Elsevier

Computer Communications

Volume 30, Issue 3, 2 February 2007, Pages 527-537
Computer Communications

A P2P technology middleware architecture enabling user-centric services deployment on low-cost embedded networked devices

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2005.11.020Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper presents a middleware architecture based on peer-to-peer (P2P) technology components, allowing seamless integration of service functions over wireless interfaces and terminals, with a view to enable realisation of intelligent control applications for the home.

Up-to-date this applications area is characterised by limited growth, as most of research effort is put on the development of user-to-user communication services, where the market potential is more evident. However, elaboration of mobile services, emerging obvious usability even by inexperienced users in the daily life, could offer the “killer application” potential for the data path of the mobile communications technology.

In the sequel, the advantages of this architecture, summarised in optimised performance and thin structure suitable to be hosted on reduced functionality, low-cost embedded systems, are illustrated in the deployment of control applications within the home (involving mobile terminals and household appliances), utilising dynamic service discovery mechanisms. The paper concludes by making provisions for the ubiquitous networking of appliances towards realisation of intelligence control applications for the mobile user.

Introduction

The penetration of Internet technology and the emergence of short range networks (Bluetooth, WiFi, HomeRF, etc.) are paving the way for new breed of revenue-generating opportunities for service providers, utility companies, security installers, homebuilders and white good appliance manufacturers. Despite the availability of technologies and standards, yet widespread acceptance of networked devices, implementing control functions in daily life, is far from reality. This is mainly due to interoperability problems caused by the mixture in the utilisation of data protocols and the underlying communication interfaces.

Smart Environments use networking technology to integrate the various devices and appliances, found in almost all homes and building environment control systems, more common in factories and offices, so that an entire home can be controlled centrally or remotely as a single machine. This technology offers the prospect of significant improvements in the living standards by promoting safety in appliance utilisation and reliable management of home environment. However, these benefits can only be realised if the technology will become affordable and accessible to those who most need it.

With the gradual improvement of technology, in the area of electronics, appliances of every type (for cars, home, communication, production, etc.) may deliver even more added-value functionality and intelligence to end-users. Sophisticated functionality usually emerge complex and time-consuming usability. Currently, appliances (e.g. for household – washing machines, refrigerators, activity sensors, etc.) operate autonomously to each other, while also, in most of the cases, require in-place user interaction for configuration, monitoring and control. This often makes operation difficult, especially for inexperienced users (children, elders and disabled persons). Also, repairing process is a costly procedure involving experienced personnel and expensive infrastructures for transportation, testing and verification.

Recent state of the art approaches in the Connected Home [1] related to the concept of ambient intelligence deal with the designation of peer-based DBMS [2] architectures to serve pervasive information discovery and aggregation onto the user terminal in seamless manner, by employing intelligent strategies for the classification of daily tasks [3]. Aspiring to the minimisation of the overhead induced by procedures invoked in data management to the expense of computational power, DBMS and its distributed forms, emerge as an obvious beneficial solution to cope with the problem of rapid data access on rich-content appliances such as PDA and TV handsets. However, most household appliances carry on embedded sub-systems with thin kernels and rudimentary file systems inadequate of bearing large burdens of logic. In reality information management should not be viewed separately but as an integral part of the service deployment context. Focus on this issue, the paper presents a P2P architecture where peers are designated as optimised functional entities carrying the service information of controllable devices (appliances). It is shown that within the home environment peers of this type may reside at local server entities or within the household appliances, whereas combinations of them may form more complex service components as perceived within the boarder context of user applications.

The rest of the paper is organised in four sections. Section 2 outlines the software architecture integrating appliances control functions and terminals, utilising the proposed P2P middleware platform. Section 3 explains in detail the internal organisation of the proposed middleware architecture, in terms of component types and interfaces with the wireless interfaces, the individual servers and the overlaying applications. Section 4 addresses design issues of P2P technology networks and Section 5 summarises the various implementation issues concerned towards the deployment of the peer architecture in the realisation of ubiquitous networking within the home by illustrating a paradigm of a control application.

Section snippets

Architecture – the concept

The fast growing sector of microcontrollers industry has been led to the production of low-cost cores with thin operating systems, mostly linux-based, optimised for hosting special functions over a variety of network interfaces. Using such cores, over the past years, the industry of household appliances has created a multitude of embedded devices aiming to replace the traditional methods of appliances fault diagnosis, repair and status monitoring. Following this trend, the introduction in mass

Peer internal structure

Peers have been originally conceived as autonomous software entities enabling mapping of generic logic to realise, in distributed manner, various information management applications in environments made up by networked devices. Peers distributed computing architecture, is primarily based on the mechanisms of capabilities advertisement and content discovery, as these allow them communicate and collaborate with each other seamlessly within the context of a user application.

Fig. 2 shows the

Services discovery methods in P2P networks

With peer-to-peer technology a network can provide services to any network-aware device in a seamless manner. Functionality carried by peers in the form of data or service can be discovered by potential applications utilising a number of available methodologies.

In contrast to the server/client communication paradigm, peers function in de-centraliser manner, where one or a number of peers can be combined to form a single service for specific applications. As such, it is important for

Building P2P technology applications for the home

One essential application of the proposed peer architecture can be found in the realisation of various functions to control the abundance of the embedded devices residing in the home environment. Devices of such type usually incorporate a wide range of on, off functionality and employ various sensors for the administration of appliances operation, and their output can be monitored remotely under timely or event triggered schemes. This way, humans may monitor and control the devices invoking

Conclusions

This article has presented a P2P middleware technology, based on a special peer structure suitable to host various type of control applications for thin-kernel embedded devices that are usually found within household appliances. It has been argued that contrary to other middleware architectures, the implications of the presented peer architecture on the network protocols are only limited to the existence of IP over which they can be mobilised and communicate to each other so as to distribute

Dr. Ing. Kavadias D. Christoforos was born in Mytilini in 1976. He received his diploma in Computer Engineering from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Deparment of the University of Patras in 1999 and his Ph.D. from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (NTUA). His main research interests include Next Generation Networks, Distributed Systems, Intelligent Networks, Mobile and Wireless (3G-4G, WLANs), Security frameworks, e-Health, Mobile Agents, Real-Time Systems and

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Dr. Ing. Kavadias D. Christoforos was born in Mytilini in 1976. He received his diploma in Computer Engineering from the Computer Engineering and Informatics Deparment of the University of Patras in 1999 and his Ph.D. from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (NTUA). His main research interests include Next Generation Networks, Distributed Systems, Intelligent Networks, Mobile and Wireless (3G-4G, WLANs), Security frameworks, e-Health, Mobile Agents, Real-Time Systems and all IP networks. Currently, he works as Senior Engineer at Teletel SA.

Dr. Ing. Stephan Rupp, 45 years. Education: Master in Electrical Engineering from the Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Ph.D. at the RWTH Technical University in Aachen on digital imaging. Professional life: From 1986 to 1991 with Philips Research as a member of the scientific staff at the research lab in Aachen, Germany, working on the development of medical systems for digital radiography. Since 1991 he is with Alcatel in Stuttgart, Germany. Following activities in product management and marketing, responsible for the business of Intelligent Networks starting from 1994. Since 1999 responsible for the design and planning of telecommunication networks, systems integration, consultancy, potential of new technologies, systems solutions, cost analysis and business plans. Stephan Rupp is also active in education at the Berufsakademie and University in Stuttgart, Germany, and as a publisher and author with dPunkt Verlag, Heidelberg. Reference in the Web: see <http://www.srupp.de/>.

Dr. Ing. Spyros Tombros received his diploma in Electrical Engineering from the University of Patras and his Ph.D from the National Technical University of Athens, in 1992 and 1997, respectively. From 1993 to 1997 he worked as research associate in the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). In 1997, he joined 4Plus SA as senior engineer with leading role in the design of ATM and UMTS traffic simulator and analysis systems. Also, all these years he has been involved in many National and EU research programmes in the area of ATM and mobile networks. Today he is the technical manager of APEX AG.

Dimitrios Vergados was born in Athens, Greece in 1973. Since 2003 Dimitrios Vergados is a lecturer in the Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, University of the Aegean. His research interests are in the area of Communication Networks, Wireless Networks, Heterogeneous Communications Networks – Military Networks, Ad hoc Networks, Computer Vision Systems and High Performance Computing. He has participated in several EC projects and has several publications in journals, books and conference proceedings. He is guest editor in IEEE Network Journal and reviewer in several Journals. Dimitrios Vergados is a member of the IEEE.

1

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Tel.:+30 22730 82220; fax: +30 22730 82009.

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