Stefano Marchesani

Short range wireless solutions enabling ambient assisted living to support people affected by the Down syndrome

Assistive technologies can provide solutions to people with physical disabilities or to weaker individuals that need particular attention. As a branch of assistive technologies, ambient care systems are emerging. In this paper we present an overall domotic architecture that, supported by a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and the use of heterogeneous devices, aims to provide multiple interfaces between a smart house and its guests. In particular we describe the results applied in the project Casa+, a smart house that is addressed to people with Down syndrome; it offers functionalities for monitoring the environment and its guests, giving indication signals, audio messages or even alarms in case of incorrect actions. Through exploitation of the most recent technologies, keeping in mind the trade off with costs, we developed the following functionalities: security, time management, assistance for daily activities, monitoring and remote control, tracking.

Model-driven agent generation approach for adaptable and resource-aware sensor node

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a versatile sensing system whose hardware resources are scarce and have to be carefully used and hence adapted to face with their context and resources changing. Moreover, WSN could be used in unreachable or dangerous places, hence their adaptation should be remotely managed. In this paper, we propose a model-driven approach able to generate agents governing the sensor node in a WSN. The generation is automatic and the obtained agents are sent to the sensor nodes and executed over a mobile agents based middleware (i.e. a virtual machine). In this way, the sensor node logics can be automatically adapted without experiencing (from the user or the remaining system) service interruption. The approach will be developed in the VISION infrastructure to bridge the QoS management and the sensor nodes to guarantee best quality of service in case of context and resource changes.

A renovated mobile agents middleware for WSN porting of Agilla to the TinyOS 2.x platform

This paper presents the porting activities related to a famous agent-based middleware (MW) for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), i.e. Agilla. After discussing main WSN-MW features, the paper describes in detail the procedure used to port such a MW from TinyOS 1.x to TinyOS 2.x. The porting has been successfully completed and then validated by means of several Agilla applications. The new code, called Agilla2, is now available to the research community.

WINSOME: A middleware platform for the provision of secure monitoring services over Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper deals with the design and implementation of security mechanisms in networked embedded systems (e.g. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)), without the support of external “resource unconstrained” facilities. While most literature contributions propose to put intelligence (that is usually more consuming both in computational resources and in memory as well) outside the WSN, we have already reported in some previous works that, under certain limitations, a WSN can operate as a functionally “autonomous entity” not only for sensing operations. This paper provides a global overview of the related research project and then reports on recent design upgrades to what we denote as the “Secure Platform”, i.e. the SW platform over WSN that is able to support a wide range of applications in non-standard environment such as monitoring of critical infrastructures, data acquisition in hazardous environments under standard security conditions. The work presented here is a partial achievement of the internal project WINSOME (WIreless sensor Network-based Secure system fOr structural integrity Monitoring and AlErting) at our Centre DEWS, whose target is to develop a cross-layer secure framework for advanced monitoring and alerting applications.

Modeling and Timing Simulation of Agilla Agents for WSN Applications in Executable UML

Wireless Sensor Networks are becoming one of the most successful choices for the development and deployment of a wide range of applications, from intelligent homes to environment monitoring. In response to the growing demand for fast development of WSN applications, we extend an existing UML-based approach for the design and code generation of Agilla applications with functional simulation and timing analysis capabilities through executable UML models. The proposed approach makes use of both a UML profile and an executable model library for Agilla. Execution times, annotated on Agilla instructions and patterns in the library, are given as additional input parameters during the model execution to carry out a timing analysis of the simulated Agilla applications. Modeling and simulation activities rely on MagicDraw© and Cameo Simulation Toolkit©. A running case study is provided to show the approach and the supporting tools at work.

Advanced Solutions to Support Daily Life of People Affected by the Down Syndrome

Recent technologies applied or explicitly developed for assisting people with physical disabilities or weaker individuals needing particular attention, are becoming an emerging research topic. In this paper we focus on ambient care systems and we present an overall architecture that aims to provide multiple interfaces between a smart house and its guests. In particular we describe the results applied in the project Casa + , a smart house that is addressed to people with Down syndrome; it offers functionalities for monitoring the environment and its guests, giving indication signals, audio messages or even alarms in case of incorrect actions. Through exploitation of the most recent technologies, keeping in mind the trade off with costs, we developed the following functionalities: security, time management, assistance for daily activities, monitoring and remote control, outdoor tracking.

Definition and Development of a Topology-Based Cryptographic Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a versatile and distributed sensing system that is able to support a wide variety of application domains. One of the most important issue in WSN design is to guarantee the reliability of the collected data which involves in turn security issues across wireless links. This paper deals with the cryptographic aspects in the broader field of security in WSNs. In particular, moving from some previous advances in our research activity, this manuscript proposes a novel cryptographic scheme that is compliant to security requirements that may arise from real-world WSN applications and reports some details about an implementation in TinyOS that we have carried for experimental validation. The proposed scheme, called TAKS2, exploits benefits from Hybrid Cryptography to handle resource constraints and allows to generate topology authenticated keys to provide increased robustness to the scheme itself.

A Middleware Approach to Provide Security in IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks

Last years have seen the growth of interest for middleware exploitation in distributed resource-constrained systems as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are. A WSN is a versatile smart sensing system to support pervasive monitoring in a variety of applications. In this context available middleware platforms usually provide the Application Layer with different basic services, as shared memory or addressing repository, but do not usually provide security services such as secure links management protocol or intrusion detection. Nevertheless, since WSN applications normally require the collection and the aggregation of reliable measurements and data from the sensing units, secure communications should be guaranteed even in the presence of resource constraints. In this paper we then present a novel middleware approach that is directly tailored to an IEEE 802.15.4-based WSN. The security-related components of the proposed middleware include a light yet powerful cryptographic scheme (TAKS) and an Intrusion Detection System (WIDS): the former module exploits the topological properties of a WSN, while the latter one is based on a Weak Process Model approach.

A cryptographic scheme for real-world wireless sensor networks applications

This demo deals with the cryptographic aspect of security applied to the WSN domain. In particular, it shows in action a novel cryptographic scheme compliant to security requirements of real-world WSN applications (i.e. with very limited system resources). The proposed scheme exploits benefits from both symmetric and asymmetric ones where the keys, for each communicating node pairs, can be generated only if such nodes have been authenticated with respect to the network topology.

Demo abstract: A cryptographic scheme for real-world wireless sensor networks applications

This demo deals with the cryptographic aspect of security applied to the WSN domain. In particular, it shows in action a novel cryptographic scheme compliant to security requirements of real-world WSN applications (i.e. with very limited system resources). The proposed scheme exploits benefits from both symmetric and asymmetric ones where the keys, for each communicating node pairs, can be generated only if such nodes have been authenticated with respect to the network topology.