Number 76, January 2009 ERCIM NEWS European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics www.ercim.org
SpecialSpecial theme:theme: THETHE SENSORSENSOR WEBWEB
Also in this issue:
Joint ERCIM Actions: ERCIM at ICT 2008
"Engineering Secure Complex Software Systems and Services" - Executive Summary of the European Commission-ERCIM Seminar on ICT Security
R&D and Technology Transfer: Enhancing Authentication in eBanking with NFC-Enabled Mobile Phones Editorial Information
ERCIM News is the magazine of ERCIM. Published quarterly, it reports on joint actions of the ERCIM partners, and aims to reflect the contribution made by ERCIM to the European Com- munity in Information Technology and Applied Mathematics. Through short articles and news items, it provides a forum for the exchange of information between the institutes and also with the wider scientific community. This issue has a circulation of 10,500 copies. The printed ver- sion of ERCIM News has a production cost of €8 per copy. Subscription is currently available free of charge.
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Cover photo: Synchronization of sensor data in team sports allows team-based queries with a potential to discover new knowledge from sensed data. Photo: AFP
Next issue: April 2009, Special theme: Future Internet Technology
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Keynote
The Sensor Web: Bringing Information to Life Barry Smyth CLARITY: The Centre for Sensor Web Tech- nologies, Ireland. Of course realising this vision is not without its challenges and as a result there is currently considerable research investment in Sensor Web technologies by funding agencies and industry players alike. Researchers at the new Centre for Sensor Web Technologies (CLARITY) are addressing these here is no doubting the impact that the information challenges head-on (see www.clarity-centre.com). CLAR- revolution has had on our everyday lives. How we ITY is funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and Tlearn, work, and play has been forever transformed by involves more than 60 researchers in University College the always-on connectivity of the Internet. But this informa- Dublin, Dublin City University, and the Tyndall National tion revolution has largely been confined to the online world Institute (TNI). The centre will focus on the development and, for many of us, we continue to interact with two very and application of sensor web technologies in areas such as separate worlds: the physical world in which we live and the personal health, environmental monitoring, and media and online world of the web. There has been a physical-digital the research focus will include three different sensor modal- divide. Every second of every day information is created ities: through naturally occurring events in the physical world but these events go largely unnoticed and the information is lost. 1. Sensing the Body – Focusing on the use of wearable tech- In the world of the Sensor Web this is set to change. nologies to capture physiological data form the wearer with key applications areas such as exercise, sports and The catalyst for this change will come in the form of a new personal health. generation of cheap, reliable, and flexible sensor technolo- 2. Sensing the Mind – Recognising the preferences of indi- gies, which will serve as new peripherals for the internet by viduals and groups of users by mining sensed interaction bringing a whole new world of input data to the wider web. data. Accordingly, data will no longer just be generated from the 3. Sensing the Place – Focusing on the use of sensors in keyboards and scanners of desktop PCs. Instead, these new monitoring the world in which we live, with applications sensor technologies will permit the sensing of diverse events in environmental monitoring. in the physical world, from the traffic congestion in our streets to the pollution in our river systems, and from energy Within these modalities, the same challenges will arise: consumption in our cities to recycling in the home. Sensors bridging the Physical-Digital divide, specification and that can be integrated with garments, and worn on the body, deployment of adaptive middleware, and taming the infor- will permit the capture of physiological data as we exercise mation overload. or recuperate. In short, this unique combination of sensors, software, and the Internet will enable new types of informa- Addressing these challenges and developing practical Sensor tion services across a wide range of sectors from health and Web solutions will, in the near time demonstrate the true the environment to education, retail, and entertainment. potential of this technology to industry, government, and consumer alike. Indeed there are reasons to be optimistic that such technologies are accessible in the near-term. For exam- This is the vision of the Sensor Web. Its guiding principle is ple, modern mobile phone infrastructure provides an ideal that better information helps people to make better decisions communication network for the Sensor Web and mobile and that by harnessing the potential of the sensor web we can phones serve as ideal sensor platforms capable of capturing help people to live healthier, safer, and more productive information from subscribers and their locale. Comprehen- lives. For example, decades worth of studies about energy sive location-sensing technologies such as GPS, for exam- usage in the home have shown that by simply informing peo- ple, are now built in to most modern mobile devices and this ple about the impact of their energy usage in real-time is suf- is already inspiring a new wave of novel applications in ficient motivation for them to cut their energy consumption which location sensing plays a key role. But all of this is just by up to 15%. the beginning. Barry Smyth
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 3 JointContents ERCIM Actions
2 Editorial Information SPECIAL THEME
KEYNOTE Introduction to the Special Theme 14 The Sensor Web: Bridging the Physical-Digital 3 The Sensor Web - Bringing Information to Life Divide by Barry Smyth, CLARITY: The Centre for Sensor by Mark Roantree and Mikko Sallinen Web Technologies, Ireland. Invited Article 16 Sensor Networks in the Real World by Steven D. Glaser and Tommi Parkkila JOINT ERCIM ACTIONS Wireless Networks 6 EVOL 2008 - Fourth International ERCIM 18 MARWIS: A Management Platform for Workshop on Software Evolution and Evolvability Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks by Michel Wermelinger and Paul Wernick by Gerald Wagenknecht, Markus Anwander and Torsten Braun 6 SERENE 2008 International Workshop on Software Engineering for Resilient Systems 20 The IBM Mote Runner by Nicolas Guelfi, Henry Muccini, Patrizio Pelliccione by Thorsten Kramp, Michael Baentsch, Thomas Eirich, and Alexander Romanovsky Marcus Oestreicher, Ivan Romanov and Alexandru Caraças 7 Interlink Consolidation Workshop by Dimitris Plexousakis 21 A Testbed for Sensor Service Networks by Thomas Usländer and Kym Watson 8 New ERCIM Working Group on Data and Information Spaces Management & Maintenance of Sensor Networks by Ingeborg Torvik Sølvberg 22 Bringing the Semantic Sensor Web to Smart Buildings 8 ERCIM office in Brussels by Rob Brennan
9 ERCIM at ICT 2008 Toolkits and Standards 24 Building the Sensor Web – Standard by Standard 11 Engineering Secure Complex Software Systems by Andrew Woolf and Services - Executive Summary of the European Commission- ERCIM Seminar on ICT Security 26 Revolutionising Sensor Based Automation in Manufacturing by R Harrison, F Jammes, H Smit and T Kirkham
Sensor Network Security 27 Security and Robustness of Wireless Sensor Networks by Václav Matyáš and Petr Švenda
29 Security Challenges for Wireless Sensor Networks – Dynamic Routing as a Security Paradigm by Marek Klonowski, Michał Koza and Mirosław Kutyłowski
Ubiquitious Sensing Systems 30 Ubiquitous Machine-to-Machine Service Networks by Johanna Kallio and Juhani Latvakoski
32 Short-Range Communication in Ubiquitous Professional and Consumer Applications by Mikko Sallinen, Esko Strömmer and Pirkka Tukeva
34 The CLARITY Ubiquitous Robotic Testbed by Gregory O'Hare, Mauro Dragone and Jennifer Treanor
4 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 35 Beyond RFID: The Ubiquitous Near-Field Applying Sensors to Sporting Environments Distributed Memory 54 TennisSense: A Multi-Modal Sensing Platform for by Paul Couderc and Michel Banâtre Sport by Noel E. O'Connor, Philip Kelly, Ciarán Ó'Conaire, Environmental Monitoring Damien Connaghan, Alan F. Smeaton, Brian Caulfield, 36 Rapid Prototyping of Sensor-Based Applications Dermot Diamond and Niall Moynahan with SunSPOTs by Manfred Bortenschlager, Elisabeth Haid and 55 Synchronizing Sensed Data in Team Sports Andreas Wagner by Dónall McCann, Mark Roantree, Niall Moyna and Michael Whelan 38 Building an Adaptive Environmental Monitoring System Using Sensor Web Technology 56 Inertial Sensing: A Little Bit of CLARITY by Jer Hayes, Greg O'Hare, Harry Kolar and Dermot by John Barton, Brian Caulfield & Niall Moyna Diamond
39 Remote Water Monitoring With Sensor Networking Technology R&D AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER by Thiemo Voigt, Nicolas Tsiftes and Zhitao He 58 Semantically Enhanced Representation of Legal 40 Sensors Anywhere – Sensor Web Enablement in Contracts for Web Applications Risk Management Applications by Mihály Héder and Balázs Rátai by Gerald Schimak and Denis Havlik 59 Contiki: Bringing IP to Sensor Networks Sensor Web Applications by Adam Dunkels 42 FLASH: Fine-Grained Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks using Acoustic Sound and High- 60 Preferential Text Classification: Learning Precision Algorithms and Evaluation Measures by Evangelos Mangas and Angelos Bilas by Fabio Aiolli, Riccardo Cardin, Fabrizio Sebastiani and Alessandro Sperduti 43 High-Density Wireless Geophone Networks for Oil and Gas Monitoring and Exploration 61 DataCell: Exploiting the Power of Relational by Stefano Savazzi, Vittorio Rampa and Umberto Databases for Efficient Stream Processing Spagnolini by Erietta Liarou and Martin Kersten
45 A Software Platform for the Acquisition and Online 62 On looking FORWARD Processing of Images in a Camera Network by Sotiris Ioannidis, Evangelos Markatos by Thomas Sarmis, Xenophon Zabulis and Antonis A. and Christopher Kruegel Argyros 63 Enhancing Authentication in eBanking with NFC- 47 Tackling the Semantic Gap in Multimodal Sensor Enabled Mobile Phones Networks by Diego A. Ortiz-Yepes by Eric Pauwels, Albert Salah and Paul de Zeeuw 65 Sino-French IT Lab in Beijing Opens to European 48 Utilising Wearable Sensor Technology to Provide Institutions Effective Memory Cues by Stéphane Grumbach by Aiden R. Doherty and Alan F. Smeaton 66 DocSearch: UHF RFID Technology for Document 49 SENSE – Smart Embedded Network of Sensing Localization Entities by Marina Buzzi, Marco Conti and Daniele Vannozzi by Wolfgang Herzner 67 Integrated Site Security for Grids Wearable Sensors by Kate Bradshaw 51 Towards Data Management in the Sensor Web: the MaD-WiSe System 68 Book Review: "From computers to ubiquitous by Giuseppe Amato, Stefano Chessa, Francesco Furfari, computing, by 2020" Stefano Lenzi, Claudio Vairo 68 Announcements 52 Detecting Hazardous Gases in Emergency Disaster Scenarios using Wearable Sensors 71 In Brief by Tanja Radu, Cormac Fay, King Tong Lau and Dermot Diamond
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 5 Joint ERCIM Actions
to the importance of looking at software evolution at various EVOL 2008 - Fourth time scales.
International ERCIM Finally, in the closing panel, Jean-Marie Favre, Massimil- iano di Penta (University of Sannio, Italy) and Serge Workshop on Software Demeyer (University of Antwerp, Belgium) presented and discussed with the audience their views on the challenges Evolution and Evolvability and opportunities facing the software evolution research community. by Michel Wermelinger and Paul Wernick
The fourth edition of this annual workshop took place in Links: L'Aquila, Italy, 15-16 September 2008, under the Workshop Web site: http://evol08.inria.fr auspices of the ERCIM Working Group on Software Working Group Web site: http://w3.umh.ac.be/evol/ Evolution. The event gathered academics to present and discuss the state-of-the-art in research on software Please contact: evolution. For information on the workshop: Michel Wermelinger This year's workshop was the result of a merger between the The Open University, UK ERCIM workshop on Software Evolution and the IEEE Tel: +44 1908 659 539 International Workshop on Software Evolvability. Histori- E-mail: [email protected] cally, the ERCIM workshops have dealt with the practicali- ties of developing software that can be changed to meet For information on the EVOL Working Group: evolving needs and the tools and methods by which this can Tom Mens be best achieved, while the Software Evolvability work- Université de Mons-Hainaut, Belgium shops have generally addressed issues at a more abstract Tel: +32 65 37 3453 level, advancing the understanding of the causes and effects E-mail: [email protected] of software evolution using means such as analogies and models from biology, the sociology of technology and other areas.
The workshop was supported by ERCIM co-located with the 23rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated SERENE 2008 Software Engineering (ASE 2008). The organisers were Michel Wermelinger (The Open University, UK), Paul Wer- International Workshop nick (University of Hertfordshire, UK) and Ciarán Bryce (INRIA Rennes, France). on Software Engineering
The workshop attracted 20 participants from ten countries. for Resilient Systems The programme consisted of ten long and four short papers, one keynote talk, and a closing panel. To make the event a by Nicolas Guelfi, Henry Muccini, Patrizio Pelliccione true workshop, the schedule had plenty of discussion time and Alexander Romanovsky built in, session chairs were asked to prepare in advance some discussion topics, and participants were given the The first workshop of the ERCIM Working Group on papers in advance. The papers covered a wide range of top- Software Engineering for Resilient Systems (SERENE) ics, from run-time changes to long-term maintenance, from was held in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on 17-19 formal models to empirical studies of the state of practice in November 2008. industry. Moreover, joining the two workshop series proved to be successful, with some papers taking up the theme of The SERENE series of workshops, organized by the ERCIM 'bridging boundaries' and looking for new techniques and working group SERENE, is an international forum for insights in other disciplines – in particular healthcare, natu- researchers and practitioners interested in advances in Soft- ral language processing and epidemiology. The full list of ware Engineering for Resilient Systems. SERENE 2008 was papers and authors can be seen on the workshop's website held in cooperation with ACM SIGSOFT, the International (see link at the end). The proceedings will be published in Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security, the IEEE's digital library. and was attended by 42 participants. The technical pro- gramme contained two invited talks, three sessions of tech- Jean-Marie Favre (University of Grenoble, France) provided nical papers, two PhD forum sessions, a project session and in his keynote address under the title 'Past, Present and an experience/industry session. The workshop organisers Future of Software Evolution: From Software-Now to Soft- received 23 submissions (thirteen technical, three industry, ware-over-Centuries' a view of the size of the territory cov- five PhD and two projects), 17 of which were accepted for ered by software evolution studies, both in subject matter presentation (seven technical, three industry, five PhD and and time. He made an analogy between the evolution of two projects). All papers have been peer-reviewed by at least informatics and the evolution of human societies and pointed three members of the program committee.
6 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 The first invited talk, entitled 'System Complexity, Depend- project officer, Walter van de Velde from the European Com- ability and Failures', was given by Brian Randell from New- mission (EC), on the collaborative research opportunities castle University, UK. Ralf Reussner of Universität Karl- arising within the programme of the FET unit of the EC in sruhe, Germany, delivered the second, on “Challenges and forthcoming years. The workshop also featured a number of Results in Component Quality Certification”. invited talks. Joseph Sifakis (CNRS Grenoble, ACM Turing Award 2007 recipient) delivered the keynote address on the Organization of such a workshop represents a big chal- verification of complex software systems. The coordinators lenge. We would like to acknowledge the help of the pro- of the three thematic areas gave an overview of their respec- gramme committee members, the additional referees, the tive research areas and group proposals, setting the context organization committee members, and the support of the for the Thematic Group invited talks. Stefan Jaehnichen scientific, technical and administrative staff of Newcastle (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft) talked about challenges arising in University, UK. grid computing and computing clouds. Ted Selker (MIT Media Lab) presented his research and ideas on context- The workshop proceedings, ISBN 978-1-60558-275-7, are aware computing and Henrik Christensen (Georgia Tech) included in the ACM Digital Library. elaborated on the study of artificial cognitive systems.
SERENE 2008 was supported by ERCIM, FNR (Luxem- For the second day of the workshop, the three groups worked bourg National Research Fund), the ICT FP7 DEPLOY IP in parallel with the aim of identifying major challenges (on Industrial Deployment of System Engineering Methods where significant added value is expected to be gained from Providing High Dependability and Productivity), LASSY worldwide cooperation. The groups also deliberated on the (Laboratory for Advanced Software Systems, University of scientific, technological and societal impact of the research Luxembourg), School of Computing Science, Newcastle proposals as well as on knowledge-building mechanisms, University, and the ICT FP6 ReSIST (Resilience for Surviv- research practices, innovation mechanisms and programmes ability in IST) Network of Excellence. for sustainable cooperation. On the third day, representatives of the Working Groups and the scientific steering committee Links: http://serene.uni.lu/tiki-index.php?page=Serene2008Overview http://serene.uni.lu/tiki-index.php
Please contact: Nicolas Guelfi ERCIM SERENE WG coordinator Luxembourg University E-mail: [email protected]
Interlink Consolidation Workshop by Dimitris Plexousakis Interlink workshop participants.
The ERCIM-led Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Coordination Action Interlink (International Cooperation Activities in Future and Emerging ICTs) held its consoli- discussed cross-thematic challenges arising at the intersec- dation workshop in Cannes, France on 12-14 November. tions of the thematic areas. The group identified the vision of 'smart cities' (multiscale smart spaces) as a unifying research Interlink is a two-and-a-half year endeavour aimed at identi- theme in which major challenges relating to the individual fying new challenges for basic research in three areas of areas arise most prominently. The workshop concluded with strategic importance, namely Software-Intensive Systems presentations of the research proposals of the Working and New Computing Paradigms, Ambient Computing and Groups as well as of the cross-thematic challenges. Communication Environments, and Intelligent and Cogni- tive Systems. The workshop brought together all three work- Links: ing groups with the goal of finalizing proposals on strategic http://www.ercim.org/interlinkworkshops/ research directions, related disciplines and fundamental http://interlink.ics.forth.gr. problems that need to be addressed within the selected areas. Please contact: The first day of the workshop began with an overview of the Dimitris Plexousakis aims and structure of the workshop by Dimitris Plexousakis, ICS-FORTH, Greece FORTH. This was followed by a presentation by Interlink's E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 7 Joint ERCIM Actions
New ERCIM Working ERCIM at ICT 2008
Group on Data ERCIM had a major presence at ICT 2008 in Lyon, France, on 25-27 November. This bi-annual event, and Information Spaces organised by the European Commission Information Society and Media Directorate General, attracted over by Ingeborg Torvik Sølvberg 4,500 delegates and presented Europe's priorities for information and communication technologies (ICT) 18 September, 2009 was the kick-off date for the new research, development and funding. ERCIM Working Group on Data and Information Spaces (DIS). The objective of DIS is to build a strong network of Through stands and networking sessions related to ERCIM researchers in the fields of information repositories and itself or to European projects in which ERCIM is participat- digital libraries and their interoperation. ing, the consortium had its highest exposure ever at "Europe's biggest research event for ICT". DIS will focus on issues relating to digital libraries, and the storage, preservation and curation of all types of data, ERCIM was present on its own booth and on the stands of including primary and scientific data. Intelligent information the European projects VITALAS (Video & image Indexing management and interoperability and scalability will be and Retrieval in the Large Scale), EchoGRID (European and addressed. The development of methods and tools to make Chinese cooperation on Grid), GridCOMP (Grids Program- digital, cultural and scientific content available, searchable ming with Components: an advanced Component Platform and accessible to all kinds of users is of special interest. for an effective invisible Grid), EuroIndia (Euro-India ICT Co-operation Initiative), and Digital World Forum on Acces- Eleven ERCIM organizations have registered for the WG, sible and Inclusive ICT. Networking sessions were held for suggesting the topic is relevant and timely for ERCIM mem- InterLink (International Cooperation Activities in Future bers. At the kick-off meeting, eight organizations were rep- And Emerging ICTs), EchoGRID and EuroIndia. resented by thirteen individuals. Among the issues discussed was the name of the WG. It was decided to change it from Working Group on Digital Libraries to Working Group on Interlink Data and Information Spaces, DIS. A draft of the work pro- As a coordination action supported by the EC IST Pro- gram for the two years was discussed. The WG intends to gramme, InterLink held a networking Session entitled 'Inter- initiate research projects in areas that are of interest to its national Cooperation Activities in Future and Emerging members, to arrange workshops and to encourage exchange ICTs'. The aims and results of InterLink were presented of researchers and students. The next meeting is the open along with an outlook on opportunities for future interna- Workshop that will take place in Paris on 27 May, 2009 in tional collaboration. The results presented were the new conjunction with ERCIM's 20th anniversary meeting. Scien- research proposals that came out of the InterLink consolida- tists interested in participating in the ERCIM DIS Working tion workshop held in Cannes in November (see article on Group should contact the coordinator. page 7).
Link: http://wiki.ercim.org/wg/DIS/ Euro-India Please contact: The Euro-India (Bringing European & Indian Perspectives for Ingeborg Torvik Sølvberg future ICT Co-operation) played a central role at ICT 2008 by ERCIM DIS Working Group chair, NTNU, Norway holding a networking session entitled "Euro-Indian ICT E-mail: [email protected] Cooperation Gateway". Chaired by Hilary Hanahoe, Trust-IT Services, and opened by Alvis Ancans, European Commission, International Relations Unit, DG Information Society & Media who illustrated the EU-India ICT R&D cooperation, the session ERCIM office in Brussels attracted more than 50 participants.
ERCIM opened an office in Brussels in December 2008. As After a brief presentation of the India Mentor project requested by ERCIM's Board of Directors, this will enable (Mentoring Indian IT organisations in the participation in the ERCIM to strengthen its links with European Commission ICT programme of FP7) by Mauro Bianchi (Teseo Sprl, India key players. The new office is ideally located within the Mentor project coordinator) and the EuroIndia initiative by premises of our Italian member, CNR, in B-1050 Brussels, Mogens Kuehn Pedersen (Copenhagen Business School, rue du Trône 98, right in the centre of the European quarter. EuroIndia Project Coordinator), the session continued with ERCIM is now able to offer a hosting environment for keynote speakers on different topics. Manesh Kulkarni, from ERCIM staff and ERCIM project meetings in Brussels. The CDAC Pune (India) presented the Digital Libraries projects office is headed by Pierre Guisset, formerly head of CETIC. in India. Prof. Dilip Kanhere from the centre for modelling and simulation, Pune University (India) explored distributed Please contact: computing. A. Prabaharan from Jawaharlal Nehru University; Pierre Guisset, ERCIM office Brussels New Delhi (India) gave an overview on ICT for learning. IPv6, E-mail: [email protected]. a topic of huge interest was tackled by T R G Nair, director
8 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Euro-India booth. Joint EchoGRID, GridCOMP and BRIDGE booth.
of research and industry from the Dayanand Sagar Institution operation on Grids, and ProActive/GCM Demonstration", at (India), while software and services in India were presented the 'International Village', demonstrated the benefits of Grids by Prashant Shukla, COO from CMC Ltd (a TATAenterprise). across a range of commercial and public sectors with live Finally, Krishna Lakshmi Narasimhan, vice president of Cranes demos from Bridge and GridCOMP showcasing cutting- Softwares (India) gave an insight into the successful Indian edge technologies developed with partners from China and experience of the AEE (acquire-enhance-expand) model for other world regions, BRIDGE presented three application intellectual property identification, development and scenarios designed to demonstrate co-operative design, sim- commercialisation. ulation and data access between European and Chinese part- ners, with special emphasis on the interoperability approach The session ended with intensive discussions between the to combine heterogeneous Grid infrastructures, as well as the participants interested in developing or increasing cooperation workflows in the Bridge application domains. The network- with India and interested in understanding more about EU- ing session on Thursday 27 November highlighted current Indian ICT collaboration. The participants had the opportunity and future developments and areas for future cooperation of to continue their discussion and to learn more about the India interest to both Europe and China. Mentor and EuroIndia projects visiting the joint booth located in the 'international village'. Visitors viewed a rolling The GridCOMP ProActive/GCM (Grid Component Model) presentation with quotes on innovation by a select group of demonstration tackled the increasing need for both improved experts from India. The presentation highlighted India's business performance and optimal energy efficiency now leadership in specific ICT areas, and its potential to invent, facing enterprise IT. GridCOMP has developed an open- innovate and make an impact through collaborative source reference implementation in the ProActive parallel developments with Europe. suite library that enables businesses to globalise their IT infrastructure while lowering costs and accelerating applica- Delegates were also invited to participate in the series of events tions. which will be held in India in January, such as 'Information Days' (Mumbai, 20 January 2009; New Delhi, 21 January Business intelligence often involves data mining and ETL 2009) and the First EuroIndia international conference in New (Extract Transform Load): relevant information from enor- Delhi, 22-23 January 2009. The conference will take place mous files are analysed, extracted, transformed and loaded during the 'Indian R&D 2009: ICT Innovation' event, organized into data warehouses in order to support decision making by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry processes. GridCOMP has enhanced these data-mining and (FICCI). This multi-faceted event featured keynote talks, ETL processes and has delivered a faster response-time parallel sessions on ICT topics of interest to Europe and India, capability for different departments in a Telco-company sce- and an exhibition showcasing technological achievements in nario. both India and Europe. EuroIndia conference will include a session presenting the main outcomes of EuroIndia's initial The demonstration showed how the GCM provides an easy technology road-mapping and a guide on how to get involved way to use deployment framework providing interoperabil- in European Commission-funded projects as well as ity with a large set of Grid schedulers and middleware. This presentations in all sessions. is one of the industrial use cases developed within Grid- COMP by GridSystems (http://www.gridsystems.com/). http://www.euroindia-ict.org/ Visitors also learnt about the achievements of EchoGRID in connecting actors from EU and China through a series of EchoGRID and GridCOMP events in both regions to deliberate top-level challenges for ICT 2008 offered a prime opportunity for EchoGRID and new computing paradigms and define research priorities GridCOMP projects to build on their achievements and moving forward. In particular, the EU-China cooperation spearhead synergies with a number of EC-funded projects workshop on 28 October 2008 in Beijing, showcased suc- and technology platforms. The joint booth of EchoGRID, cessful partnerships between China and Europe in Grids, GridCOMP and BRIDGE (Cooperation between Europe and software and services, and e-infrastructures, with the aim of China to Develop Grid Application) on "EU & Chinese Co- fostering future collaborative developments to address new
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 9 Joint ERCIM Actions
challenges. The workshop brought together around one hun- large audience during the the Networked and Electronic dred European and Chinese representatives, including the Media Summit in St Malo, France, 13-15 October 2008 European Commission and Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology officials. The next release of the prototype, VITALAS V2, available in February 2009, will integrate text, video and audio modules. The networking session held on Thursday 27 November This version will enable audio queries and visual queries, 2008, was entitled “Priorities for Future Research on Grids: analyse of non-textual content in such a manner that textual EU & International Perspectives”. This Session looked at annotation from audio and visual content analysis can be different research agendas around Grid from multiple yet automatically predicted and generated. complementary perspectives, with the future evolution of distributed computing and software and services firmly in http://vitalas.ercim.org/ mind. Each of the hosting projects, EchoGRID, NESSI- GRID (Network European Software and Services Initiative - GRID), CHALLENGERS and 3S (European Community for Software & Software Services), gave a brief talk on the main outcome of their road-mapping activities and white papers. BRIDGE then took the floor to present current achievements in Grid developments, paving the way for discussion.
The session brought into focus future research priorities for distributed computing and software and services defined by EU road-mapping projects both at a European and interna- tional level, featuring success stories on EU and Chinese co- operation on grids. VITALAS at ICT'08. EchoGRID: http://echogrid.ercim.org/ GridCOMP: http://gridcomp.ercim.org Launch of ERCIM Innovation Digital World Forum The first edition of 'ERCIM Innovation' was successfully The Digital World Forum EU project staffed a booth in the launched during the ERCIM cocktail reception attended by 'International Village' of ICT 2008 and issued a press release some 200 people, including 30 representatives from the Euro- announcing a public workshop on the role of mobile tech- pean Commission. This brand new magazine aims at commu- nologies in fostering social and economic development in nicating ideas and innovations from ERCIM members in Africa in Maputo, Mozambique, on 1-2 April 2009. In this order to facilitate their uptake by business and industry. In workshop, participants will explore ways to fulfill the poten- short, the purpose of this magazine is to foster innovation in tial of mobile phones as a platform for deploying develop- Europe thanks to closer relationships between research, aca- ment-oriented ICT services towards the poorest segments of demia, standardisation, industry, and investment. This kind of populations in developing countries, with an emphasis on the activity demonstrates that ERCIM is not only the European African context. DWF also participated in the networking network of research but also a unique European network of session on "Strategic cooperation opportunities with sub- innovation. The content for ERCIM Innovation is provided Saharan Africa". by our new network of technology/knowledge transfer &
DWF is an FP7-funded project focusing on the use of ICT to leverage economic development in Africa and Latin Amer- ica. The project explores ways in which advantage can be taken of the new model of low-cost technologies in broad- band infrastructure and devices, as well as the explosion of mobile telephony to bridge the digital divide and help con- nect the hitherto unconnected.
http://www.digitalworldforum.eu/ http://www.w3.org/2008/11/mw4dafrica-pressrelease The first edition of VITALAS 'ERCIM Innovation'. The VITALAS project (Video and image Indexing and reTrievAl in the LArge Scale) project demonstrated at innovation experts working in our member institutes, with ICT'08 the first release of its cross-media search system additional articles of interest contributed by external innova- which combines semantic search, textual and visual con- tion experts. The magazine is available for download from cepts search, and visual similarity search on a corpus of the ERCIM Web site. Printed copies are being distributed to 10,000 annotated images provided by the Belgian news 9,000 people throughout Europe and can also be requested agency Belga. The system was previously presented to a from [email protected].
10 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 joint corporate initiatives on secure software were also Engineering Secure launched. They clearly demonstrate the great interest that major industrial players and private and public organisations Complex Software have in cooperating in this field by sharing and promoting pragmatic approaches and proven software assurance prac- Systems and Services tices. Automated support for best practice enforcement and the ability to reason about the business impact of security are Executive Summary of the European Commission- key issues to manage security related efforts in an economi- ERCIM Seminar on ICT Security cally feasible way.
ERCIM and the European Commission jointly organised Novel IT frameworks, models and tools a Strategic Seminar on “Engineering Secure Complex during all phases of the software lifecycle Software Systems and Services”. The seminar was held Software security should be an integral part of every phase in Brussels on October 16th 2008 and is the result of of the software lifecycle (ie, from design to deployment, an effort of ERCIM, its Security and Trust Management monitoring and auditing). The existence of common IT Working Group, and the European Commission's DG development and execution frameworks enforces the use of INFSO Unit F5 "Security".
The seminar aimed at collecting the relevant academic and industrial expertise in secure software engineering (shortly, Strategic Seminars SSE) and at linking it with industry's best practices in the field. As the Information Society continues to develop, the With the seminar on "Engineering Secure Complex Software Systems security of its supporting ICT infrastructures will grow in and Services" the ERCIM Board of Directors embarked on the initia- importance. The need for assurance of software systems and tive to organise a series of annual strategic seminars on current topics services demands a set of novel engineering methodologies within ICT and Mathematics, responding to the need for closer ties and tools in order to ensure secure system behaviour. There with the European ICT industry. is clearly the urgency and, actually, the opportunity for exploiting synergies of advanced research approaches with The rationale behind this strategic decision is manifold: to enhance industrial best practices in order to reduce the gap between the impact of research taking place within ERCIM institutes and theory and practice. Working Groups by actively disseminating results towards industrial stakeholders; to expose researchers to ongoing research activities The specific objectives of the seminar were: with an industrial take-up potential; and to help bridge the gap • to present the best practices applied in industry and to dis- between research and industrial practice. cuss latest progress on key R&D initiatives • to encourage the dialogue and promote collaboration http://www.ercim.org/activity/strategic_seminar/ between scientists and industrial players • to identify future key research challenges, in particular in the context of the evolution towards the Future Internet. best practices and fosters collaborative work towards their This report briefly describes the main findings of the semi- further improvement for achieving higher levels of secure nar, which was attended by more than 60 stakeholders from software. Formalising and describing how the many possible industry and academia. The full seminar report, agenda, indi- processes and their security requirements have to be organ- vidual presentations and list of participants are available at ised into an application or system is essential to software http://www.ercim.org/activity/strategic_seminar. industry. Modelling tools could provide the right abstract schemes to make possible the description and assessment of 1. Industrial Best Practices and Perspectives alternative scenarios for achieving a balanced secure soft- The first panel of the seminar addressed industrial best prac- ware solution. Furthermore, industry needs IT tools that sup- tices in the field and future perspectives. The panellists also port security in the software that it produces or uses and that discussed about IT frameworks, models and tools required are platform- and programming language-agnostic. In fact, for improving the development of secure software through- industry requires tools that encapsulate specialised knowl- out its lifecycle; creating a sound business case for security; edge by translating underlying theoretical foundations into promoting software assurance and measurability and testing concrete secure software development practices. Such tools procedures for auditing and security compliance purposes; have to be well integrated into development environments dealing with the increasing complexity of IT systems; and, and be easy to use by non-experts. education, training and awareness initiatives. Creating the business case for security Best practices Despite the accrued interest of industry on SSE practices, In ever changing and global markets, software companies overall, IT security has to compete with several other invest- are continuously developing and improving their procedures ment priorities. With squeezing IT budgets and ever-shorter and tools for embedding security in their software systems times to market, how much do managers need to spend on IT and services. A rich set of best practices is now around in security to achieve enough security and when secure is terms of documents and guidelines that ask for strict devel- secure enough? Understanding the value that investments on opment process control, supervision, or review. Recently, secure software can add through the product value chain is
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 11 Joint ERCIM Actions
vital for business and IT managers taking decisions on Also, mechanisms able to pass from negative-form require- spending money on security. Specifically, managers need to ments to more operational ones (as for functional require- understand how much risk their company is ready to take for ments) should be envisaged. As a whole, security require- a given threat and manage that risk accordingly. ments engineering is an area where progress is possible and potentially useful in order to answer common software Dealing with assurance, measurability and testing industry needs. Understanding the value of security and assessing and man- aging risks implies putting in place an appropriate set of Models for Secure Software Engineering "controls" at different levels, business, technology or The software development process needs several models to processes. Such a control framework would allow preven- deal with domain specific aspects and to identify the correct tion of vulnerabilities and monitoring compliance with inter- security solutions to adopt. These models often have to be nal or external security requirements, including legal com- combined and refined in a way that ensures that the overall pliance. That requires, however, putting in place an appropri- security of the final product is kept. Appropriate techniques ate set of independent measurement and testing procedures to pursue here are model-driven design, security patterns, for all phases of the software lifecycle as well as metrics for and case modelling and analysis of "uses" and "abuses". collecting data, auditing performance and, ultimately, prov- Process description and model checking techniques could be ing/ensuring security by measuring it. used to validate specific solutions at a given design stage, eg for validating requirements. Design techniques should Dealing with increasing levels of complexity involve component-based approaches allowing modular ver- of software systems ification – compositionality is in fact a major security chal- Presently, the complexity is rapidly increasing when moving lenge related to the scalability and inherent complexity of from the secure engineering of isolated application compo- ICT systems. Another challenge to deal with, from a security nents to that of software systems that mix various infrastruc- point of view, is dynamic change of systems and code and ture resources with application functionalities. Such soft- dynamic evolution of system functionalities. ware systems are usually built incrementally resulting in "systems of systems" with functionality often different from When applicable, formal methods seem to be able to guaran- what their underlying components were designed for. More- tee an increased robustness of software. Today, the high cost over, they increasingly rely on real-time dynamic composi- of applying them is an impediment to their larger industrial tion involving third-party software components and services. deployment. Therefore, one of the research directions with Under these circumstances, achieving secure systems and major impact would be to embed formal methods in auto- secure software products is a huge challenge and key busi- mated development tools in a transparent way for the user. ness success factor. Finally, methods for measuring the trustworthiness of the software systems, is yet another area of importance for Promoting education and awareness industry where major research efforts are necessary. Security conscious and well-educated software architects and software developers are needed together with more Language-based security investments on higher-level education, professional and on- Language-based security is regarded as the backbone of the-job training. Dedicated awareness creation initiatives secure software engineering. Indeed, language-based secu- would also permit to stress the importance of secure soft- rity techniques and specific type systems allow verifying, at ware within managers, software architects, programmers and compile time, the absence of (certain) vulnerabilities and users. constrain the run-time execution of applications. In fact, they move the burden of ensuring the security of the final code 2. Research Advances and Perspectives from the application programmer to the programming envi- The second panel of the seminar focused on promising ronment developers. Further progress is expected from sev- research directions for engineering secure complex software eral ongoing efforts aimed at embedding information flow systems. It addressed the following topics: security require- management techniques in programming languages such as ments engineering; model-based techniques and automated Java, or at embedding security mechanisms in Business tools for the development of complex secure software sys- Process Execution Languages used for composing complex tems; methods for secure coding and programming; the services. A promising research area is developing techniques recent advances on methodologies and tools for the verifica- for proving complex properties of cryptographic algorithms tion and validation of specifications and code; and finally, as well as provably correct implementations. the role of risk in the creation of secure "systems of sys- tems". Advances in security verification and validation Several rigorous techniques have been developed for check- Security requirements engineering ing system specifications, such as model checking and theo- Several security weaknesses originate in the incomplete or rem proving. However, there are still several limitations that conflicting nature of security requirements of software code. must be addressed for their wider deployment in industry. Specific expertise, methods and tools should be devoted to Relevant research issues include addressing their scalability this task. For example, a step-by-step refinement procedure and coping with the ever-increasing complexity of software- (eg, model-based requirements design) and automated tools intensive systems. In addition, one needs to take into account would help security requirements engineers to improve the the uncertainty about the behaviour of the system compo- process from requirements elicitation to analysis and to track nents (eg malicious software) as well as external threats. them during the subsequent software development steps. Overall, more research efforts are necessary to make security
12 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 verification and validation tools usable in practice during ing all the underlying technology components supporting software development at industrial scale. such products. A prerequisite for solving software liability is solving the compositionality problem. Advances in risk assessment for systems of systems Risk is a crucial notion in security and its role in the design Standardisation, education and other relevant issues of complex systems of systems needs to be further investi- Currently there is a lack of sufficient standardisation in soft- gated. Issues to address here include assessing the complex- ware security. In some cases, clear specifications are avail- ity and the (cyclic) interdependencies inherent in ICT sys- able at a certain level of abstraction, but implementations of tems, often composed of several parts developed by different standards are often not completely in line with these specifi- parties; and, assessing risks linked to changes in the lifecy- cations. Robust tools for testing and validating such imple- cle of systems of systems through, for instance, composi- mentations are necessary. tional risk-assessment methodologies. Embedding risk in an explicit manner in all the steps of the software development Often there is a gap between the methodologies that secure lifecycle could help to reduce the cost and make the software engineers are taught in Universities and the knowl- improvements in software engineering more concrete. edge they need when working in industry. A closer and more productive cooperation is required between industry and 3. The Way Forward academia in order to produce curricula dealing with both The last panel considered the findings from the two first pan- foundational knowledge principles and industrial reality. els and brought up some additional aspects related to: (a) enabling methodologies and tools for building secure com- 4. Concluding Remarks plex systems and services; (b) software liability aspects; and The significant participation of both industry and academia (c) standardisation, education and other relevant issues for representatives at the event is showing the relevance of the the field. topics addressed. Industry is showing sufficient motivation for adopting best practices in the SSE field and the scientific Enabling methodologies and tools for building secure community can already bring several methodologies and complex software systems tools. Targeting specific priorities as some of the ones iden- Security engineering and software engineering methodolo- tified in this report would certainly help to close the gap gies and platforms should be integrated. The general (wrong) between foundational and practical work. Security and soft- perception is that software engineering is dealing with con- ware engineering need also to be integrated in one coherent struction of correct software, while security engineering is framework. As the complexity of ICT systems increases, dealing with the deployment of software. The software easy-to-use software tools that encapsulate highly intensive architecture should be the starting basis. Security, managea- specialised knowledge need to be developed through bility and scalability should be the main drivers for the soft- research and industrial partnerships. In order to ease this ware architects. Industry also needs usable and efficient process, industry and academia should share similar expert- methodologies and tools that automate the security of soft- ise and adopt the same language and terminology. ware code. Formal methods have proven to be useful for checking security specifications but not really software Raising current levels of education and awareness in the implementations. It is therefore urgent to undertake further field is another main issue emerging from the discussions work for bridging the gap between fundamental theories and held. Finally, special attention must be given to new forms of pragmatic approaches for industry to use. IT infrastructures such as cloud computing, “the internet of things” or, more broadly, the Future Internet, that bring new Industrial software is often built on top of legacy systems challenges for secure software as well as new opportunities and/or is outsourced. This calls for tools for verifying the for industry and business organizations. security properties and performance of legacy systems and/or third party software. The composition environment Links: should permit to control the security properties of composed ERCIM Strategic Seminars: software both at the design phase and dynamically, at run http://www.ercim.org/activity/strategic_seminar/ time. Compositionality is a big challenge. Even if a software system is built from individually trusted components, the ERCIM WG on Security and Trust Management: overall system may not be trusted. Modular verification of http://www.iit.cnr.it/STM-WG/ smaller modules may prove to be a good solution in large complex systems. European Commission's DG INFSO Unit F5 "Security": http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/security/home_en.html Software liability For the moment, software companies in general and those Please contact: companies in particular offering packaged software services Dimitris Plexousakis, FORTH-ICS, Greece or Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based applications E-mail: [email protected] and services are not liable for the likely damages they may cause due to software vulnerabilities of their products. As Fabio Martinelli, IIT-CNR, Italy liability may change with time, it is important for companies E-mail: [email protected] to adopt best practices quickly. Should software companies become liable, they would need to become in full control of Thomas Skordas, European Commission all the products, applications and services they sell, includ- E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 13 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Introduction to the Special Theme The Sensor Web: Bridging the Physical-Digital Divide
by Mark Roantree and Mikko Sallinen
One of the truly multidisciplinary research efforts involving toring needs to be continuous, integrated and without loss of computer scientists revolves around the topic of sensor net- data, requiring the specification and deployment of software works. It brings together chemists who develop the sensors, services for the Sensor Web. Personal health (or pHealth) net- engineers focusing on wireless platforms and other hardware works are emerging in many research projects and industrial components, and the computer scientists who develop the applications. Wearable sensors transmit a variety of sensed services, knowledge layers and middleware. In many cases, readings from human participants, which are harvested and research must also include the knowledge workers associ- undergo semantic interpretation to allow domain specialists ated with the specific domain, many of whom are repre- to make informed decisions on the health and increasingly the sented in the articles in this issue of ERCIM News. In almost performance of individuals in sporting environments. There all cases, some aspect of the research will seek to create a are several commercial products in this field that enable bridge or bidirectional channel between the physical world researchers and companies to develop more advanced solu- of the planet, its people and the sensors, and the digital world tions for the market. Applications of the Sensor Web covered of computers and their software applications. in this issue include exploration in oil and gas fields, multi- media sensing, life-logging of human actions and interaction, The emergence of the Sensor Web concept is due to the pro- and environmental hazards, demonstrating the multi-discipli- liferation of physical devices that are accessible through the narity of Sensor Web research and highlighting the need to internet and thus, act as an extension to the World Wide Web. bring expertise from different backgrounds together. Through new hardware peripherals, connected directly to the Web, automatically interpreted, integrated and transformed So what issues arise from the articles presented here? There for human interaction, querying and mining, we create the is evidence of a large number of sensor networks in different Sensor Web. disciplines, as already discussed. They incorporate both small cheap devices and larger customized, proprietary and highly The Sensor Web provides a platform for new ideas and expensive devices. In general, the sole difference between applications for different domains. However, each applica- them is accuracy. As the smaller, less accurate sensors tion domain has its own unique characteristics and the con- become cheaper, they will quickly represent the significant cept of a general platform can be developed only for labora- majority of this device type on the Sensor Web. In many tory tests. As a result, development tends to focus on propri- cases, more than one sensor will be required to support deci- etary solutions to meet a varied set of requirements. sion-making processes. This will demand synchronization and normalization of sensor feeds before integration takes The breadth of research in the Sensor Web domain is place. While this presents problems, as highlighted in a num- demonstrated in the articles in this issue of ERCIM News. ber of the articles, the power of the Sensor Web is that it pro- Wireless networks are necessary to connect to sensor vides an infrastructure for harvesting the data. Historically, devices that may be physically unreachable. While sensor significant volumes of data generated by sensing devices data is often analysed after sensing has stopped, wireless have been lost, mainly due to a lack of computer scientists in networks are essential if we are to perform live queries of the research project. This illustrates the gap between the sensor output, and adapt the behaviour of the sensor in real physical and digital worlds. time. Toolkits for maintaining sensor networks, together with standards for processing and managing sensor data, The first step in developing a Sensor Web system is the con- assist in building more powerful and robust networks. In struction of a simulation for the planned sensor network. This addition, new technology for developing and integrating process becomes easier with time as the domains and envi- smaller nodes enables measuring devices to be placed in a ronments are better understood. However, when designing a far wider range of products. In an increasing number of new architecture or software service for one of the layers in applications and projects, data generated by sensor devices an architecture, or perhaps for a new domain, precise simula- is of a confidential nature, perhaps in areas such as personal tion is of considerable help prior to implementation into real health or body networks. This requires the appropriate components. A necessary requirement is that all layers are research effort into security for the data transmitted by the accurately modelled, otherwise the simulation will give mis- many sensor devices inside the networks. Ubiquitous sys- leading results. When this step is completed, the physical tems will also provide significant data volumes and chal- process of sensor deployment and sensor network construc- lenges for the Sensor Web. Similarly, environmental moni- tion can begin.
14 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 New ERCIM Working Group on the Sensor Web
A new ERCIM Working Group on the ing), and through their collaborators have longer term. The Working Group is "Sensor Web" was recently established. a broad multidisciplinary base. Areas of preparing for the next round of FP7 calls Representatives from seven ERCIM mem- interest to the group include both applied and intends to participate fully with bers (IUA, ICS-FORTH, ISTI-CNR, and basic research. Examples of deploy- ERCIM's Fellowship Programme. CRCIM, VTT, SARIT and NTNU), partic- ment areas include personal health, envi- ipated in the kick-off meeting on 19 May ronmental analysis, ambient intelligence, ERCIM Working Groups are open to any 2008, or expressed their interest in joining locomotive and large vehicle monitoring, researcher in the specific scientific field. the Working Group. military applications, deployment of per- Scientists interested in participating in the sonnel in toxic environments, and traffic ERCIM Sensor Web Working Group Objectives analysis. should contact the coordinator. The objectives of the Sensor Web Working Group is to promote and facilitate interac- Future Plans Link: tions between various R&D groups inside The group intends to establish an ERCIM http://wiki.ercim.org/wg/SensorWeb/ and outside ERCIM, in multidisciplinary International Conference on the Sensor themes relevant to the Sensor Web. The Web. This should be of a high quality, with Please contact: Working Group members cover a wide the intention of raising the group's profile, Gregory M. P. O'Hare range of ICT skills (software engineers, providing a forum for discussing the Sensor Web Working Group chair information management and databases meaning and scope of the Sensor Web, and The CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web including information retrieval, wireless attracting new people for future collabora- Technologies, University College Dublin, applications, networks, security and e- tions. The launch of a journal on Sensor Ireland mobility, ambient and ubiquitous comput- Web has also been considered for the E-mail: [email protected]
The first task for computer scientists in Sensor Web research such as SQL and XPath or XQuery. It is likely that the XML is to ensure data crosses safely from the physical to the dig- query languages will find widespread use, as data converted ital world, where it can be processed and manipulated to bet- to XML has highly interoperable properties. This is crucial ter inform us at to how to proceed in the many environments when integrating sensor data, both within a single sensor net- in which sensors now exist. In the past, environmental and work and with the data generated by other sensor networks. personal health sensor networks have generated large vol- umes of data that were not captured in a digital format. For The final challenge is the identification of the most impor- example, sports scientists have for some time been running tant issues in each application, eg closing the loop, control- sensor-based tests on athletes, in many of which data is ling parameters, devices or actuators or giving instructions. recorded manually and on paper. Even complex sporting These tasks should all be completed by accurate miniature equipment such as speed gates that record the velocity of sensors and nodes, wideband data communication, and the players as they move through various sections of a training utilization of real-time control with minimum or zero power course, will have their data transmitted wirelessly to a hand- consumption. This final step demonstrates the path from the held device, which then has no means of transferring the data original sensor device through the engineering layers to a persistent storage mechanism. Eventually, sensor hard- required for transmission of data, through the software serv- ware will always provide a means of recording and transfer- ices and human interaction, and finally back to the sensor, ring data but in the meantime, it is the role of data manage- where the knowledge generated is used to make the sensing ment researchers to devise a means for ensuring that this device more powerful and more accurate. The aspiration for data is recorded electronically and stored in persistent, the Sensor Web is that it should continue to evolve and query-capable systems. address its limitations, so that the outcomes of the sensor age lead to an improvement in the planet's environment and the Analysis of the data and uncovering the essential issues from health of its citizens. huge volumes of information is the next step. If data remains in the raw format generated by sensors, many knowledge workers will be unable to express the complex queries that Please contact: are required to extract knowledge or make the assessments Mark Roantree, Dublin City University, Ireland required to adapt the behaviour of sensors within the net- E-mail: [email protected] work. The next challenge for computer scientists is to con- vert the raw data into a usable format, preferably one that Mikko Sallinen, VTT, Finland can be queried and updated by standard query languages E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 15 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Sensor Networks in the Real World
by Steven D. Glaser and Tommi Parkkila
At the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, University of California, Berkeley, USA, we have been developing and deploying wireless sensor systems for ten years. We have focused on solutions to societal needs. As we ask more and more from our 'motes' and their low-power networks, we foresee important applications for sensor and control networks that will require a more powerful and flexible solution.
The system we propose, AdapSys, is proliferation of wireless sensor net- four motes were distributed over the based on a fundamental unit that can works, and these have completely main span and southern tower (see Fig- perform at a very high level of abstrac- changed what we can measure. Each ure 1), comprising the largest wireless tion - a multi-level controller and sensor element of the network is commonly vibration sensor network ever installed hub that is completely software recon- called a 'mote' or smart sensor. Motes for structural health monitoring pur- figurable, including basic and ancillary are combined into large networks that poses. The spatially dense array functionality. In this scheme, each unit allow dense and detailed sensing. These resulted in an increase in effective sig- can act as a single complex controller as networks move beyond the idea of a nal-to-noise ratio compared to single, part of a locally controlled mesh, which sensor as a single instrument measuring isolated, sensors, and most importantly in turn can be part of a wider distributed one thing, to a comprehensive system allowed the higher modes, both vertical or hierarchical control network. All ele- consisting of many small nodes work- and torsional, to be analyzed easily and ments of this system consist of the same ing cooperatively. Engineering and sci- accurately. hardware, but have fundamentally fluid ence, however, remain captive to the behaviors based on software adaptivity traditional hierarchical embedded sys- Deep Underground Science and and reconfigurability. tem. This experience has led us to Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) devise a new monitoring and control DUSEL is a large physics and engineer- We want to know what our structures appliance, each interacting in an ing laboratory being constructed in the are doing: structures in the big sense, organic network. old Homestake gold mine in Lead, SD, from our bodies up to large industrial USA. We are developing a deep in situ processes, airframes and buildings. This Here is an example of the current state seismic observatory that will move us has traditionally been a troublesome and of practice. During 2006 a mote net- closer to the realization of rapid imag- expensive problem. Recent improve- work was designed, implemented, ing of dynamical geo-processes at ments in sensors based on Micro-Elec- deployed and tested on the Golden Gate depth. More than 12 000 small-diame- tro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and Bridge in San Francisco, in order to ter (~ 65 mm) exploration holes exist in wireless technology have allowed the monitor its structural condition. Sixty- throughout the mine, which we intend
Figure 1: Mote antenna for the accelerometer package at the top of the South tower of the Golden Gate bridge.
16 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Figure 2: The fundamental system unit of the AdapSys system., which includes options to act as a wireless sensor network.
to use as multi-point monitoring probes. demand through sensing, control and sonde is now software on the FPGA, Any motion in the rock mass is thus computation. AdapSys is a compound there is little need for upgrades to entail surrounded by multiple receivers, of flexible, reconfigurable, FPGA- physical hardware replacement; a com- which greatly constrains the inversion based fundamental system units (see pletely new set of machines can be back to source movements. This solu- Figure 2). One of these units can exe- implemented by installing new software tion led us to propose the AdapSys cute the functionality of several micro- over the Web. appliance. controllers through its multi-processor capabilities. New functionalities can be The AdapSys prototype is currently AdapSys added to the system as parallel self-con- being assembled at the VTT Laboratory AdapSys is an elegant, straightforward, tained processor units inside the single in Oulu. We are planning a joint flexible and reconfigurable system FPGA chip. This allows the system to research project with companies from comprised of Field Programmable Gate be incrementally upgraded in the field the machine and automation industry in Array (FPGA)-based units. Each Adap- while allowing support of modular ver- Finland, in order to test and refine the Sys unit is: (i) a real-time multi-channel ification and certification. system in actual field situations. data acquisition platform; (ii) a multi- sensor data aggregator; (iii) a remotely Analyses of the DUSEL results along reprogrammable multilevel controller; with past experience show that (iv) highly portable; (v) distributed; and improved seismic arrays can be con- Please contact: (vi) an embedded sensing and control structed from a string of accelerometer Steven D. Glaser, network solution. We envision a group pods installed along a bore hole. We are Center for Information Technology of AdapSys units controlling, say, a currently prototyping down-hole son- Research in the Interest of Society, large paper mill, public conveyance des based on an Altera FPGA. The University of California, Berkeley, systems, public safety equipment dur- device has 24 input channels, both ana- USA ing a natural or man-made disaster, or log and digital, with a virtual real-time E-mail: [email protected] even an array of wind generators with machine for each. Within the FPGA http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~glaser built-in nondestructive evaluation sys- there are also real-time machines for the tems. real-time clock, bus handling, and Tommi Parkkila numerous control loops. All memory VTT - Technical Research Centre AdapSys uses a single FPGA to orches- functions are handled seamlessly within of Finland trate and carry out the application the FPGA. Because the heart of the E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 17 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
MARWIS: A Management Platform for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks
by Gerald Wagenknecht, Markus Anwander and Torsten Braun
A heterogeneous wireless sensor network (WSN) contains different types of sensor nodes. To operate such a WSN, we present MARWIS (Management ARchitecture for WIreless Sensor Networks). It uses a wireless mesh network as a backbone and offers mechanisms for visualization, monitoring, reconfiguration and updating program code.
A wireless sensor network (WSN) may wireless mesh network (WMN) oper- platform can be easily integrated into run different applications for different ates as the backbone and builds the the heterogeneous WSN. tasks, such as event detection, localiza- communication gateway between these tion, tracking, or monitoring. Different sensor sub-networks, the WSN and the The architecture used to manage hetero- types of sensor node are therefore Internet. Wireless mesh nodes perform geneous WSNs efficiently contains the required, and to handle heterogeneous the management tasks, and are con- following structural elements: one or WSNs with a large number of these dif- trolled by a management station located more management stations, several ferent sensor nodes, a comprehensive in the Internet. A possible scenario is mesh nodes as management nodes, sen- management architecture is also neces- shown in Figure 1. sor node gateways plugged into a wire- sary. We present MARWIS, a Manage- less mesh node, and the heterogeneous ment Architecture for heterogeneous The use of a hierarchical architecture sensor nodes. The management func- Wireless Sensor Networks, which sup- has various advantages. Sensor nodes, tionality is placed on the wireless mesh ports common management tasks such which are normally unable to communi- nodes, meaning the resource-limited as visualization, monitoring, (re)config- cate with each other due to incompatible sensor nodes have fewer management uration, updating and reprogramming. It radio chips, can be interconnected using functions to perform, which in turn takes into account the specific character- wireless mesh nodes. Furthermore, reduces memory and computation istics of WSNs and the restricted physi- dividing a huge WSN into smaller sen- requirements. A user can perform man- cal resources of the sensor nodes. These sor sub-networks decreases the number agement tasks using a management sta- include battery life, computing power, of hops required to reach each sensor tion, and this can be remotely located memory, network bandwidth and link node. Specifically, each sensor node on the Internet. quality. reaches the next wireless mesh node (which is the communication gateway) Using a graphical user interface, the One of the main features of MARWIS is within three to four hops. This results in topology of the heterogeneous WSN its hierarchical architecture. We divide a better communication performance with with all the sensor sub-networks is visu- large heterogeneous WSN into smaller a lower round-trip time, lower jitter and alized. The status information about sub-networks, each of which contains less packet loss. A further advantage of every sensor node is monitored and dis- sensor nodes of one specific type. A using a WMN is that a new sensor node played. This includes hardware features
Figure 1: A possible MARWIS scenario.
18 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Figure 2: The WSN manager provides the management functionality for the different sensor sub-networks. It consists of three databases and the MARWIS server with three modules.
(micro-controller, memory, trans- and energy. If newer information is ceiver), software details (operating sys- required, the sensor node can be tem versions, protocols, applications), queried directly. dynamic properties (battery, free mem- ory) and, if available, geographical The MARWIS server contains three position information. The applications modules for the management tasks. The running on the sensor nodes or network WSN monitor module connects to the properties can be reconfigured using the WSN information database and to the user interface. Furthermore, updating sensor value database in order to handle and reprogramming the sensor nodes is requests from the management station. a very important issue. In large WSNs It also stores data coming from the sen- manual execution of this task is unfea- sor nodes into the databases. The WSN sible, and a mechanism to handle it configurator module is responsible for automatically and dynamically over the the configuration tasks. It queries prop- network is required. Both the operating erties from the sensor nodes and stores system and applications must be them in the WSN information database. updated, either fully or partially. The code update manager module stores newly received program images The WSN manager located on the mesh (and related information) in the pro- nodes provides the management func- gram version database and notifies the tionality for the different sensor sub- management station about available networks. It consists of three databases programs. Link: and the MARWIS server with three http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~rvs/research/ modules, as shown in Figure 2. The Sensor Node agent is the comple- mancom.html ment of the MARWIS server and per- The WSN information database stores forms the management tasks on the sen- Please contact: all information about the sensor nodes sor nodes after message exchange with Gerald Wagenknecht and the WSN, such as the topology the MARWIS server. University of Bern, Switzerland (neighbours, addresses) and states of Tel: +41 31 511 26 36 the sensor nodes (battery, memory). The architecture is currently being E-mail: [email protected] The program version database stores all implemented and tested in a small real- versions of all programs for all plat- world testbed. A small Linux distribu- Markus Anwander forms, which can be installed in the sen- tion (kernel 2.6.14.6) is running on the University of Bern, Switzerland sor nodes. Finally, the sensor value mesh nodes; the MARWIS server is Tel: +41 31 511 26 34 database stores all data measured by the being implemented in C using sockets; E-mail: [email protected] sensors. To get information about the the databases are managed with sensor nodes, first the databases on the MySQL; the API for accessing the data- Torsten Braun relevant mesh node are queried. This bases is implemented in C; and Contiki University of Bern, Switzerland means a direct connection to the sensor is running on the sensor nodes as the Tel: +41 31 511 26 31 node is unnecessary, which saves time operating system. E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 19 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
The IBM Mote Runner
by Thorsten Kramp, Michael Baentsch, Thomas Eirich, Marcus Oestreicher, Ivan Romanov and Alexandru Caraças
Wireless sensor networks may well be the next big thing. Nevertheless, a fully business-process- integrated infrastructure for deploying large numbers of sensors and actuators requires a well-designed ecosystem. This should combine inexpensive devices with simple, bulletproof device programmability for easy integration and use by application domain specialists. The IBM Mote Runner system addresses this challenge with a high-performance, low-footprint middleware platform comprising a hardware-agnostic and language-independent virtual machine together with development and integration tooling to easily create and manage applications for open sensor and actuator networks.
One-way, dedicated data-gathering IT Minimizing up-front investment tively using WSNs for data collection, networks such as those underlying, for requires minimum hardware cost, and pre-processing and autonomic feed- example, a delivery tracking system, this necessitates very efficient software back. have shown the commercial value of running on the least expensive and most real-time control of real-world compo- cost-effective off-the-shelf chips (or The IBM Mote Runner run-time envi- nents. Building on this, more general- 'motes'). Minimizing subsequent invest- ronment for wireless sensor networks, ized applications for wireless sensor ments translates into design require- currently under development at the networks (WSNs) are becoming ments for minimum hardware interac- IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, tack- increasingly apparent and significant in tion after mote deployment (eg for man- les these challenges in a holistic man- ual battery change or sys- ner. At its core, Mote Runner provides a tem reconfiguration). high-performance, resource-efficient virtual machine that is compatible with The second problem is high-level languages and which shields technological: a WSN run- portable applications from hardware time environment must not specifics. It is designed to run on very only be able to cope with small standard embedded controllers the broad range of techni- including low-power 8-bit processors, cal challenges imposed on thereby reducing initial investment WSNs but it must equally costs. Furthermore, it allows program- be accessible beyond the mers to use object-oriented program- low-level functionality of ming languages and development envi- individual WSN nodes. ronments such as C# and Java to Here, 'accessible' refers to develop portable WSN applications that three things. First, it must may be dynamically distributed, loaded, be possible to dynamically updated, and deleted even after the configure and reconfigure WSN hardware has been deployed, Figure 1: IBM Moterunner architecture. the WSN in the field to thereby reducing post-deployment and deal with situations such maintenance costs. All operations and as interrupted communica- communications can be cryptographi- size and real-world relevance. Concep- tion or WSN node failures. Second, it is cally protected to establish a trusted tually, the broadest application cate- necessary to secure the WSN in order execution environment. Figure 1 illus- gories for WSNs involve environmental that it may be considered a trusted trates how this all fits together. Finally, information, and provide a flexible com- source of information and reliable per- Mote Runner WSN applications pro- munication and intelligence-gathering former of actions in response. Third, the vide seamless integration with state-of- infrastructure that serves, for example, WSN must be well integrated into the the-art back-end infrastructures by next-generation business applications larger infrastructure with which it coop- means of an event-driven process by allowing them to directly tap into the erates. It must be generally programma- engine, which effectively bridges the ever greater number of digitally-enabled ble by domain specialists to solve gap to large-scale business and scien- sensors and actuators that provide input domain-specific problems without deep tific applications without requiring deep to and control of their operation. knowledge of WSN technology and technology skills. components. Only then are real-world To unlock this potential, however, two solutions possible which link – while Link: first-order problems must be addressed. being easy to program and deploy – the http://www.zurich.ibm.com/moterunner One is cost: WSNs consist of many physical world of sensors and actuators small computing elements that must be with business processes and applica- Please contact: cost optimized. In this realm, cost takes tions. The result is the desired improve- Thorsten Kramp the form of up-front investments in ment in the responsiveness of transac- IBM Zürich Research Laboratory, hardware and software plus any subse- tions, enabling end-to-end process Switzerland quent investments (eg for maintenance). security and reducing cost by effec- E-mail: [email protected]
20 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 A Testbed for Sensor Service Networks by Thomas Usländer and Kym Watson
Working towards 'plug and measure' in sensor networks for environmental monitoring with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards, the SANY (Sensors Anywhere) project specifies an architecture for all kinds of fixed and moving sensors. This will allow both seamless plug-and- measure capability for sensors in the field, and sharing of information between sensor networks.
The SANY project focuses on interoper- fications. At the sensor network level, which is able to aggregate or fuse sen- ability of in-situ sensors and sensor net- the ad hoc wireless ZigBee network is sor data from several SOSs. The Fusion works. This is done using both the stan- complemented by simulated sensor SOS queries the catalogue for available dards and the on-going work of the nodes, which measure properties such SOSs of the required type and then con- OGC (in particular the Sensor Web as temperature, humidity, illuminance ducts a selected procedure to produce a Enablement suite of standards), OASIS and acceleration. The testbed is spatial or spatio-temporal interpolation. (Organization for the Advancement of designed for experiments in a wide The interpolation result is a so-called Structured Information Standards) and range of scenarios and scales, such as coverage, a function defined on a W3C. The SANY sensor service archi- mobile sensors traversing several net- space-time grid of sampling points. The tecture provides a quick and cost-effi- works. The simulation is implemented procedure takes the inaccuracy of the cient way to reuse data from sensor and as an application in LabVIEW raw sensor data into account. The spa- data sources that are currently incompat- (National Instruments), which has the tio-temporal uncertainty of the fusion ible. Data sources can include live sen- additional task of configuring the Zig- result is specified using uncertML, an sor data, databases of archived data and Bee nodes. New sensor nodes (either XML schema developed by the model-based calculations. real or simulated) are recognized auto- INTAMAP (Interoperability and Auto- matically and registered in one of three mated Mapping) project to describe the The sensor service architecture and the OGC Sensor Observation Servers statistics of uncertain data. As with the service specifications have been made (SOS). The sensor values are then underlying sensors, the fusion proce- publicly available on the SANY project inserted into an SOS as they arise by dure is described with the OGC sensor server, while the SANY specifications measurement or simulation. The avail- model language SensorML. In this way, and best practice experience have been able network resources (observed fea- the fusion procedure can be treated as a contributed to the OGC standardization tures, sensors, services) are registered sensor, but with the important charac- work. The results are being tested in in a catalogue server along with meta- teristic that its result is a coverage. The three innovative risk management appli- data to support resource discovery by coverage can be visualized using a Map cations covering the areas of air quality, client applications. Clients can find, for & Diagram service from the SANY marine risks and geo-hazards. example, information sources for a partner ETH Zürich. given region and observable phenome- The Fraunhofer Institute for Information non of interest. The procedures developed to date are and Data Processing (IITB) has realized variants of the Bayesian Maximum a testbed for sensors and services in Fraunhofer has produced in the testbed Entropy method that is able to consider order to trial the architecture and speci- a special SOS known as a Fusion SOS, soft sensor data (eg where the sensor
Figure 1: Testbed for Sensor Service Networks.
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 21 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
value lies in an interval) and additional ing. The intermediate files produced by three development cycles. The SANY phenomenological knowledge on the the fusion procedure are uploaded consortium is composed of sixteen part- relationships between observed proper- together with the fusion result to the ners from eight countries. It includes ties. If additional sensors or SOSs enter WebGenesis information management the two research organizations Austrian the testbed, the Fusion SOS discovers server. This ensures a reproducible trace Research Centers (coordinator of the these new resources with the aid of the of the processing steps. consortium) and Fraunhofer, six com- catalogue and incorporates the new data panies, three universities, four public sources automatically into the fusion On-going work in the testbed involves authorities and the Open Geospatial procedure. The self-describing informa- the use of RESTful Web services to pro- Consortium Europe (OGC). tion plays an essential role in this plug- vide representations of the network and-measure capability. resources and the development of Links: model-based fusion methods. SANY http://www.sany-ip.eu/ The Fusion SOS is implemented on the (Sensors Anywhere) is an FP6 Inte- http://www.opengeospatial.org/ platform WebGenesis, an information grated Project co-funded by the Euro- management server from Fraunhofer pean Commission within the Thematic Please contact: IITB. The information management Priority 'Information Society Technolo- Kym Watson server contains the information cate- gies' in the area of ICT for environmen- Fraunhofer Institute IITB, Germany gories features of interest (sampling tal risk management. SANY is a three- Tel: +49 721 6091 486 grids), procedures and results with year project that started in September E-mail: associated metadata to support search- 2006 and has now completed two of [email protected]
Bringing the Semantic Sensor Web to Smart Buildings
by Rob Brennan
Deploying sensor networks in the built environment is not enough to produce smart buildings. How can we avoid creating silos of application-specific sensor networks? How can we publish the sensor data in secure, reusable and flexible ways? Can we support end-to-end provisioning of these sensor networks as an integral part of the building from requirements collection through design, procurement, construction, commissioning and facilities management operations?
The Facilities Management (FM) sub- ment or space management) and techni- sor deployments and capabilities) group of the NEMBES (Networked cal facilities management (eg energy developed by the OpenGS consortium, Embedded Systems) project aims to management, buildings operation and and standard W3C Semantic Web tech- answer these questions and more by maintenance). Within NEMBES-FM nology such as metadata definitions bringing together a multidisciplinary we are extending the application of sen- encoded as RDF (resource description team of architects, civil engineers, com- sors in smart buildings with additional framework) documents. This means puter scientists and electronic engineers, sensing capabilities and sensor-centric adding formal semantic annotations to who are addressing the issue of net- applications for these areas. However, existing standard Sensor Web lan- worked embedded sensor systems in a rather than building application-spe- guages in order to provide semantic holistic way across the stack from chip cific sensor networks and ending up descriptions and enhanced access to design, networking, middleware and with isolated silos of non-interoperable sensor data. This is accomplished with service management. This four-year and inflexible sensor networks, the model references to ontology concepts project started in October 2007 and is project has adopted a semantic Sensor that provide more expressive descrip- funded by the Irish Government's Web design to give a Web-based, open tions of and relationships between con- Higher Education Authority under the distributed system of sensor resources cepts. The use of formal metadata to Program for Research in Third Level within the building. This enables describe the sensors' outputs, platforms, Institutions program. The project is led resource sharing, resource reallocation, locations and control parameters will by the Centre for Adaptive Wireless sensor network interoperability, sensor enable a new generation of flexible Systems, and the FM subgroup is led by discovery and intelligent applications facilities management applications to the Informatics Research Unit for Sus- that discover and reason over associa- be built. tainable Engineering (IRUSE). tions, for example between events in space and time or within a particular Efficient and flexible management of Traditionally, facilities management in context. disparate, decentralized information the AEC (Architecture Engineering and sources such as sensor data, building Construction) domain is concerned with This is accomplished through the appli- occupancy graphs, facilities manage- infrastructural facilities management cation of semantic Sensor Web technol- ment process models and building (eg security and emergency manage- ogy such as SensorML (to describe sen- information models will enable smart
22 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Figure 1: The NEMBES project.
FM applications for buildings with mul- This project also goes beyond tradi- tiple occupying organizations and a dis- tional ICT standardization to embrace tribution of facilities management the major AEC domain IT standards authority across different management such as the IFC (Industry Foundation roles. The long-term vision of the group Classes), used for describing models of is to enable ambient intelligence within buildings in CAD tools and AEC con- the smart building. In this scenario, struction requirements and project man- building information models combined agement tools. Integrating our work with location-sensing technology will with the IFC standards will enable a allow the distribution of context-spe- dialogue with the ACE domain experts, cific data to facilitate the monitoring of thereby encouraging rapid integration maintenance activity progress, ie the of semantic Sensor Web technology in 'ambient interaction' of inspection and ACE tools and business practices. The maintenance personnel with the fabric project consortium is fortunate to of the building itself. Examples of the include the Environmental Research benefits of this technology will include Institute at UCC, a live smart building, assisting facilities management staff in which sensor networks and building with automatic monitoring and support information models are combined with of health and safety routine procedures; Semantic Web technology to provide a avoiding illegal occupation density in unique testbed. public spaces by triggering security per- sonnel actions; and more effective facil- ity space and relocation management via automatic inventory item tracking. Smart infrastructural FM applications Links: that easily integrate new personnel, The NEMBES project website: inventory items, sensors and use-cases http://www.nembes.org without the intervention of dedicated IT personnel, will instead have these tasks The Knowledge and Data Engineering performed by FM personnel and their Group, Trinity College Dublin: delegates within the organizations http://kdeg.cs.tcd.ie/ occupying the building. They will addi- tionally support seamless process inte- The Centre for Adaptive Wireless gration between local FM activities and Systems, Cork Institute of Technology: Please contact: external third parties such as contract http://www.aws.cit.ie/ Rob Brennan maintenance engineers, visitors, short- Knowledge and Data Engineering term occupants (eg conference organiz- Informatics Research Unit for Group, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland ers) and security or emergency response Sustainable Engineering (IRUSE) Tel: +353 1 896 8426 teams. http://zuse.ucc.ie/iruse/ E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 23 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Building the Sensor Web – Standard by Standard
by Andrew Woolf
An explosion in the instrumentation of our environment using sensors of all descriptions is driving the development of infrastructure to manage the wealth of information they collect. The Sensor Web aims to simplify the publication of, and access to, sensor resources, just as the World Wide Web has done for documents. And, as with the WWW, the Sensor Web relies on new information and communication standards for structuring sensor information and its exchange.
At the heart of these new standards is a extended to specific sensor applications the Sensor Observation Service (SOS, conceptual model for Observations and (see box). [OGC 06-009r6]) provides a Web serv- Measurements (O&M, [OGC 07-022r1, ice interface for retrieving filtered OGC 07-002r3]). It says simply that an The abstract O&M model may be observations or related information Observation is an action whose Result is applied across the spectrum of sensor (feature-of-interest, sensor parameters, an estimate of the value of some Prop- applications and deployments, and pro- observation results). Individual sensor erty of a Feature-of-interest, obtained vides a framework for building observations may be aggregated within using a specified Procedure (Figure 1: exchange standards and service inter- one service into combined 'observation The 'Observations and Measurements' faces for accessing sensor data and con- offerings' and multiple services may be conceptual model.). Each of these core textual information (Figure 2: The Sen- federated into single access points. The O&M information classes may be sor Web standards stack.). For example, Sensor Model Language (SensorML, [OGC 07-000]) is an XML language for describing observation procedures and sensor types. Other related standards include the Transducer Markup Lan- guage (TML, [OGC 06-010r6]) for transducers and transducer systems, the Sensor Planning Service (SPS, [OGC 07-014r3]) for tasking and scheduling observation requests with sensor sys- tems (eg by satellite remote-sensing instruments), and the Sensor Alert Ser- vice (SAS, [OGC 06-028r3]) for setting up notification subscriptions for spe- cific sensor events.
These new standards are being devel- oped by the Open Geospatial Consor- tium (OGC), a non-profit de facto inter- national standards body for geographic Figure 1: The 'Observations and Measurements' conceptual model. information. OGC members span gov- ernment, academia and industry. Orga- nizations contributing to the O&M specification include CSIRO (AU) as editor, Geoscience Australia (AU), Uni- versity of Alabama in Huntsville (US), Image Matters LLC (US), Washington University (US), Science and Technol- ogy Facilities Council (UK), SeiCorp Inc. (US), Galdos Systems Inc. (CA), Geospatial Research & Consulting (DE), PCI Geomatics (CA), and Texas A&M University (US).
Research undertaken through global collaborations of experts, often in the context of coordinated international engineering testbed activities (the OGC Web Service Initiatives) accelerates the Figure 2: Figure Two: “The Sensor Web standards stack. development of interoperability stan-
24 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 dards and protocols. With sufficient maturity, these specifications will be Example: Marine Science Observation proposed for de jure standardization through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The O&M conceptual model has been substantially developed since 2002 through such initiatives (OWS-1.2 and OWS-3). It was finally approved in 2008 for Version One publication by OGC, and is being progressed as a new ISO standard 19156 (see links below).
A growing awareness of the impor- tance of environmental monitoring for the health of our planet is leading to the development of large-scale infrastruc- tures that transcend national bound- Figure 3: O&M example – marine research cruise. aries. Through a ten-year implementa- tion plan, the Group on Earth Observa- tions (a grouping of 76 national gov- A cruise ship measures seawater temperature (O&M observed Property) along ernments and other international organ- a North Atlantic cruise track (O&M Feature-of-interest) using a thermosalino- izations) aims to integrate existing graph (O&M Procedure), and produces a series of data values {19.2°C, 18.7°C, observation networks into a Global ...} (O&M Observation result). Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) to achieve comprehensive, The SOS GetObservation operation is used to retrieve the entire observation coordinated and sustained observation and its context; DescribeSensor will return thermosalinograph details; GetFea- of the Earth system. tureOfInterest provides details of the cruise track; while GetResult returns just numerical temperature values. Within Europe, a recent Directive (2007/2/EC) will establish the 'Infra- structure for Spatial Information in Europe' (INSPIRE) to integrate envi- ronmental data across all member states. The 'Kopernikus' partnership between the European Commission and the European Space Agency will point, while service standards like SOS emerge practical demonstrations of establish core operational services (eg and SPS provide the computational their effectiveness. Demonstrators like ocean forecasting, landcover monitor- viewpoint. the US-based OpenIOOS testbed for an ing, emergency response) for the global Integrated Ocean Observing System environment and civil security. These Within the broader context of ICT inno- and projects like the European 'Sensors three global-scale initiatives all require vation, Sensor Web standards build on Anywhere' (SANY) FP6 Integrated standard information models and net- key W3C specifications (XML, Web Project are validating the application of work services for integrating sensor services). There is a growing move these standards in real Sensor Web data – both in situ and remotely sensed towards richer semantics, for describing applications. (spaceborne and airborne). observed properties and their relation- ships; for instance, ISO 19150 is a new Links: An underlying abstract architectural standard for the use of ontologies with http://www.opengeospatial.org/ approach is used to develop Sensor Web geographic information. An important http://www.earthobservations.org standards. The Reference Model for principle is the decomposition of http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/ Open Distributed Processing (RM- domains of governance – identifying markets-technologies/swe ODP, [ISO/IEC 10746]) factors a dis- responsible parties with a remit for http://www.isotc211.org/ tributed system like a Sensor Web into managing agreed vocabularies and con- http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ five complementary viewpoints: enter- cepts on behalf of a community of inter- http://ec.europa.eu/gmes/index_en.htm prise (roles, scope and policies of the est (eg definitions of particular sensor http://www.sany-ip.eu system), information (semantics of systems and observables). This is information and information process- required in order to facilitate reuse of Please contact: ing), computational (service interfaces), models and enhance interoperability. Andrew Woolf engineering (component distribution e-Science Centre, STFC Rutherford across nodes) and technology (imple- While much of the Sensor Web stan- Appleton Laboratory, UK mentation choices). Against this model, dardization work has so far been devel- Tel: +44 1235 778027 O&M provides the information view- opmental, there are beginning to E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 25 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Revolutionising Sensor Based Automation in Manufacturing
by R Harrison, F Jammes, H Smit and T Kirkham
Increased access to device-level automation components is closing the final gap in the enterprise computing model.
The implementation of Web service- manufacturing plants and remove con- trated how the production data could be enabled sensors and actuators on pro- trol from vendors back to users. combined with other enterprise data to duction lines will permanently change improve the accuracy of decisions relat- the way in which future automation sys- Implementation ing to production routing and supply tems are designed and implemented. The SOCRADES and SODA (Service- chain management. Current interfaces to automation com- Oriented Device and Delivery Architec- ponents are largely vendor-specific, ture) projects have conducted research During the demonstration, data from restricting the reconfiguration of lines and trials into automation based on the sensors and actuators on the produc- and the management of line data across service-oriented architecture (SOA), tion line was transmitted by equipment enterprises. Outside the automation and in the past year have delivered ini- created by Schneider Electric. This domain, enterprise system development tial prototypes. At the recent ITEA equipment consisted of Web-service- has seen real-time data linkage take exhibition in Rotterdam, a test rig enabled Field Terminal Blocks (FTBs), great steps in the office, warehouse and developed with Ford was used to which support the Device Profile for supply chain. Research into the use of demonstrate SOA-based sensor and Web Services (DPWS) toolkit. The Web-service-enabled sensors and actua- actuator data being used to manage DPWS toolkit is designed for embed- tors has the potential to present an open monitoring and control applications. ded systems and has a small memory standards-based method to integrate The data was fed to project partners in footprint, but also contains a selection production lines into this enterprise the Enterprise computing field (SAP) of Web service standards to suit the computing model, an innovation that and industrial automation sector (ARC demands of an automation environ- will revolutionize automation in future Informatique). The demonstrator illus- ment. Both projects are working on
Figure 1: Vision of service-enabled automation.
SCADA SAP Human Machine Interface
Orchestrator
Mode Status FTB Services
Element EachEach ElementElement Logic and I/O
Rig Sensors and Actuators Figure 2: ITEA exhibition architecture and rig picture showing FTB location.
26 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 these demands, which are focused on reducing costs by improving resource development of devices such as the execution timing and reliable/efficient usage and reducing downtime. The FTB, pioneered in the SOCRADES and message delivery. The FTB is a piece of greater accuracy and real-time access to SODA projects to support this new hardware that contains an ARM 9 chip product-level data will further enhance vision. developed to support the DPWS toolkit. enterprises by allowing them to make more accurate decisions regarding pro- The support of DPWS on the FTB duction and supply chain matters. The allows Web service interfaces to be application of the results from these developed to the device-level I/O research projects in real manufacturing within the line. For example, calls to environments will be the subject of Links: directly command an actuator or moni- future work that should confirm these SOCRADES: http://www.socrades.eu tor specific sensors on lines can be findings. The adoption of the approach made via Web services located on a will also be dependent on further SODA: http://www.soda-itea.org variety of applications, as opposed to research in the areas of safety, security specific vendor control devices. The and real-time execution of devices. Device Profile for Web Services home control of devices by Web services has page including link to specification: been achieved using central Web serv- Direct SOA linkage to sensors and actu- http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2006/0 ice orchestration and also on a smaller- ators moves a traditionally vendor-spe- 2/devprof/ scale peer-to-peer choreography. cific computing area into a new open domain, ready to link with existing Please contact: Future innovations in enterprise computing. Tom Kirkham Device-level automation components For the manufacturer this will improve Loughborough University, that produce data in standard and open performance and reduce costs. How- Leicestershire, UK forms will be faster to reconfigure, ever, this is dependent on the continued E-mail: [email protected]
Security and Robustness of Wireless Sensor Networks by Václav Matyáš and Petr Švenda
Researchers at Masaryk University, Brno, are working on security issues relating to large-scale, highly distributed and relatively dense wireless sensor networks.
In our work we focus on link key estab- While the resiliency of probabilistic nificantly better fraction of secure lishment in the memory- and computa- pre-distribution schemes generally links than previously published SA tion-restricted environment of wireless increases when more keys can be put protocols, especially for denser net- sensor networks (WSNs). We also into a key ring on every single node, works. We applied SA protocols of study how link security behaves under such an increase is limited by the node partially compromised networks a selected attack and what methods can storage capacity. Our multiparty proto- resulting from node capture when be used to strengthen the resilience of col creates a large virtual key ring in an probabilistic key pre-distribution are WSNs against compromise. We base efficient and secure way from the key used, and provided analytical and sim- our work on the assumption that a par- rings of separate nodes. This results in a ulation evidence that SA protocols tial compromise in WSNs is inevitable substantial increase in resilience of the work even better here. On average, SA and network architecture should be pre- underlying probabilistic key pre-distri- protocols secure more links for proba- pared to cope with related security bution scheme against the threat of bilistic pre-distribution than for key issues. We work with two basic link node capturing. The protocol performs infection, when networks with the key establishment concepts based on similarly to the hypercube pre-distribu- same percentage of initially compro- symmetric cryptography: memory-effi- tion (Liu & Ning, 2003) but is more mised links are assumed. When the SA cient probabilistic pre-distributions suitable for scenarios with random protocols are applied, a network with (Eschenauer & Gligor, 2002) and light- deployment and unknown link compro- half of its links compromised can be weight key exchange without pre-dis- mise status. The proposed protocol made reasonably secure with less than tributed secrets (Anderson et al, 2004). itself is also resilient against partial 10% of compromised links. These two key distribution concepts compromise inside a group of support- behave differently when the network is ing neighbours. Some combinations of SA protocols attacked. Analysis of the resulting com- that worked for key infection do not promised patterns has led to the pro- Our former work exploited non-unifor- increase the number of secure links in posal of mechanisms for improving the mity of link compromise patterns in probabilistic pre-distribution and thus network resiliency based on support key infection, and led to a secrecy only impose unnecessary communica- from neighbouring nodes. amplification (SA) protocol with a sig- tions overhead. Instead of analysing
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 27 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Figure 1: Automatic generation of secrecy amplification protocols.
each separate compromise pattern aris- strategies with demonstrative applica- ing from the combination of a particu- tions to link key security for probabilis- lar key distribution method and tic pre-distribution and key infection attacker strategy, we proposed an auto- approach. New attacks are generated mated approach based on the combina- either as a recombination of existing tion of a protocol generator and net- attacks or as completely novel attacks work simulator. We utilize evolution- automatically assembled from elemen- ary algorithms to facilitate guided tary attacker actions. They are then searches for high-performance SA pro- evaluated on a network simulator or in tocols created as a series of elementary a real system. Attacker strategies that instructions. Every candidate protocol increase the number of compromised is evaluated on our network simulator links with respect to several determinis- for a particular compromise pattern tic algorithms or random cases were (see Figure 1). found. Initial results for attacks against selected routing protocols show good Using this method, we were able to prospects for an automated search for automatically re-invent all the human- selective jamming, message dropping designed SA protocols of which we and neighbour overloading to achieve a were aware, and to find a new protocol specific attacker goal such as increasing that outperforms these. Moreover, we routing path length, message latency or proposed an alternative construction of concentrating routed messages. SA protocols that exhibits only a linear (instead of exponential) increase in nec- Due to battery power limits and taking essary messages when the number of into consideration the high communica- neighbours in the communication range tions overhead exposed by current (network density) is growing, and we replication detection, the reputation achieved comparable performance to management mechanisms that have protocols with original message-expen- been proposed so far are often not sive assumptions providing energy-effi- affordable. We are currently designing cient SA protocols. With respect to clas- prevention, detection and reaction tech- sical human-made protocols, an niques for the network. Rather than Link: increase in the number of secure links aiming for perfect security, which is A technical report covering some of was obtained by an efficient combina- particularly hard to achieve in WSNs, the issues discussed above: tion of the simpler protocols and an the aim is to force attackers to make http://www.fi.muni.cz/reports/files/ unconventional interleaving of elemen- disadvantageous trade-offs in terms of 2007/FIMU-RS-2007-05.pdf tary instructions. These allow protocols computational time, energy or other to be executed even when one of the costs. Due to the diversity of usage sce- Please contact: participants is out of radio transmission narios, there is a need to develop an Václav Matyáš range. economical/mathematical model that Masaryk University, Brno – CRCIM, would help to find a near-optimal solu- Czech Republic Our current work focuses on the con- tion for a particular combination of net- Tel: +420 549 49 5165 cept of automatic search for attack work usage and available resources. E-mail: [email protected]
28 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Security Challenges for Wireless Sensor Networks – Dynamic Routing as a Security Paradigm by Marek Klonowski, Michał Koza and Mirosław Kutyłowski
Recent work carried out at Wroclaw University of Technology shows that a fair level of security can be achieved for wireless sensor networks without heavy cryptographic technology.
Wireless sensor networks processing sensitive data are facing the risks of data manipulation, data fraud and sensor destruction or replacement. This con- cerns applications such as the gathering of data on environmental pollution around industrial installations, or sensor systems replacing traditional video monitoring. Large-scale deployment in practice is conditioned by solving these kinds of security problem and reducing the risks due to limited physical protec- tion of the devices and openness of the wireless communication channel. While modern cryptography and computer security offer many ways of solving these problems, they are focused on solutions for high-performance devices, and not for computationally weak sen- sors with limited communication band- width. New 'lightweight' solutions tai- lored for the special needs of wireless sensor networks have to be designed. Figure 1: Snapshot of a single routing path. This is one of the focal points of the EU project FRONTS (Foundations of Adap- tive Networked Societies of Tiny Arte- facts). Fortunately, some recent devel- vantage that an adversary can attack the scheme has the following basic proper- opments have shown that without heavy network by gaining control over inter- ties when processing a message M: cryptographic technology it is still pos- mediate sensor nodes. The cryptography • Pi+1 receives encrypted messages sible to achieve a fair level of security in used by such devices is usually weak from Pi and Ri in order to compute its a practical sense. This report indicates a and can provide opportunities to reveal share of message M, few ideas of this kind. information sent or to manipulate them. • Ri+1 receives different encrypted messages from Pi and Ri in order to Due to the energy required for transmis- The following idea may be applied in compute its share of M. sion over long distances, it is often a order to make it much more difficult to good idea to route data along a sensor carry out attacks. Instead of a single The encryption scheme guarantees that network by making many hops over information path, each message is sent corrupting either Pi or Ri reveals no small distances instead of a direct trans- over a double path. This means that information about M. Also, combining th mission from a sensor to the sink node. instead of a single i node Ni we have the shares from different stages of mes- However, such a solution has the disad- two nodes: Pi and Ri. The encryption sage processing gives no information
Figure 2: Encoding details.
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 29 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
about M as long as the adversary has collect and corrupt many sensors until view of hiding the transmission routes only one share from each level of the the matching pair is found. in the case of heavy traffic, under the path. assumption that an adversary can select Another step of the design is to make the traffic coming out of each node. What is the advantage of such a design? the path self-evolving: at any time a This involves studies concerning com- The main point is that while it might be node may negotiate with its predeces- binatorial issues of traffic analysis as relatively easy to find and corrupt one sors and successors a change of the well as stochastic investigations of the
of the nodes (say Pi ) for this to be use- transmission key and redirect its duties rapid mixing of Markov chains. Further ful, the adversary must still find and to another node. Since these changes details of the scheme will be developed
corrupt the matching node Ri . This can can be made independently and uni- in cooperation with other partners of the be difficult for purely practical reasons: formly at random, the data path may project; in particular, we plan to if each sensor is hidden in the environ- evolve so fast as to make unfeasible any develop a prototype of the system. ment, then while the first might be attempt at data analysis based on moni- found by chance, the second must be toring radio traffic. Indeed, a cryptana- Link: found by a detailed search in the same lytic attack would face the difficulty FRONTS: http://fronts.cti.gr/ area. This could be hard without arous- that assigning the messages to sensor- ing the interest of observers. to-sensor links (and to the pairwise Please contact: keys) would be hard, due to the number Mirosław Kutyłowski Moreover, we propose a far more of possibilities growing extremely fast Wrocław University of Technology, sophisticated design in which on each as the number of links increases. Poland level of routing there are many potential Tel: +48 71 320 21 09
sensors to play the roles of Pi and Ri. In The architecture described here is cur- E-mail: this case the adversary usually has to rently being analysed from the point of [email protected]
Ubiquitous Machine-to-Machine Service Networks
by Johanna Kallio and Juhani Latvakoski
In the near future, there will be many more embedded devices than there are mobile phones. When these devices are connected to the Internet, many novel kinds of ubiquitous service will be enabled.
It has been estimated that in 2010, the devices and their enabled applications specify a universally applicable M2M number of communicating devices will in wired and wireless systems, regard- concept that will enable the interopera- be a thousand times greater than the less of the supplier. Information tech- tion of sophisticated M2M applications number of mobile phones, which is nology applications usually operate as through heterogeneous wired and wire- already more than one billion. When separate M2M solutions that are less IP communication networks. connecting devices such as various unaware of each other. As a result, a machines, actuators and sensors to the number of business opportunities Made up of seventeen partners, the Internet, novel types of service are remain unexploited as the services pro- international Usenet consortium enabled. Previously, such devices com- vided by the devices cannot be placed focuses on M2M research enabling municated with services using technol- on the Internet. ubiquitous M2M service networks. The ogy such as SMS. The applications were project consortium is led by the VTT vendor or domain-specific closed sys- The three-year Usenet project funded and includes industrial, SME and tems, for which achieving interoperabil- by the Eureka/ITEA2 programme is research partners from Finland, Bel- ity with other vendor/domain systems developing a service concept for solv- gium, France and Spain. was challenging. The Usenet (Ubiqui- ing the above interoperability problems. tous M2M Service Networks) project M2M services refer to the services M2M Architecture aims to enable ubiquitous machine-to- resulting from collection, transmission The system components provided by machine (M2M) service networks, in and processing of information, and different suppliers have a strong influ- which the M2M infrastructure is able to establish an interactive system with the ence on the structure of M2M systems. connect and combine services produced remote devices that are ultimately inte- M2M systems usually require the inte- in different domains in an interoperable grated within a managed M2M software gration of components coming from way (see Figure 1). system. The project has generated new various stakeholders in the value chain: types of M2M service scenario, which M2M service providers, M2M opera- The Usenet Project are related to ubiquitous building infra- tors, M2M manufacturers, software Currently, no universally applicable structure, machine tools, consumer houses and M2M system integrators. M2M service infrastructure exists that devices, home automation and telemat- The referred components need to be would allow interoperation between ics domains. The primary goal is to interoperable in order to establish sensi-
30 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Figure 1: Ubiquitous M2M service networks.
ble business operations. Traditionally, several communication infrastructures water or electricity, and the space is M2M solutions have applied vertical for collecting data and controlling monitored with a video camera. The architecture and closed solutions. This M2M devices. Smart services can be user is able to follow what is happening has created challenges in the distribu- based on information, which is col- in the system via the home user inter- tion of added value, which has been a lected from several service platforms. face (Figure 2), and can control the barrier to M2M market enlargement. It The challenges of horizontal systems space with sensors and actuators con- has been estimated that horizontal are related; e.g. the overall quality of nected to the space. For example, users architecture has better possibilities to end user services and security, which can track the outside and inside temper- boost M2M market. inevitably requires the existence of ver- atures and are provided with alarms and tical interfaces. warnings of water leaks, unexpected It is expected that horizontal architec- weather or the presence of a house- ture will make it easier for different Home Surveillance – an M2M breaker. They also have control over the players to be part of the M2M value Application Example lights, heating and so on. Automatic network. For example, an M2M asset A Usenet M2M application scenario has services related to control operations devices manufacturer can offer control been implemented to demonstrate the can also be included. and administration services for their Private Space M2M system for residen- products. Communication infrastruc- tial homes. The purpose of the system is Potential of M2M Systems ture can be connected to these devices to provide smart surveillance services M2M systems will provide essential by means of various telecommunica- of private space. Various sensors meas- business possibilities and advantages tions' manufacturers and service ure quantities such as humidity, temper- for companies, especially when infor- providers. Service platforms can utilize ature, light levels and consumption of mation systems controlling their core processes are utilizing the real-time information produced by an M2M sys- tem. In consequence, a company can increase the quality of its services, reduce costs and increase customer sat- isfaction. This fundamental change, which will bring new business opportu- nities for companies, can already be seen in the market. VTT aims to help companies to take advantage of this rapidly growing M2M market.
Link: Usenet project: https://usenet.erve.vtt.fi/
Please contact: Juhani Latvakoski, Johanna Kallio VTT, Finland Tel: +358 40 520 0149 E-mail: [email protected], Figure 2: User interface of Usenet experimental M2M application. [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 31 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Short-Range Communication in Ubiquitous Professional and Consumer Applications
by Mikko Sallinen, Esko Strömmer and Pirkka Tukeva
Short-range communication technology is proving its worth in many areas of application. Here we illustrate three case studies involving NFC (Near-Field Communication) and Nanonet radio technology. These include a consumer application with the TouchMe paradigm, and professional applications for force measurements on train wheels and acceleration measurements on the axis of a paper mill machine. We also show the advantages of these short-range communication technologies and discuss other potential applications.
In recent years, a rapidly growing range higher than in consumer applications. more data-intensive sensor applica- of wireless communication technology Current applications include measure- tions, NFC can easily establish a Blue- has become available and is being ment and wireless data transfer from tooth connection between two devices applied to numerous application the field to a central unit, as well as when they are brought close together. It domains. One of the latest examples of control and monitoring applications. In is not necessary for a user to find the short-range communication technology many cases this works well, but the correct menu items and configuration is a light and simplified version of Blue- problem is often that even if the data parameters on the mobile handset, tooth known as Bluetooth ULP (Ultra- can be transferred, it is still necessary which makes interaction with the NFC- Low Power), earlier known as Wibree. to have power cables. Energy harvest- enabled sensor very elegant. On the Other examples of short-range commu- ing and power management is one of other hand, the sensor must be within the reach of the user.
For easy piloting of NFC applications we have developed Smart NFC Inter- Mobile phone with NFC and face, a building block that provides NFC optional and Bluetooth communication capabil- Bluetooth ity to various smart objects. Thus it also
NFC-Interfacer NFC makes these smart objects capable of WIRED LOCAL SH ORT IN TE R FA CE S DAT A RANGE FO R SMART PROCESSING WIRELESS DEVICES IN TE R FA CE S
REAL RECHARGE- DATA TIME ABLE MEMORY CLOCK PO WER SU PPL Y (+BT) communicating with mobile handsets as depicted in Figure 1. Smart NFC Inter- face incorporates components for short- range wireless communication with mobile handsets, a set of wired inter- NFC (+BT) faces for sensors and other smart objects, local data processing and stor- age, and a clock for time stamping the measurement results and other events.
NFC-Interfacer
WIRED LOCAL SH ORT IN TE R FA CE S DATA RANGE FO R SMART PR O CE S SIN G WI RELESS DEVICES IN TE R FA CE S
RECHARGE- REAL DATA ABL E TIME MEMORY PO WER CLOCK SU PPL Y Smart NFC Interface The advantages of NFC over alternative wireless short-range communication Figure 1: Intelligent interfacing module for smart objects. technologies in sensor applications, such as Bluetooth, are its lower power consumption, shorter communication nication technology include RFID, the key issues in the more challenging set-up latency and better immunity to Bluetooth, IrDA and Zigbee. From these industrial applications. eavesdropping. NFC can also operate in technologies, IrDA and Bluetooth offer passive mode with extremely low a huge number of applications. In this article, we use two different power consumption, which means wire- technologies. The first is NFC (Near- less sensors can have multiple-year bat- New technology will also generate a new Field Communication), an RFID-based tery lifetimes. Even batteryless sensors business for the service sector which is technology that provides short-range taking their power from the RF field an important growing market. There are communication at 13.56 MHz licence- that is generated by a nearby active many areas in which wireless technology free band. The second is the Nanonet NFC device are feasible. will find ubiquitous application, includ- radio module, which uses the 2.4 GHz ing entertainment, healthcare, automo- licence-free band and is manufactured In addition, NFC enables simple com- tive and logistics. These are areas which by Nanotron Ltd. munication based on the TouchMe par- have a huge future market potential. adigm that from the user's viewpoint is Touch-based Sensor Readout by NFC fast and convenient compared to plug- In industrial or other professional appli- NFC can be used to read data from a ging in cables or manually establishing cations, the requirements for accuracy, sensor to a mobile handset by touching a Bluetooth connection between the reliability and timing are typically the sensor to the mobile handset. In sensor and the mobile handset.
32 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Figure 2. Force measurements from a train wheel.
Figure 3: Measurement system inside the paper roll.
Force Measurements on Train Wheels presence of surfaces and walls. Commu- with the axis of a paper roll. The goal A typical challenge in the industry is nication with sensors is carried out using was to measure the acceleration of the taking measurements on rotating an SPI (serial peripheral interface) inter- axis and be able to predict cases in machines. The difficulty of wiring both face with a 16 Mhz line. This wireless which the paper will tear in the paper data and power supply makes this a link is carried out using NanoNET machine. It is known that tear will occur non-trivial problem. Examples of this power modules by Nanotron. when there is vibration in the axis. kind of object are wheels, turbines, For this purpose, a specific measure- blades and paper rolls. In this field, the Nanotron uses 'chirp' modulation tech- ment tool was designed (see Figure 3). goals are to optimize construction and nology, which provides benefits such as It includes a triple-axis acceleration maintenance by condition monitoring, resistance to multipath fading. In the sensor and a transmitter to send online and to be able to foresee the need for receiver side of the measurement sys- measurement signals. The challenge in maintenance. It would be much more tem, the System-on-Chip platform the task was to successfully transmit a effective to carry out maintenance receives the data. In each wheel there signal through a full paper roll. For the based on the actual wear of parts, rather are twenty pairs of strain gauges that data transmission, we used the same than based on age as tends to be the measure the deformation of the wheel. radio technology as in the train wheel case. In the future, this will lead to sig- These strain gauges are read at a fre- case; with this we were able to measure nificant savings. quency of 3 kHz. The measurements are and recognize peaks in the vibrations of filtered to a frequency of 500 Hz and the axis and the data was transmitted To take force measurements on train the data is transferred using 48 channels successfully even through the thickness wheels, strain gauges are placed on the for transformation. It is therefore neces- of the roll. surface of the wheel in the form of a star. sary to run several radios in parallel and The measurements are converted using to carry out high-speed synchroniza- FPGA platform and then transferred tion. The sampling rate is 290 MHz in using the 2.4 GHz ISM band and 2Mb/s the developed system. Please contact: wireless link. The power consumption Mikko Sallinen while in use is 60 mA, and 1μA while in Acceleration Measurements from the VTT Technical Research Centre, standby. Maximum transit power is 10 Axis of a Paper Mill Finland mW. The outdoor range of the radio is In the third application, we integrated a Tel: +358 40 7235263 100m; when indoors it depends on the 3D acceleration measurement system E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 33 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
The CLARITY Ubiquitous Robotic Testbed
by Gregory O'Hare, Mauro Dragone and Jennifer Treanor
The CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technology in Ireland is currently constructing a ubiquitous robotics testbed by integrating a collective of mobile robots with a wireless sensor network and a number of portable devices. The new, mixed testbed will be hosted at the School of Computer Science and Informatics at University College Dublin, (UCD), and will also avail itself of the laboratory facilities hosted in Dublin City University (DCU) and Tyndall, Cork. The testbed will provide a service for all researchers interested in developing ubiquitous robot applications.
The number and variety of applications posed advances in mobile networking, and software components are not stable of robots in our daily environment is on routing, data collection and data analy- but may change at run-time. In order to the increase. Examples include robotic sis within the WSN community. Robots adapt to such environments, these pets (eg Sony Aibo), household appli- are just another class of user of sensor applications must exhibit run-time flex- ances (eg iRobot vacuum cleaner data, potentially harvested both by their ibility, such as the ability to reorganize Roomba) and assistive technology (eg on-board sensors and by the sensors the interaction patterns of their architec- the MANUS wheelchair). At the end of already available in their environment. tural elements during execution. In par- 2006, figures for service robots for per- sonal or domestic use stood at nearly 3.5 million, with this projected to more than double before the end of 2010.
At this point, a principal challenge for the robotics community is the integration of robots into today's digital society. Inex- pensive Internet access and the diffusion of wireless computing devices have made ubiquitous/pervasive computing a viable reality that augments the normal physical environment and supports the delivery of services anytime, anywhere to human users. Endowing these ubiqui- tous devices with intelligent behaviour, and thus creating intelligent environ- ments, is termed ambient intelligence. Figure 1: Robots at the CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technology.
Robots are a compelling instance of those artefacts that comprise and deliver the ambient space. Modern multi-robot Robots can also actively help the sensor ticular, Component-Based Software applications have moved away from the network, not only by acting on the envi- Engineering (CBSE) and Agent-Ori- historical view of monolithic control ronment, but also by helping to deploy, ented Software Engineering (AOSE) systems: they run on specific computa- program and maintain sensors; collabo- paradigms are natural candidates to pro- tional units and are in charge of their rating with sensors' localization; and by vide modular architectures to integrate own 'hardwired' hardware. They are acting as mobile gateways in multi-hop and dynamically organize the different already perceived to belong to a larger, networks. They also push the bound- system functionalities. open distributed network made up of aries of WSN research by requiring different sensors and effectors. Ubiqui- interoperable and efficient solutions to Ubiquitous Personal tous robotics further extends this view data collection and online analysis. and Social Assistant Agents by explicitly addressing the need for Not only will these robots have to deal interoperability between robots and Adaptive and Self-Organising with a variety of complicated tasks, but existing ubiquitous and pervasive infra- Software Architectures they will also be expected to behave in structures, such as wireless sensor net- The need for adaptive and self-organiz- a socially intelligent and individualized works (WSNs). ing software architecture for ubiquitous manner in order to meet the diverse robotics emerges from the very same requirements of each user. However, CLARITY is particularly interested in requirements as for autonomous opera- reconciling the personalization/social employing the new testbed in three tions. In traditional networked robot aspect with pervasiveness and ubiquity overlapping areas of research: systems, component integration is remains a largely unexplored area of essentially an offline feature. In con- research. On both fronts, user interface Integration between Robots and WSNs trast, these systems demand a more agents, eg acting as a personal agent The new testbed represents an ideal open and dynamic approach, as the assistant (PAA) to their user, have arena in which to develop and test pro- nature and availability of their hardware already been widely adopted as intelli-
34 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 gent, adaptive social interfaces to the Ubiquitous robot systems involve many (i) visualize the topology and behaviour digital world, eg in the form of virtual interacting hardware and software com- of the WSN through a network map; (ii) characters interacting with the user via ponents, and malfunctions in both types log collected parameters for network PCs, PDAs and the Internet. As such, of component can encumber them. analysis; (iii) localize nodes on a pro- the experience accumulated in these Such characteristics pose a considerable vided 2D floor plan; and (iv) formulate applicative domains may be used to challenge to the application of a strong and inject composite queries into the inform robotics research. Moreover, as engineering perspective within robot- network. both software agents and robots ics, as it is difficult to correctly gauge increasingly inhabit the same human the accomplishment of specific system Links: social space, their mutual interaction objectives and guide improvements and CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web and combined operation within human further developments. For these rea- Technologies: societies will also acquire increasing sons, our research has commenced by http://www.clarity-centre.com/ importance. defining a number of logging and CLARITY Ubiquitous Robotic inspection facilities. Testbed: http://ubirobot.ucd.ie The New Testbed IFR Statistical Department. 2007 world The new testbed integrates and extends On the robot side, an XML service robotics survey: some pre-existing facilities, specifically: developed in collaboration with the http://www.worldrobotics.org/index.php • WSN of 70 Berkeley motes measur- Interoperable Systems Group at DCU The Interoperable Systems Group at ing humidity, light and temperature will provide a generic logging service DCU: • ten mobile robots, equipped with an for the instrumentation of both CBSE http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~isg/ array of state-of-the-art sensors, and AOSE frameworks. In addition to Octopus: including USB cameras, laser range offline analysis, the service will also http://www.csi.ucd.ie/content/octopus- finders, sonar, infrared, odometers support hardware-in-the-loop simula- dashboard-sensor-networks-visual- and bumpers. Each robot carries a tions (HILS), thanks to synchronization control mote able to measure ambient vari- and replay functionalities that will ables, which is also equipped with allow focusing online analyses and sim- Please contact: triple-axis accelerometers, magne- ulation over isolated groups of software Gregory M. P. O'Hare tometer, compass and microphone modules. CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web • a variable number of Internet gateways Technologies, University College • a variable number of PDAs and mobile The Octopus interactive dashboard, Dublin, Ireland phones equipped with Bluetooth. developed at UCD, will be employed to E-mail: [email protected]
Beyond RFID: The Ubiquitous Near-Field Distributed Memory by Paul Couderc and Michel Banâtre
The upcoming radio frequency indentification (RFID) revolution will undoubtedly contribute to the blending of the information society with the physical world: while common 'communicating objects' are currently restricted to complex electronic devices such as cell phones, cameras etc, RFID is in fact able to promote anything as a communicating object. In such a new world, data will not necessarily always flow into computers and networks, but may be physically retained by objects moving in real space.
While RFID technology promises many concept of global identification, associ- For example, security procedures in air- useful applications, such as improved ated directory services or tracking data- ports require that your personal effects safety, easier and faster interactions, bases. However, technically RFID are are checked separately from you by X- reduced error in data input and automa- just small memory devices that can be rays. Forgetting one of your items, or tion of tedious processes, it also raises addressed by near-field communica- mistakenly exchanging a similar item serious concerns – in particular the pri- tion, and although identification has with someone else occurs frequently. vacy issue. In a world where many per- been the main application target, these Solutions have been proposed for this sonal objects are electronically identi- devices provide support for alternative problem, based on active tags attached fied, the activities of individuals could mechanisms. to the items that are monitored by an be traceable in a similar, though much owner tag. This is impractical for sev- more comprehensive, way to 'googling' We will now present such an alterna- eral reasons: active tags are expensive, someone today on the Internet. tive, through the example of the 'Ubi- they require batteries (and hence regu- Check' service, a solution to a common lar maintenance), radio emissions may An important cause of this issue is that problem when travelling: it is unfortu- be restricted by regulations (on planes RFID systems are usually based on the nately quite easy to forget something. for example), and temporarily separat-
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 35 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
ing an item from its owner would the privacy concerns of many other Another application example is to use require the alarm to be disabled. RFID approaches. Specifically, tracking RFID to build distributed maps for of individuals is not easy, since the tags' robotic support. In the Roboswarm Ubi-Check represents another solution content may change often for the same project we consider very simple robots using RFID tags attached to the items. It person and same set of objects. Further, with limited knowledge and sensors. In is possible to write in the memory of the the system is not based on identifica- order for them to navigate, RFID tags tags the data required to check the tion, ensuring greater privacy. are arranged in the space where the integrity of the group of items. One pos- robots are working. Each tag contains sible implementation is to compute a Another interesting aspect is that check- relative spatial references pointing to digital certificate from the identifiers of points and association points are the nearest tags, effectively making a all the items. An important aspect is that autonomous and only carry local pro- graph. These pointers allow a robot to the identifiers associated with each item cessing. The system is therefore not reach one tag from another, assuming can be regenerated regularly (eg for that odometry drift is low enough while each trip): they are only used for a moving the distance separating two locally computed integrity check, not tags. In this distributed map example, for identification. The values could be the memory is distributed quite thinly written in the tags at, for example, the over the physical space. As near-field airport check-in, the train station, or communication technology gets better even when leaving home. Then, at rele- and cheaper, denser and more ubiqui- vant points after the area in which peo- tous memories are likely to emerge in ple are vulnerable to item loss or the environment, with computing appli- exchange, we deploy checking gates cations that we are yet to imagine. (such as the exit of the security check in While the industrial promoters of airports, or the exit gate of a plane or a RFID/NFC are mostly concentrating on train). These gates would ensure the applications based on identification, integrity of groups of items crossing almost anything can be done with mem- them, warning people in the case of a Figure 1: Ubi-Check: integrity checking ory devices, including systems that missing item or the presence of some- using a collection of eletronic tags respect privacy. A key question to mak- one else's item. ing this possible is: will there exist completely 'blank' or free-format tags, This solution is a distributed system dependent on a remote information sys- without any pre-existing and non- where only local properties are checked tem. This has important benefits in rewritable identifier? in order to ensure a global goal. In fact, terms of extensibility, reliability and it uses a principle similar to the trans- deployment costs. Link: mission of a file in independent frag- http://www.irisa.fr/aces/ ments over a packet network, where This service is an example of a more integrity is verified by checking general usage of near-field communica- Please contact: sequence number coherency or check- tion beyond identification. As men- Paul Couderc sums, except that here the data are car- tioned previously, this technology con- Centre de recherche INRIA Rennes - ried by 'physical' fragments. Such a sists of memory devices, a basic and Bretagne Atlantique, France solution is interesting because while generic support for computing, obvi- Tel: +33 2 99 84 72 92 providing a security service, it avoids ously not limited to storing identifiers. E-mail: [email protected]
Rapid Prototyping of Sensor-Based Applications with SunSPOTs
by Manfred Bortenschlager, Elisabeth Haid and Andreas Wagner
Sensor technology has the potential to boost productivity just as the Internet did. We demonstrate the opportunities presented by sensors and sensor network technology by deploying a corresponding framework in an indoor environmental quality application. Our framework is based on OGC Sensor Web standards and exploits SunSPOT sensor technology for rapid prototyping.
Due to the restrictions of industrial sen- bility to different domains. As a result, and for testing and verifying algorithms sors, the engineering of applications that testing, extending and porting an appli- on a small scale prior to deploying them exploit sensor network technology is cation based on a sensor network is in industrial operation. We demonstrate difficult. Such sensors are usually pro- expensive. Java-based SunSPOT sensor this methodology in the development of prietary and inflexible as regards pro- technology has been developed for an indoor environment quality (IEQ) grammability, reusability and applica- rapid prototyping of such applications assessment application that exploits
36 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 SunSPOTs. This application is based on This tool can be exploited to reduce tration of the sensors, and reading and a wireless sensor network, adopts OGC costs by evaluating novel algorithms a processing of sensor data; for example, Sensor Web standards, and provides a priori before adapting them to real- users can visualize and interaction with visual interface to the sensor values. world problems. current sensor values on a graphical, Web-based interface. In particular, the SunSPOT Sensor Technology This form of sensor technology will Sensor Model Language (SensorML), SunSPOTs are embedded hardware prove useful in a broad spectrum of Observation & Measurements (O&M), modules that are equipped with a 180 applications and domains, such as early and Sensor Observations Service (SOS) Mhz CPU, 512 KB RAM, 4MB flash detection and warning systems, envi- specifications are adopted. memory, three on-board sensors (tem- ronmental monitoring, automotive perature, light and three-axis accelerom- engineering, warehouse/container man- Communication between the sensor and eter), hardware interfaces for the inte- agement, logistics, monitoring of build- the base station can occur in both push and pull modes and in a regular or on- demand fashion, where the values are communicated over the meshed wire- less sensor network. All configurations can be defined by the user during run- time. In addition, a user can employ a sensor value reader device (essentially another SunSPOT) in order to get data from a specific sensor by physically moving into the communication range of that sensor and querying the accor- dant data.
Future Activities Further research will focus on the enrichment of the visualization compo- nent by correlating it with information SunSPOT sensor. potentially coming from other, external sources such as the Internet. This should be achievable with reasonable gration of arbitrary external sensors, and ings, home automation, weather fore- effort due to the adoption of open Sen- the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless transmission casting, medical monitoring of patients sor Web standards. In addition, method- technology, which is enabled for mesh and diagnosis, and agriculture and ologies will be investigated that will networking. SunSPOTs are entirely pro- farming. allow algorithms and functionalities grammable in the Java programming that were successfully verified on a language and thus help to abstract from Application: Indoor Environmental SunSPOT platform to be ported to non- the underlying hardware. No direct Quality Measurement Java sensor platforms with minimal interaction by machine code with the Based on SunSPOT sensor technology effort. hardware is necessary, which signifi- we developed an indoor environmental cantly eases the development of sensor- quality application. Factors that influ- The work presented here is part of the based applications. ence the climate in a room and con- MobilityLab, a Centre of Excellence on tribute to human well-being are meas- the Engineering of Location-Based Sys- The SunSPOT sensor technology was ured at different positions in a room. tems, and involves Sun Microsystems, developed primarily to satisfy three tar- The sensor data, then, can be retrieved Vienna University of Technology (Insti- get groups: education (introducing from the sensors and are further tute for Geoinformation and Cartogra- pupils and students to related topics processed in our sensor network. phy) and Salzburg Research. such as programming, networking, embedded systems, robotics or hard- Each sensor station is composed of two ware), research and development main components, namely (i) an exter- Links: (allowing for fast implementation of nal sensor which can measure electro- https://www.sunspotworld.com/ systems that integrate sensor technology magnetic pollution, air pressure, humid- http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects and for easy testing of their behaviour), ity, air temperature, brightness, noise or /groups/sensorweb and hobbyists (developing small sensor- carbon dioxide, and (ii) a SunSPOT http://mobilitylab.salzburgresearch.at based applications for personal needs). module which is responsible for pre- processing acquired sensor data and Please contact: One of the major design goals of propagating them through the sensor Manfred Bortenschlager SunSPOTs was to provide a tool for network. Salzburg Research rapidly prototyping sensor-based appli- Forschungsgesellschaft mbH / AARIT, cations, and for testing and verifying The base station managing this sensor Austria algorithms on a small scale prior to network is an OGC-compliant Sensor E-mail: manfred.bortenschlager@ deploying them in industrial operation. Web application. It allows for adminis- salzburgresearch.at
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 37 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Building an Adaptive Environmental Monitoring System Using Sensor Web Technology
by Jer Hayes, Greg O'Hare, Harry Kolar and Dermot Diamond
The ultimate goal of environmental sensor networks is to realize the concept of an 'adaptive environment' – one that senses and rapidly adapts to potential incidents in order to minimize their impact.
Environmental pollution affects human health and reduces the quality of our land and water. As a result, there is great interest in monitoring water and air quality and ensuring that all areas are compliant with legislation. Ubiquitous environmental monitoring places con- siderable demands upon existing sens- ing technology. The combined chal- lenges of system longevity, autonomous operation, robustness, large-scale sensor networks, operationally difficult deploy- Figure 1: The phosphate analyser developed by CLARITY (left) and results over an 8-day period ments and unpredictable and lossy envi- from a field trial at a waste water treatment plant (right) showing excellent agreement with a ronments collectively represents a tech- reference analytical system (total duration 49 days). nological barrier that has yet to be over- come. The CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies is working with IBM to confront these challenges. Ubiquitous critical for both health reasons and for pled with significant reductions in their sensing envisages many aspects of our the sustainable exploitation of these cost is the key to enabling scaled-up environment being routinely sensed. resources. Sensor Web technology such deployments of sensors at multiple This will result in data streams from a as low-power wireless communica- locations, and this is a key goal for the large variety of heterogeneous sources, tions, coupled with the emergence of CLARITY-IBM team. which will often vary in their volume new and reliable sensors such as the and accuracy. The challenge is to microfluidic analyser platform devel- Sensor networks provide a web of inter- develop a networked sensing infrastruc- oped by CLARITY (see Figure 1), now connectivity: multiple sources of infor- ture that can support the effective cap- enable environmental data to be col- mation that will allow decision-making ture, filtering, aggregation and analysis lected at much higher temporal and spa- processes to be more accurate and effi- of such data. This will ultimately enable tial resolutions. Other examples of sen- cient. These processes can be complex us to dynamically monitor and track the sors being developed by CLARITY and demanding however, and are often quality of our environment at multiple researchers are very low-power and constrained in a number of possibly locations. The ability to monitor quality low-cost colorimetric sensors that can conflicting dimensions such as quality, is a prerequisite to maintaining quality, be fabricated by modifying commercial responsiveness and cost. CLARITY and ensures that detected pollution inci- optical components with chromo- researchers and IBM are working dents are dealt with as quickly as possi- responsive films. For example, inex- together to examine in-situ decision ble, dramatically minimizing their pensive yet sensitive chemo-sensors making, whereby decisions are effected impact. In effect, the ultimate goal of can be made by applying such coatings based upon inferences made from both environmental sensor networks is to to light emitting diodes (LEDs), as locally sensed data and data aggregated realize the concept of an 'adaptive envi- shown in Figure 2. Detailed experimen- from sensor networks. The in-situ sen- ronment' – one that senses and rapidly tation with these devices in the field has sor nodes that comprise a sensor net- adapts to potential incidents to minimize demonstrated their effectiveness at work are often computationally chal- their impact. detecting and tracking the dispersion of lenged with respect to processing volatile chemical plumes. Continued power, as they are developed to be low- In recent years an increasing number of improvement in the long-term reliabil- cost, low-power devices rather than environmental incidents have occurred ity of chemical sensing platforms, cou- high-performance computing devices. which would have benefited from an adaptive environment approach. These include the detection of lead in water supplies, cryptosporidium outbreaks Figure 2: A gas sensor made by and, as recently reported by the Irish coating a pH indicator dye (left) and EPA, and high pollution levels in a third the sensor platform, mica2dot mote of Irish rivers and streams. In Ireland (right). In the presence of an acidic and the rest of the world, proper man- vapour/gas, the sensor changes agement of environmental resources is colour from deep blue to yellow.
38 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 This computational challenge places a seaboard of Ireland. Collaboration in the filtering, aggregation and analysis of major constraint upon the reasoning development of SmartBay will form a environmental data. While the initial process. To overcome this challenge, core activity of the Global Centre of real-world benefits of such technology CLARITY and IBM are developing a Excellence for Water Management, will be in the environmental domain, hybrid reasoning approach to deliver in established by IBM in Ireland in 2008. these benefits will ultimately belong to situ decision-making that combines SmartBay-related research will mirror any application area of the Sensor Web. stream-based computing with multi- the monitoring activities in the Hudson agent system techniques. The hybrid River in New York State of the Beacon Links: reasoning approach builds on System S, Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, and CLARITY: an IBM technology for distributed will in part compliment the River and http://www.clarity-centre.com/ stream processing, and Agent Factory, Estuary Observation Network (REON) IBM Big Green Innovations: developed by CLARITY researchers to established for that purpose. http://www-03.ibm.com/technology/ provide a powerful collaborative deci- greeninnovations/ sion-making system. In partnership The application of Sensor Web technol- SmartBay: with the Irish Marine Institute, this ogy to environmental sensing will even- http://www.marine.ie/home/services/ hybrid approach is being tested through tually result in the realisation of the operational/SmartBay/SmartBay.htm an environmental demonstrator project 'adaptive environment' concept, though entitled SmartBay, which seeks to networks that can rapidly detect and Please contact: deliver an infrastructure to validate dis- adapt to potential environmental inci- Dermot Diamond tributed in-situ real-time environmental dents, in order to minimize their impact. CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web monitoring technolgies. CLARITY and IBM are demonstrating Technologies, Dublin City University, key technological building blocks of the Ireland SmartBay is a next-generation water adaptive environment through projects E-mail: [email protected] management system (both marine and such as SmartBay, through which new freshwater), aspects of which are cur- sensing and collaborative decision- Harry Kolar rently under development by CLARITY making technology is being used to test IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center, for the Marine Institute of Ireland. It is elements of a networked sensing infra- USA located at Galway Bay on the Atlantic structure that can support the capture, E-mail: [email protected]
Remote Water Monitoring With Sensor Networking Technology by Thiemo Voigt, Nicolas Tsiftes and Zhitao He
Sensor networks enable remote monitoring of natural environments such as glaciers, volcanoes and bodies of water. Within the project 'Sensor Networks to Monitor Marine Environment with Particular Focus on Climate Changes', SICS and partners are designing and implementing flexible, reprogrammable sensor network solutions suitable for monitoring the marine environment with high resolution in time and space.
Carrying out marine research requires works to Monitor Marine Environment of material on hard surfaces in aquatic that studies be undertaken in remote with Particular Focus on Climate environments. We first intended to use environments such as the Baltic Sea. Changes', SICS and partners have an oil-filled garage, but found that this However, marine environmental moni- designed an advanced water monitoring affected the sensor readings. Initial toring is expensive: the cost of operation system (Figure 1). Our system features experiments with an air-filled garage at sea includes at least €10 000-15 000 a diving unit, consisting of a bin con- have shown that this solution also pre- per day for the use of a lar ge research taining several sensors connected to one vents fouling. vessel, plus the cost of laboratory tech- sensor node. The diving unit moves up nicians, analytical instrumentation and and down an anchor line. In this way we Our system is driven by rechargeable logistics. As a result, the marine envi- are able to take measurements at any batteries. Previous projects have had ronment is poorly monitored. For exam- depth using only one set of sensors. A problems with solar power. Our project ple, in the Baltic Sea's Bothnian Bay, the pressure sensor determines the depth at partner Uppsala University therefore nine fixed stations are visited only eight which measurements are being designed a wave energy generator to times a year. recorded. When the diving unit is not in obtain electric power from vertical the water taking measurements, it is wave movements. As a ring of stacked Sensor networks mean that marine data parked in a garage that is part of our magnets floats up and down along a rod collection can be undertaken in a much buoy construction. By parking the div- wound with metal coils, an alternating more cost-efficient fashion. Within the ing unit in the garage, we expect to voltage is induced across the two ends multi-disciplinary project 'Sensor Net- eliminate fouling, ie the accumulation of the coil. This is further rectified and
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 39 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
cost of the transferred data, we com- press the data before sending it. Previ- ous work has shown that compression is much cheaper than communication for typical sensor nodes with low-power radios. The same is true for the more power-hungry GPRS communication. To this end, we have designed a new compression algorithm called SB-ZIP that is more efficient than state-of-the- art compression algorithms. For exam- ple, SB-ZIP compresses 4.5 MB of acceleration data measured on the buoy to only 1.5 MB, whereas the well- known S-LZW algorithm is only able to reduce it to slightly over 3 MB. Illustration: Bo Reinerdahl Figure 1: Sensor system for remote water monitoring. SICS is running this project in collabo- ration with Umeå Marine Sciences Cen- tre, Uppsala University and SMHI, the filtered to provide a constant charging energy. The sheer amount of data Swedish Meteorological and Hydrologi- voltage to the batteries. exceeds the limited RAM available in cal Institute. At the conclusion of the sensor nodes. Moreover, to handle the project in late 2009, we expect to have Our system is designed to cope with different data types smoothly, we use deployed around ten buoys at places rel- water depths of around 100m, meaning Contiki's Coffee file system to store evant for marine monitoring in the the number of measurements taken dur- data. The data is transferred onshore Baltic Sea. ing one dive can be significant. Storage using GPRS (General Packet Radio Ser- is thus required for the large volumes of vice), and this is too energy-consuming measurement data: not only those col- a task to be performed after every dive. Link: lected by the diving unit but also from We have therefore ported Coffee to http://www.sics.se/node/1361 light and acceleration sensors placed on operate on SD cards that enable cheap the top of the buoy. System data also mass storage. Please contact: needs to be saved; for example, the Thiemo Voigt, SICS, Sweden energy produced by the wave energy Due to the high energy consumption of Tel: +46 8 633 1598 generator as well as the available the GPRS unit as well as the per-byte E-mail: [email protected]
Sensors Anywhere – Sensor Web Enablement in Risk Management Applications
by Gerald Schimak and Denis Havlik
The increasing frequency, severity and consequences in Europe of floods, storms, forest fires and other natural hazards sensitive to climate change has clearly shown the shortcomings of existing environmental monitoring and information systems. The observed inefficiency is primarily a consequence of historical and organizational factors. An exorbitant amount of work on data and service standardization would be required to build more efficient information systems using state- of-the-art technology.
Emerging technology in risk monitoring the currently available and emerging Sensors Anywhere (SANY) is an ambi- and management has the potential to technologies offers rapid deployment, tious FP6 IST Integrated Project deal- speed up the necessary organizational easy maintenance, quality assurance and ing with sensor networks for environ- and structural changes. Ad hoc wireless automated data processing along the mental and risk management applica- sensor networks and the collective intel- whole information processing chain tions (Figure 2). SANY aims to con- ligence of the Sensor Web; the plug-and- from smart sensors and wireless ad hoc tribute to joint efforts of the European measure paradigm of IEEE 1451 smart sensor networks, over automated data Commission (EC) and the European sensors; the Semantic Web; and the OGC loggers and value-added middleware Space Agency (ESA) on 'Global Moni- Sensor Web Enablement architecture: all services, to user applications capable of toring for Environment and Security' these address critical factors of the state- dynamically integrating all available (GMES) by improving the interoper- of-the-art technology. However, none of data sources at run time. ability of in situ sensors and sensor net-
40 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 The first validation subproject (Fig- ure 1) illustrates the use of SensorSA services at data acquisition level, as well as vendor independence and the feasibility of building virtual networks across administrative and technical bor- ders. Furthermore, it is concentrating on assessing air pollution episodes, track- ing pollution back to its source and pre- dicting the air pollution in urban areas or around industrial zones.
The second validation subproject con- centrates on coastal water management issues, such as assessing, modelling and predicting bathing water quality with user-determined 'what-if' scenarios. It uses advanced data fusion services to demonstrate the feasibility of run-time binding of heterogeneous data sources and the run-time choice of data fusion service, and to predict microbiological contamination through data fusion using all available real-time measure- Figure 1: SANY air quality management subproject. ments and the results of microbiological water sample analyses. The real-time works and taking up the challenges 'observation' data and meta-information, data sources used by this subproject mentioned above. This means specifi- the so-called 'Sensor Observation Ser- include meteorological data, sea tem- cally that the Sensor Service Architec- vice' (SOS); a service for sensor plan- perature, turbidity, salinity, chlorophyll ture (SensorSA) developed in SANY ning and executing tasks, called the 'Sen- and dissolved oxygen levels. shall allow quick and cost-efficient sor Planning Service' (SPS); a service reuse of data and services from cur- that allows users to subscribe to specific Finally, the third validation subproject rently incompatible sources in future alert types, known as the 'Sensor Alert concentrates on geohazard monitoring environmental risk management appli- Service' (SAS); and a service that facili- in a complex urban environment, which cations across organizational, adminis- tates asynchronous message interchange means assessing the structural instabil- trative or regional borders. between users and services, and between ity of architectural objects caused by two OGC-SWE services, called the 'Web human activities (eg tunnel excavation). In order to assure the sustainability of Notification Service' (WNS). It demonstrates the integration of wire- the project results, SANY reuses the less ad hoc sensors into SensorSA net- open standards from W3C, OASIS, ISO Three validation subprojects of SANY works; rapid deployment, auto-configu- and Open Geospatial consortium demonstrate the feasibility of building ration and self-management; and data (OGC). One of the most promising risk management applications with fusion of in situ and Earth Observation standardization efforts is currently hap- SensorSA. data sources. pening within the Open Geospatial Consortium Sensor Web Enablement The authors wish to thank the Informa- initiative (OGC-SWE). The goal of tion Society and Media Directorate OGC-SWE is to enable all types of Web General of the European Commission and/or Internet-compatible sensors, (DG-INFSO) for co-funding the inte- instruments, and imaging devices to be grated project SANY within the area of accessible and, where applicable, con- ICT for Environmental Risk Manage- trollable via the Web. The OGC-SWE ment. vision is to define and approve the stan- dards foundation for interoperable Web-based sensor networks. For this Link: purpose, OGC-SWE specifications http://www.sany-ip.eu include a standardized model for repre- senting and exchanging observation Please contacts: results as well as an information model Denis Havlik and encodings that enable the discovery Project co-ordinator S@NY and tasking of Web-resident sensors. Austrian Research Centers – ARC (AARIT) Of special interest for SANY are the fol- Figure 2: 'SANY'-trees - sensors anywhere in Tel: +43 50550 3157 lowing: a service for retrieving sensor our environment. E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 41 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
FLASH: Fine-Grained Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks using Acoustic Sound and High-Precision Clock Synchronization
by Evangelos Mangas and Angelos Bilas
Sensor localization is an important component and enabler of many applications using intelligent sensors. FLASH is a system that achieves fine-grained localization using acoustic sounds and high- precision clock synchronization via radio frequency (RF) communication. Sensors can dynamically localize themselves in space by maintaining synchronized clocks and measuring time of arrival for acoustic sound pulses. Our techniques focus on achieving highly accurate synchronization and consistent sound detection. Furthermore, FLASH does not require external infrastructure such as fixed equipment, specialized hardware support, or great resource consumption. Experimental results show that FLASH localization is accurate to within 11cm in a variety of indoor environments.
Localization is an important component are sensing the audio frequency spec- of many sensor applications. For trum. All listening nodes attach a time- instance, the ability to accurately locate stamp to the received sound pulse, in a humans or objects in enclosed spaces global synchronized timescale. These can help in detecting and responding to (synchronized clock) timestamps are abnormal situations. Techniques such as used to calculate the time of flight for the use of GPS, image processing or each sound pulse. Distance is then esti- static ranging mechanisms are either not mated based on the speed of sound. Our effective, cumbersome to use, or incur work is therefore focused on high-accu- high costs. racy clock synchronization and sound detection for range estimation. Our work focuses on achieving fine- To achieve precise clock synchroniza- grained localization without excessive or tion we implement a synchronization specialized resources that use wireless protocol operating at the Media Access sensor nodes. We rule out the use of Control (MAC)-Layer that does not extensive external infrastructure, since it introduce significant communication is usually both expensive to acquire and costs and that deals with fixed over- complex to install. Moreover, it is impor- heads introduced by the interrupt mech- tant to achieve localization by using only anism and RF communication. We also typical resources available in sensor introduce an external mechanism for nodes, without the use of specialized testing synchronization precision, caus- hardware peripherals. For these reasons, ing simultaneous interruptions to syn- we choose an approach that relies on an chronizing motes and then comparing acoustic sound-ranging scheme. Each the synchronized timestamps produced. reference node produces an audible Figure 1: Performing experiments with sound We implement our synchronization pro- sound pulse while the rest of the nodes in our lab. tocol on Mica2dot motes. Our experi-
Figure 2: Left: Error in estimated distance with respect to absolute distance; Right: Localization in two dimensions, the sounders are node0 and node1.
42 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 mental results show that synchroniza- timestamps at the beeper node and the compared to methods that use multiple tion precision has an error of less than listening node results in the time of sensor devices per node. 5μs (median) for a 30s resynchroniza- flight for the sound pulse. tion period. Future work in the area includes local- Overall, FLASH demonstrates that ization in outdoor and more demanding Our acoustic sound technique focuses localization can be achieved with inex- environments, such as in the presence on consistently detecting the start of the pensive off-the-shelf devices and yet be of obstacles between nodes, intense arriving sound pulse. Attaching a time- quite precise. Figure 1 shows part of our noise in a room, temperature and stamp at the beeper node is simple: experimental setup, whereas Figure 2 humidity variations and outdoor envi- right before applying voltage to the shows our results for 1D and 2D local- ronments. We believe that FLASH and embedded buzzer we use the local (syn- ization. Using the Berkeley Mica2dot similar techniques will play an impor- chronized) clock to broadcast an RF motes, the default microphone that tant role in cyber-physical systems and message. At each listening node we already exists on the sensor platform and in our efforts to better interact with and identify a sound pulse produced by the cheap simple buzzers, we were able to control our environment. beeper node by using the periodicity of locate nodes at distances of up to 10m, the sound pulse and requiring the aver- depending on surrounding noise. The Link: age peak-to-peak amplitude to surpass a average error in localization precision is http://www.ics.forth.gr/carv/scalable/ certain predefined dynamic threshold, 11cm for distances up to 7m. However, which is less susceptible to reflections. our approach does not require either cal- Please contact: Then we attach a timestamp to the first ibration or any special infrastructure. Angelos Bilas peak-to-peak measurement that was of Furthermore, our method requires a sin- ICS-FORTH, Greece greater value than our dynamic thresh- gle sounder and microphone per node, E-mail: [email protected] old. The difference between the two resulting in better energy efficiency http://www.ics.forth.gr/~bilas
High-Density Wireless Geophone Networks for Oil and Gas Monitoring and Exploration by Stefano Savazzi, Vittorio Rampa and Umberto Spagnolini
Strong fluctuations in crude oil prices and the expected production peak of current reservoirs are pushing oil companies to increase their investment in seismic exploration. Replacing cabling with wireless technology should radically improve the quality of depth imaging and simplify acquisition logistics. Recent advances in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) now allow the wireless community to satisfy the rigid constraints imposed by seismic acquisition systems, which have a large number of sensors (> 10 000) over the monitoring area (> 5km2).
Strong fluctuations in crude oil prices oil exploration. Technical limitations in sor/geophone with an error of less than are pushing oil companies invest more the data-rate efficiency, interference and 1m to avoid degradation of the depth in seismic exploration of new oil reser- battery use of current short-range wire- imaging quality. voirs and in new technology to improve less network architectures (eg WiFi, the quality of depth imaging. Seismic Bluetooth) forced previous proposals Network Architecture prospecting requires a large number of for wireless geophone system architec- As shown in Figure 1, the proposed sensors (up to 30 000), such as geo- tures to choose a combination of wire- WGN architecture exploits different phones or MEMS-based (Micro Electro- less and wired configuration. However, radio transmission technologies to effi- Mechanical Systems) accelerometers. recent advances in WSN technology ciently handle both short-range trans- These are deployed over large areas (up conveniently address the issues related missions (ie for short-distance low- to 30km2) to measure the back-scattered to the strong constraints imposed by power communication among geo- wavefield generated by an active excita- seismic acquisition systems. A Wireless phones/sensors), and long-range trans- tion source. A storage/processing unit Geophone Network (WGN) must sup- missions (ie for seismic data delivery to (sink node) collects measurements from port multiple acquisition settings and storage units and geophone remote all the geophones in real time to obtain applications. Basic network require- monitoring) that must cover distances an image of the sub-surface. Current ments are: i) network throughput of of several kilometers. The hierarchical telemetry is cable-based and usually 150kbps down to 50kbps for single network design requires the deployment requires hundreds of kilometers of component sensors; ii) real-time (or of a number of Wireless Geophone cabling, which results in delays, high near real-time) acquisitions with strong Gateways (WGGs) to collect data read- logistic costs and low imaging quality. delay constraints; iii) remote control by ings from a large number of wireless sink node and synchronous acquisition geophones (WGs) and forward the data Wireless technology is thus expected to with a maximum timing skew of 10μs; to the storage unit (SU). These WG significantly improve the efficiency of and iv) accurate positioning of each sen- nodes are self-organized into independ-
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 43 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
ent sub-networks; ideally the number of OFDM or MultiBand Orthogonal Fre- mission is organized in superframes devices per sub-network should be as quency Division Multiplexing) provide with the beacon period (BP) carrying high as 300 nodes to minimize the num- wireless devices with high data rates the essential information of each ber of WGGs. This results in an aggre- over short ranges of up to 480Mbps, device. Logical device/sensor groups gated (per sub-network) throughput of and low power consumption (ie below are dynamically formed according to about 45Mbps (up to 60Mbps). Data 100mW in active transmission mode WiMedia protocol to facilitate the shar- delivery within one sub-network is but down to 20μW in power-save ing of resources, while wireless obtained by multi-hop transmissions mode). The MB-OFDM processing can medium reuse can be exploited over towards the WGGs; WG sensors are also guarantee network scalability different spatial regions. within 5-100m of inter-node distance to through time and frequency division by reduce both energy consumption and allowing the use of multiple sub-bands WGG supports specific extended func- increase battery life. to separate the co-located sub-net- tions compared to a standard WiMedia works, and coexistence with other 2.4 device. These functions allow: i) the Physical and MAC Layer Requirements GHz-based radio devices without sig- Gateway to behave as an intermediate The requirements of self-localization nificant cross-interference. sink, forwarding data to the storage/ and frame synchronization make Ultra processing node SU and controlling WideBand (UWB) technology the natu- The high number of devices per sub- each sub-network; ii) contention-free ral choice for short-range transmissions network and the large network size sug- resource negotiations to guarantee real- within each sub-network. To achieve gest the adoption of a number of distrib- time constraints (eg quality of service positional accuracy with errors less than uted MAC (Medium Access Control) and maximum delay); and iii) coexis- 1m, the travel-time estimation error for functionalities. Network topology tence of long/short range transmissions. ToA-based (Time of Arrival) position- should define a hierarchical structure Figure 2 illustrates the MAC layer fram- ing must be in the order of 3ns with a where the WGG acts as an intermediate ing structure adopted for each sub-net- minimum required signal bandwidth of sink towards the storage unit. The work, while the probability of full net- 500MHz. UWB technology provides WiMedia standard (ECMA-368 from work coverage versus the BP length is data acquisition, synchronization and ECMA International, the European shown at the bottom of the same figure. localization without the use of fully Association for Standardizing Informa- Sensors/geophones are assumed to be GPS-based (Global Positioning Sys- tion and Communication Systems) has deployed according to the requirements tem) WGN nodes. Moreover, recent been chosen as the reference for the of a conventional seismic survey. Geo- advances in radio design (ie MB- development of the WGN MAC. Trans- phone deployment has a major impact
WG #1 Beacon Slot Super Frame 1)Device Address Beacon Period Data period and spatial position α 1−α 2) Neighbor Information 3) WGG device address (sub-network ID) 4)Reserved Slots WGG’s HOBS Unused BSs Beacon 3 2 Slot 1423 WGG WGG 4 1 Shot line Reserved Slot Location Time Seismic stamp data for WG #1 info WGG 1) Owner Address WGG WGG 2) Destination Data from WG#2 SU Address 1 0.9 Δ = 20m 0.8 x Δ = 11m Δ =15m Δ = 6m 0.7 x x y Δ = 6m Δ =6m (M = 164 WGs) WGG WGG 0.6 y y (M = 292 WGs) (M =216 WGs) 0.5 WGG: Wireless Geophone Gateway 0.4 800m WG: Wireless Geophone verage probability 0.3
m Δ Δ y SU: Storage unit 0.2 x 0.1 20 WGG Short range communication Full co α = 12% α = 8% α = 4% Long range communication Beacon Period length Figure 1: Wireless Geophone Network architec- Figure 2: MAC layer framing structure (top) used by each sub-network, and its ture. impact on full network coverage (bottom).
44 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 on the framing structure design: a lower Links: Please contact: density with a sensor spacing of 20m Land seismic exploration: Stefano Savazzi, Umberto Spagnolini, (still reasonable for seismic acquisi- http://www.oilfieldreview.com/ DEI, Politecnico di Milano, Italy tions) can make WiMedia feasible for E-mail: [email protected], WGN applications with minimal modi- Wireless Geophone Network: [email protected] fications. On the other hand, higher geo- http://www.wisygeo.com phone densities, with a sensor spacing http://scitation.aip.org/tle Vittorio Rampa of less than 11m, require further MAC IEIIT-CNR, Italy modifications. More details are given at WiMedia: E-mail: [email protected] the WisyGeo Web site. http://www.wimedia.org
A Software Platform for the Acquisition and Online Processing of Images in a Camera Network by Thomas Sarmis, Xenophon Zabulis and Antonis A. Argyros
Applications related to vision-based monitoring of spaces and to the visual understanding of human behaviour, require the synchronous imaging of a scene from multiple views. We present the design and implementation of a software platform that enables synchronous acquisition of images from a camera network and supports their distribution across computers. Seamless and online delivery of acquired data to multiple distributed processes facilitates the development of parallel applications. As a case study, we describe the use of the platform in a vision system targeted at unobtrusive human-computer interaction.
Camera networks are increasingly Application Layer employed in a wide range of Computer Vision applications, from modelling and interpretation of individual human Host computer Host computer behaviour to the surveillance of wide areas. In most cases, the evidence gath- Processing modules Processing modules ered by individual cameras is fused together, making the synchronization of acquired images a crucial task. Cameras
es Local shared-memory Local shared-memory are typically hosted on multiple comput- Cross-computer ers in order to accommodate the large shared-memory number of acquired images and provide Acquisition module Acquisition module the computational resources required for Synchronization
their processing. In the application Control messag layer, vision processing is thus sup- Cameras Cameras ported by multiple processing nodes (CPUs, GPUs or DSPs). The proposed Figure 1: Platform architecture for camera network supported by multiple computers. Central platform is able to handle the consider- sensor control is provided by a message-passing communication infrastructure. Acquisition able technical complexity involved in modules place the images on a synchronized shared-memory space, making them available to the synchronous acquisition of images multiple processing nodes across computers. Processing modules read these data and perform and the allocation of processes to nodes. parallel execution of computer vision algorithms. The same modules also have access to this Figure 1 illustrates an overview of the space, allowing them to synchronously view intermediate computation results. proposed and implemented architecture.
The platform integrates the hardware and device-dependent components employed System modules can communicate in bandwidth requirements imposed by in synchronous multi-camera image and two modes. Communication through image transmission are accommodated video acquisition. Pertinent functionali- message-passing addresses control by a Direct Memory Access channel to ties become available to the applications messages to targeted or multicast recip- a local shared-memory space. For programmer through conventional ients. The diversity of communicated cross-computer availability of images, library calls. These include online control information types is accommodated by memory spaces are unified over a net- of sensor-configuration parameters, data-structure serialization. Communi- work link. The latency introduced by online delivery of synchronized data to cation through shared-memory spaces this link is compensated for by notifica- multiple distributed processing nodes, provides visual data or intermediate tion of nodes, regarding the partial or and support for the integration and sched- computation results to the nodes of the total availability of a synchronized uling of third-party vision algorithms. host or of multiple computers. The large image set. In this way, per-frame syn-
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 45 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Figure 2: Person silhouettes in synchronous images are segmented in parallel. Individual processes fuse them into a registered 3D representation of the per- son, recognize coarse gestures as expressed by body configuration, and estimate the spatial direction in which the person's head is facing. Image acquisition Acquisition module Acquisition module subtraction Background
Processing modules Processing modules
Cross-computer shared-memory
Processing module Processing module Processing module 3D representation Head pose Body configuration map registration estimation analysis
chronization of modules is achieved, development is facilitated by support and analysis operations is performed in but at the same time, processing of par- for 'chaining' of processes. parallel on each image, to detect the tially available input is also supported. presence of humans through back- Shared-memory spaces across process- Being in the format of a binary library, ground subtraction in the acquired ing nodes are essential, as large data this platform can be invoked, independ- images. Using the shared memory capacity and frequent input rate demand ent of the programming language used. across computers, segmentation results the parallelization and pipelining of As an additional utility, the developed are fused into a 3D volumetric repre- operations. platform provides a GUI for the control sentation of the person and registered to of generic camera networks and the a map of the room. Two other processes Acquisition modules encapsulate the recording of image sequences. Forth- run in parallel and access the same data complexity of sensor-specific, syn- coming extensions involve additional to recognize the configuration of the chronization, and shared-memory con- capabilities for cooperation with mid- person's body and estimate the pose of figurations. Online sensor configura- dleware infrastructures in systems the person's head. The utilization of the tion and command is implemented where vision is integrated with other proposed platform facilitates the modu- through message-passing, while image sensory modalities (aural, tactile etc). lar development of such applications, transmission utilizes shared-memory improves the reusability of algorithms communication. A range of off-the- The platform is currently employed in and components and reduces substan- shelf sensor types is supported through the development of a vision system tially the required development time. an extensible repository of device-spe- (illustrated in Figure 2), targeting unob- cific wrappers. To facilitate testing of trusive and natural user interaction. The This work has been partially supported by applications, input may be prere- development of this system is part of a the FORTH-ICS RTD programme 'AmI: corded. broader project funded internally at Ambient Intelligence Environments'. FORTH-ICS on Ambient Intelligence Processing modules run vision algo- (AmI) environments. The system Link: rithms that are transparent to the com- employs multiple cameras that jointly http://www.ics.forth.gr/cvrl/miap/ puter and provide access to images and image a wide room. Two computers doku.php?id=intro intermediate computation results. Dur- host eight cameras and a dedicated bus ing the applications development stage, for their cross-computer synchroniza- Please contact: an Application Programming Interface tion, and utilize a LAN connection for Xenophon Zabulis enables synchronization and message communication. Upon image acquisi- FORTH-ICS, Greece coordination. Articulated application tion, a sequence of image processing E-mail: [email protected]
46 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Tackling the Semantic Gap in Multimodal Sensor Networks by Eric Pauwels, Albert Salah and Paul de Zeeuw
Sensor networks are increasingly finding their way into our living environments, where they perform a variety of tasks like surveillance, safety or resource monitoring. Progress in standardization and communication protocols has made it possible to communicate and exchange data in an ad hoc fashion, thus creating extended and heterogeneous multimodal sensor networks. CWI is looking at ways to automatically propagate semantic information across sensor modalities.
Wireless sensors are deployed in a grow- Indeed, an additional layer of intelli- data picked up by complementary sen- ing number of applications where they gence on top of the communication pro- sors (or modalities) are linked to perform a wide variety of tasks. Although tocols will enable sensors to advertise semantically related concepts. A sim- this has considerable economic and social their own capabilities, discover comple- ple example will clarify the issues at advantages, it seems likely that even mentary services available on the net- hand: imagine a camera network on a greater benefits can be gained once het- work and orchestrate them into more factory floor that has been programmed erogeneous sets of individual sensors are powerful applications that meet high- to identify persons using face recogni- able to communicate and link up into level specifications set by human super- tion, and to determine whether or not larger multimodal sensor (inter)networks. visors. This can be achieved more effi- they are walking, say for safety rea- We expect that the network's performance ciently if the capabilities of the different sons. If the same factory is also will become more robust when informa- components can be described in both equipped with open microphones that tion from multiple sources is integrated. human- and machine-readable form. It monitor ambient noise, then an intelli- gent supervision system might pick up the strong correlation between walking people as observed by the camera net- work and rhythmic background sounds Figure 1: In multimodal sensor as detected by the microphones. networks, reliable information from one sensor can be used to By mining general knowledge data- supervise the extraction of bases, the system might then be able to semantic information from conclude that the observed rhythmic another sensor. audio output corresponds to the sound of footsteps and add this snippet of semantic information to its knowledge database. In essence, the system suc- ceeded in using available high-level information (the visual recognition of walking people) to bridge the semantic gap for an unrelated sensor (audio). By accumulating the information gleaned In addition, networks could become will then be possible for individual sen- from such incremental advances, we smarter for at least two reasons: sensors sors to relate their own objectives and contend that it will be possible to grad- that produce highly reliable output can be capabilities to human-defined goals (eg ually - but largely automatically - used to provide on-the-fly 'ground truth' minimize energy consumption without extend the system's knowledge data- for the training of other sensors within the sacrificing comfort) or available knowl- base linking low-level observed sensor network, and correlations among sensed edge, both of which are usually data to high-level semantic notions. events could bootstrap the automatic expressed in terms of high-level seman- propagation of semantic information tics. To explore the viability of this idea we across sensors or modalities. have conducted a number of simple Granted, the linking of low-level sen- experiments in which we used the Inter- The implementation of our vision sor data to high-level semantic con- net as a general knowledge database. requires two conditions to be met. cepts remains a formidable problem, For instance, referring to the above sce- Firstly, sensors should come equipped but we contend that the complementar- nario we submitted the paired search with an open interface through which ity inherent in the different sensing terms walking (as the camera has been their output data and all relevant meta- spectra supported by such a network programmed to detect this behaviour) data can be made available for third might actually alleviate the problem. and sound (through the use of standards party applications. Secondly, sensor net- The basic idea is simple: if particular such as SensorML, each sensor can works need to be endowed with a learn- sensor data can be linked to specific communicate the modality of its output) ing mechanism that shifts the burden of semantic notions, then it can be into a search engine and analysed the supervision from humans to machines. hypothesized that strongly correlated response. By restricting attention to
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 47 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
meaningful words that occur frequently their semantic distance to the original Link: (both in terms of number per page and concept (walking). By restricting atten- http://www.cwi.nl/pna4 number of unique pages), we end up tion to the most similar concepts, it with a sorted list that suggests a link transpires that it is highly likely the Please contact: between the audio data and a list of recorder audio is related to either foot- Eric Pauwels semantic concepts including music, steps, gait or music, all of which make CWI, The Netherlands video, gait, work and footsteps. In a sense. These results hint at the possibil- Tel:+31 20 592 4225 final step this list is further whittled ity of automatically extending semantic E-mail: [email protected] down by checking each of these sugges- notions across modalities, thus leading tions against an ontology to determine to more robust and intelligent networks.
Utilising Wearable Sensor Technology to Provide Effective Memory Cues
by Aiden R. Doherty and Alan F. Smeaton
We describe a wearable sensor technology that passively records 'lifelog' images and sensor readings of a wearer's daily life. The focus of our work is not on aggregating, collecting or networking data as in the usual application of sensors in the Sensor Web, but rather on detecting events of interest to the wearer from a multi-sensor standalone device. These events of interest provide effective cues to allow people to more easily access their autobiographical memories. Early research indicates this technology may be potentially helpful for sufferers of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Sensors and sensing technology are Lifelogging is the term used to potentially useful as a memory aid to everywhere, and this issue of ERCIM describe the recording of different recall autobiographical memories. News contains many examples of sen- aspects of your daily life, in digital Research in the field of cognitive neu- sors networked together for some greater form, for your own exclusive personal ropsychology has established that 'cued purpose. Mostly, people deploy sensors use. It can take many forms, such as an recall' is better than 'free recall'. The and then gather the readings together and application running on your mobile closer a cue is to how an actual memory address issues like networking, calibra- phone that 'logs' all your phone calls. was encoded, the better memory tion, sensor fusion and sensor event One particularly interesting device is retrieval is. Other studies indicate that detection. The general trend is towards the SenseCam, a camera that is worn autobiographical memories tend to be networking sensors into the Sensor Web, around the neck and automatically strongly encoded in a visual manner in but this isn't the only way of using them. captures thousands of images of the the brain. The SenseCam records pic- Sensors can be used in small groupings wearer's life every day. It has a range tures from the viewpoint of the user, on standalone devices that gather and of in-built sensors for monitoring the making it able to provide visual cues of process information and report back not wearer's environment, detecting move- our past that are very close to how the sensor readings, but major semantic ment, ambient temperature, passive original memories/experiences were events. In this article we describe one infrared information (ie body heat) and encoded in the brain. such sensor technology which is simple light intensity. and cheap to manufacture, but can Even though SenseCam images provide empower an individual to reflect on their Preliminary studies indicate that infor- strong memory cues, there exists a sub- past behaviour and memories. mation gathered by the SenseCam is stantial problem in effectively manag- ing the overwhelming volume of images generated by this device – approximately 650 000 images per year are captured. Within the CLARITY centre at Dublin City University, we have developed a suite of functions applied to SenseCam data that automat- ically provide effective digital memory retrieval cues. We structure our process- ing into a number of logical steps that exploit various characteristics of the human memory system.
1. Firstly, we intelligently segment sequences of images into distinct Figure 1: Sample lifelog images from a typical IT worker's day. events such as having breakfast,
48 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 working on a computer etc. This is detecting how visually novel each to gather information as part of a lifelog. achieved very quickly using on-board event is. These include Universities of Toronto, environmental sensor values. Tampere, Illinois, Utrecht and CWI in 4. As human memory is known to store Amsterdam. Our approach does not 2.Given that human memory stores items associatively, it is useful to aug- conform to the common model of a sen- information associatively, we provide ment individuals' SenseCam events sor network composed of inter-con- users with automated search func- with images (or videos) from external nected sensors with live, real-time tions to find events similar to a given sources, eg to better remember a trip streaming data. This is because the event, eg "show me other times when to the Eiffel Tower by viewing pic- demands of lifelogging are for post- I was at the park". By intelligently tures of the tower uploaded by others event reflective retrieval rather than real representing events through the to the Internet. Using GPS informa- time, meaning live inter-connectivity fusion of image descriptions and the tion, and after some intelligent auto- with other sensor nodes is not as vital as in-built sensor values, we found that mated processing, we can automati- in other Sensor Web technologies. users can find events related to any cally find relevant supplementary given 'query event'. images and videos from Internet sites Link: such as Flickr and YouTube. http://www.cdvp.dcu.ie/SenseCam/ 3. Given that the human memory more strongly encodes distinctive memo- Our technology for autobiographical Please contact: ries, we automatically identify events memory capture and management has Aiden R. Doherty, Alan F. Smeaton that are more visually unique among been deployed not only within our CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web those recorded by a wearer. We have research centre in Dublin, but also in Technologies, Dublin City University, found that it is effective to combine numerous cognitive psychology Ireland the automated detection of faces (to research groups in Europe and North E-mail: [email protected], indicate social engagement) with America, and uses sensors and a camera [email protected]
SENSE – Smart Embedded Network of Sensing Entities by Wolfgang Herzner
The SENSE project (Smart Embedded Network of Sensing Entities) is developing methods, tools and a test platform for the design, implementation and operation of smart adaptive wireless networks of stationary embedded sensing components. The network is an ambient intelligent system, which adapts to its environment and delivers reliable information to its component sensors and the user.
SENSE is an EC-funded project of the tem consisting of multiple embedded • to understand how a shared semantic 6th Framework Programme, Embedded components: video system, audio sys- vocabulary influences dynamic node Systems (objective 2.5.3, contract no. tem, central processor, power source discovery and configuration 33279). It aims at developing a platform and wireless networking. The security • to understand how perception and for smart adaptive wireless networks of application implements object/scenario information processing can be com- smart sensors. These sensors cooperate recognition (eg unattended luggage or bined using low-level and high-level to establish and maintain a coherent people 'lurking' in an area). Nodes rec- feature fusion. global view from local information. ognize local objects, using a combina- Newly added nodes automatically cali- tion of video and audio information, and The expected results of SENSE are to brate themselves to the environment, neighbouring nodes exchange informa- combine the aspects of: and share knowledge with their neigh- tion about objects in a self-organizing • embedded intelligent middleware in bours. The network is scalable due to the network. The result is a global overview smart devices, local processing and sharing of informa- of current objects and events observed • adaptive configuration, tion, and self-organizes based on the by the network (see Figure 1). • flexible cooperation (among devices), physical placement of nodes. • high-level perception and adaptation The five main objectives are: • dynamic networking in a common As test platform for a civil security mon- • to build networked systems of framework of semantic knowledge itoring system, a test application com- embedded components that can discovery and sharing. posed of video cameras and micro- dynamically and automatically phones, was chosen. The test platform reconfigure themselves The SENSE system encompasses will be installed at the Krakow Balice • to convert low-level local informa- aspects including: airport, to yield real data and perform- tion to semantic knowledge • construction of a modality-neutral ance goals from a realistic test environ- • to use semantic-level knowledge for embedded test platform ment. Each sensor is a stand-alone sys- network-centric computation • raw sensory processing
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 49 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
• transformation of sensory data into semantic knowledge • communication between nodes to produce a consistent world view • sharing of knowledge between intel- ligent nodes • automatic recognition of unusual and alarm situations • communication between the intelli- gent network and an operator, and • automatic discovery and configura- tion of new intelligent nodes.
Embedded systems in SENSE develop their own semantic symbols based on an analysis of their environment. SENSE incorporates research from machine learning to discover statistical regularities in its environment, and compresses these regularities into Figure 1: Civil Security demonstrator (Airport Krakow); frame-by-frame detection of objects. informative semantic symbols. At the local level, SENSE uses algorithms such as 'expectation-maximization' to adaptive and device-independent. Net- works, connections are constantly cre- optimize each node's set of semantic works that cover those challenges are ated and destroyed. This is called 'plug symbols. Sharing of knowledge called ad hoc networks or self-organiz- and participate'. between nodes is also a topic of ing networks. Their development is research, both in distributed systems driven by the wireless community, but Vision and audio sensors were selected and artificial intelligence. The SENSE some of their principles are also of to fit the application domain and also system uses a mature algorithm called interest for wired networks. Less effort because they are complex enough to 'belief propagation'. This algorithm is required for their installation, initial- allow for significant advancement in specifies how to share probability dis- ization and maintenance, and they dis- sensor processing technology. How- tributions over semantic concepts play inherent fault tolerance and the ever, the framework designed will be between nodes, such that a self-consis- possibility to save energy within the generic enough to accommodate a wide tent world view results. Figure 2 illus- network. This is true for both wired and range of sensors. The middleware and trates the architecture of SENSE. wireless types but is typically only rele- software framework is designed to eas- vant for the latter. In contrast to self- ily incorporate additional sensor types, The unique feature of SENSE is that it organizing networks, traditional net- which mean the project results are more combines technology from embedded works have a very time-demanding easily extended and the technology is systems, robotics, networking and commissioning phase that also involves easier to adopt for third parties. machine learning research in a new expert knowledge. way. The result is a framework for the With respect to requirements, the air- development of smart networks of Dynamic addition or removal of nodes port application is very similar to other embedded components that are flexible, is a further challenge. In ad hoc net- applications in public buildings and public areas, such as shopping centres, railway and bus stations, office build- ings, football stadiums and so on. The SENSE technology is modular and is Semantic appropriate for integration with existing information Semantic Co-activated is communicated security systems (existing video sys- information is Semantic Symbols to the user tems, for example). This provides an lead to shared communicated upgrade path from current systems to a around the representations network User full distributed SENSE system, improv- Interface ing the chances for technology uptake. Node Node Node Nodes build up Link: an understanding Node Node of their environment http://www.sense-ist.org by fusing sensor input to form Please contact: semantic symbols Objects Nodes perceive and Wolfgang Herzner objects and Events events in their Austrian Research Centers – ARC environment Figure 2: (AARIT) (video and audio) SENSE architecture. E-mail: [email protected]
50 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Towards Data Management in the Sensor Web: the MaD-WiSe System by Giuseppe Amato, Stefano Chessa, Francesco Furfari, Stefano Lenzi, Claudio Vairo
The convergence of sensor networks with the Web (Sensor Web) poses new problems. These relate both to the management of the enormous amounts of data continuously produced by sensors, and to the reaction to events inferred from such data. The MaD-WiSe system (MAnagement of Data in WIreless SEnsor networks), developed at ISTI-CNR, exploits the well-known database paradigm to address this issue.
The MaD-WiSe system considers a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) as a highly distributed and dynamic data- base. Sensor data can be acquired, manipulated and filtered using simple SQL-like statements. Various WSN applications can be developed using its functionality. For example, the MaD- WiSe system has been used to imple- ment a prototype application providing remote monitoring of firefighters equipped with totally encapsulated chemical suits (see Figure 1). This application enables real-time monitor- ing of various physiological parameters during operational activity. The infor- mation acquired can be used to raise the alarm in situations of risk, provide advice to the team leader with respect to the necessary actions, and also to analyse offline the health of those involved in an operation. The applica- Figure 1: Firefighters being monitored with MaD-WiSe. tion employs five sensors that are deployed on the arms, legs and chest of the operator.
The MaD-WiSe architecture comprises munications between nodes and data with both sensor and remote streams. a set of modules running on WSN nodes processing. For the former, data rates determine the (network side), and a set of modules that activation frequency of transducers offer WSN services to the external The Stream System defines three types associated with sensor streams. In the applications (context information of streams: sensor, remote and local latter case, data rates are used by the provider). The network side consists of streams. A sensor stream is connected network layer to optimize radio sched- a set of modules that implement a dis- to a transducer and carries data originat- uling: the radio is switched on only tributed data stream management sys- ing from the transducer. A remote when a piece of data must be sent tem on a WSN. It is organized into three stream is a data channel between two through a remote stream. Sensor layers, as shown in Figure 2. The layers distinct sensors: writing to a remote streams can also be 'on demand'. In this interact through well-defined interfaces stream occurs on one sensor while read- case the transducers are activated only and are autonomous with respect to each ing from the stream occurs on the other. in response to an explicit read request other. Thus remote communication between on the stream. different sensors is encapsulated within The Network Layer supports connec- the stream system, which in this respect The last of the three layers is the Query tion-oriented multi-hop communication offers the transport layer functionali- Processor Layer, which implements the between arbitrary pairs of nodes. The ties. A local stream is local to a sensor, query processor of a full-in-network dis- Stream System Layer offers abstraction as writing to and reading from the tributed data stream management sys- mechanisms for data access by means stream can only be requested by code tem. It can be programmed by the client- of data streams. It can be thought of as running on the same sensor. side subsystem in order to take part in the equivalent of a file system on a sen- The Stream System allows streams to the execution of a distributed query. The sor network. The main difference is that be created or removed, and records to query language used in MaD-WiSe is in the Stream System, data is continu- be read from and written to existing called MW-SQL and shares its basic ously acquired from transducers, com- streams. Data rates can be associated constructs with SQL. However, sensor
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 51 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Wireless Sensor Network
3 1 5 4 2
8 7 6
MaD-WiSe Network-side node
Query Manager/Executor
Stream System
Network
TinyOS
Figure 2: The software in a network-side node. Figure 3: The MadWise query interface.
network peculiarities and the distributive module (composed of a query parser, 2.x. It runs on WSN platforms based on nature of the database implementation an execution plan optimizer and a MICAz and IRIS motes and is distrib- introduce some differences. MW-SQL query manager) and a higher-level uted with an open-source licence. Fur- allows users to express queries to manip- module, the JDBC driver, which inter- ther information and downloads can be ulate, filter and organize sequences of acts with the low-level module by found on the project Web site. tuples generated by the sensors. MW- means of the MW-SQL language. At SQL relies on the concept of source to the current stage of the project, the present the user with an abstraction of a JDBC driver is being encapsulated sequence of tuples arriving from a pre- within an OSGi bundle in order to Link: cise origin. The MaD-WiSe query inter- implement a gateway between the http://mad-wise.isti.cnr.it face is shown in Figure 3. WSN and the Sensor Web, and to enable queries involving different Please contact: The MaD-WiSe context information WSNs in the Sensor Web. Giuseppe Amato provider fits within the raw data ISTI-CNR, Italy retrieval layer of a context-aware MaD-WiSe was developed using nesC Tel: +39 050 3152906 architecture. It comprises a low-level and is available for both TinyOs 1.x and E-mail: [email protected]
Detecting Hazardous Gases in Emergency Disaster Scenarios using Wearable Sensors
by Tanja Radu, Cormac Fay, King Tong Lau and Dermot Diamond
The aim of this project is the development of integrated smart wearable sensors for emergency disaster intervention personnel. The CLARITY (The Centre for Sensor Web Technologies at Dublin City University) team is involved in the integration of gas sensors into wearables for detection of
hazardous gases like CO and CO2.
This research arose through involve- for potential risk sources. Some of the projects (see for example www.biotex- ment in a joint European Union-funded issues covered are monitoring of vital eu.com). FP6 project called Proetex (www.proe- signs, posture and activity, external tex.org). The aim of the project is to hazard monitoring, and low-power The project brings together 23 partners develop textile- and fibre-based inte- wireless communications. The project from a range of backgrounds – univer- grated wearable sensor systems. Such is closely connected with other large sities, research institutions, industrial systems will improve the safety and European projects on smart textiles, partners and end users – drawn from efficiency of emergency personnel by wearable sensing and associated appli- laboratories in France, United King- monitoring the health status of the oper- cations – it brings together and extends dom, Poland, Italy, Belgium, Switzer- ator and the surrounding environment the technology developed by previous land, Germany and Ireland.
52 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Researchers from CLARITY based in ted wirelessly to the wearable base sta- the National Centre for Sensor Research tion using Zigbee. Power is supplied to at Dublin City University are involved the sensors using a nickel metal hydride in the integration of sensing platforms rechargeable battery. The CO2 sensor is into wearables for the detection of envi- placed in a specially designed pocket ronmentally harmful gases surrounding located on the firefighter's boot. The emergency personnel. Special attention pocket is designed not to obstruct the is being paid to carbon monoxide (CO) firefighter's activities. The prototype and carbon dioxide (CO2). These gases currently used for testing is shown in are associated with fires and mining Figure 1; note the side pocket contain- operations, and it is of the highest ing the CO2 sensor along with the wire- importance to warn and protect opera- less sensing module and a battery. The tors from potential harm caused by pocket has a waterproof membrane that over-exposure to high concentrations of protects the sensor from moisture, but these gases. The objective is rapid allows gas to pass through. The CO sen- detection of the status of an environ- sor will be integrated in the firefighter's ment (low, medium or high hazard) and outer garment (ie jacket). All sensed real-time communication of this infor- Figure 1: Firefighter's boot with built-in information will be fed to a wearable mation to the garment wearer. Critical pocket used for enclosing the CO2 sensor and local base station that shares the data in this identification of potential toxifi- wireless communications platform. with a remote centralized base station. cation is a reliable method of measuring The ultimate goal is to achieve local
CO/CO2 exposure. Commercially communication between firefighters and available sensors have been carefully civil workers in the operations area, as selected and are being integrated into in which the current between the elec- well as longer-range communications the outer garments of firefighters. The trodes is proportional to the concentra- between these personnel and the support sensors provide sufficient sensitivity to tion of the gas. On the other hand, the team outside the operations area. reliably alert users to the presence of CO2 sensor is potentiometric. In this these harmful gases. Another important case, the reference and working elec- The project commenced in 2006 and aim is to achieve wireless transmission trodes are placed in an electrolyte that will end in early 2010. The project is of sensor signals to a wearable wireless provides a reference CO2 concentration. envisioned to produce three sets of pro- base station that gathers, processes and The measured potential is based on the totypes during the four years of its exis- further transmits the data. difference in concentration between the tence; so far two generations of proto- reference electrode and the outside air. types have been successfully developed. When selecting the appropriate com- Both types of sensors are very sensitive At this stage, accurate wireless trans- mercially available sensors for the gas and give an accurate reading (in parts mission of the sensor signal has been sensing application, special attention per million). This means that both low successfully achieved (see Figure 2). was paid to sensor size, robustness, sen- concentrations of these gases (which Future activities will include evaluation sitivity and power requirement. Electro- can be hazardous over long periods of of prototypes in laboratory and field chemical sensors satisfy most of these exposure) and high concentrations conditions. Their performance will be requirements, especially in terms of (which pose an immediate danger) can compared to that of existing technology, size and power requirements. CO is be accurately detected. The signal and will be improved upon by customiz- detected using an amperometric sensor obtained from these sensors is transmit- ing the products according to the spe- cific user needs. Finally, the products will be tested in real-life situations as an ultimate proof of their full functionality.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the European Union (Proetex FP6-2004-IST-4) and the Science Foundation Ireland (07/CE/I1147).
Links: http://www.proetex.org http://www.dcu.ie/chemistry/asg/radut http://www.clarity-centre.com
Please contact: Tanja Radu CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, Dublin City University
Figure 2: Wirelessly transmitted signal from CO2 sensor calibration (range atmospheric to Tel: +353 1 700 7602 42000 ppm CO2). Sensor was enclosed in an airtight chamber and CO2 was injected. E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 53 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
TennisSense: A Multi-Modal Sensing Platform for Sport
by Noel E. O'Connor, Philip Kelly, Ciarán Ó'Conaire, Damien Connaghan, Alan F. Smeaton, Brian Caulfield, Dermot Diamond and Niall Moynahan
The evolution of the World-Wide Web to the Sensor Web is providing an unprecedented opportunity to develop novel applications in a variety of domains. In this article we describe our work on multi- modal sensing for sport.
Sensor technology is rapidly changing strains that they are feeling in their player speed using the location infor- the professional sporting landscape. joints and muscles. mation and detecting the sound of a ball Modern motor racing has been virtually hitting a racquet. These detected events transformed by the introduction of The project is a collaboration between are used in a variety of Web-based sophisticated drive-by-wire sensor tech- CLARITY (The Centre for Sensor Web coaching tools. These include (a) being nology, for example. Similarly, the abil- technologies) and Tennis Ireland, the able to view individual tennis strokes ity to accurately monitor the perform- national governing body for tennis, from multiple view points, (b) support ance of an athlete during training is based in Dublin City University. We for online coaching feedback (eg “This having a major influence on a wide have instrumented an all-weather tennis shot was the wrong choice given the range of track and field events. In this court with nine Internet-enabled cam- location of your opponent when you project we introduce state-of-the art eras with built-in microphones. This is played it”), and (c) an easy way for sensing technology onto the tennis linked to a localization system that coaches and athletes to produce person- court with a view to facilitating coaches identifies the player's position to within alized annotated video summaries for as they train the next generation of ten- 15cm by triangulating the radio signal players to download and review for nis superstars. These sensors make it emitted by small tags carried by the motivational purposes.
Integrating Smart Materials and Body Sensor Networks By its very nature, this project requires convergence between multiple disci- plines in order to be successful. It requires input from engineers for signal processing and content analysis aspects and from computer scientists for addressing indexing, archival, personal- ization and user interface issues. Sports scientists play the crucial role of medi- ating between the technologists and the end-user coaches and athletes. Their input is invaluable in helping translate a complicated set of domain-specific and expert-driven requirements into a set of concrete technical functionalities. This helps ensure the practical relevance and usefulness of any technology devel- oped. They also help ensure that coaches and athletes understand the potential benefits of the technology, Figure 1: Coaching tool developed for Tennis Ireland. thereby stimulating take-up by the key stakeholders.
possible for coaches to obtain a second- players in their pockets. The coach uses However, the potential for convergence by-second record of player performance a simple wireless device to signal an extends even beyond this initial con- that goes far beyond what can be cap- important event during play via a sim- stituency. More generally, the sensed tured by more traditional techniques; ple button press. After training, these environment can be considered as an simply eyeballing the player as they button presses are synchronized to the experimental platform for trialling move, serve, volley and return, does not video streams. Content analysis mecha- wearable sensing. The wireless inertial reveal what might be going on under nisms are then used to define the pre- sensing platforms being developed by the surface in terms of the player's ever- cise start and end of tennis play around CLARITY engineers will be integrated changing performance profile, his/her these locations. We do this by tracking into the system with a view to providing breathing patterns, and the stresses and the ball in each camera, measuring biomechanical feedback to athletes.
54 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 The smart materials being developed by built into the wearable platform of one of polyamide lycra. The device consists of chemists in the CLARITY work pro- our industry partners and trialled with a super-absorbent material that provides gramme will be integrated into body tennis players to monitor specific muscle a passive pumping mechanism to con- sensor networks and will allow a variety movement and strain. Data collection trol fluid flow. The optical detection of of important physiological and biomet- and feedback can be piggy-backed on pH-induced colour changes in the dye is ric indicators to be detected. the existing system, with the added ben- achieved via a paired emitter-detector efit of a synchronized multi-view video LED system. The Tennis Ireland instal- To date, most data gathering and experi- to augment expert analysis of data from lation provides an ideal framework for mentation with this technology happens the wearable sensors. testing this innovative technology in a within a laboratory. The Tennis Ireland real application scenario with real users. installation provides infrastructure for A longer-term example is the 'sweat data gathering, analysis and feedback patch' being developed to measure the Please contact: that will allow this technology to be pH of sweat. A change in sweat pH may Noel E O'Connor tested in the field, during real exercise. signal an increased reliance on anaero- CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web For example, the work on conducting bic metabolism, but there is a lack of Technologies, Dublin City University, polymers will result in textiles for meas- reliable methods for assessing pH dur- Ireland uring stretching, bending and pressure ing exercise. CLARITY is working on a Tel: +353 1 700 5078 movements. This 'smart foam' will be new fluid-handling platform based on E-mail: [email protected]
Synchronizing Sensed Data in Team Sports by Dónall McCann, Mark Roantree, Niall Moyna and Michael Whelan
In this article we will be discussing the synchronization of sensor data in team sports. Synchronization allows us to use more expressive queries, to query across all participants in a given activity and to potentially discover new knowledge from the semantically enriched data. A collaborative research effort between groups working on data management and on health and human performance (both at Dublin City University) involved a series of experiments using wearable sensors during team games and the capture and querying of sensed data.
When dealing with sensor data for a that correspond to various states, eg increasing activity through Pre-Game team sport, it is often useful to be able to first half, second half etc. A 'profile' is a and Warm-Up, and remaining con- query across multiple sensors and thus combination of various states. Each stantly active throughout each half. This to be able to compare data from several state occurs once and in the order spec- profile can be easily split into states players for any given moment in time. ified. The goal is to semantically enrich because of the period of rest located In order to do this, the data from all sen- sensor data with an additional field that between the two periods of high activ- sors must be synchronized so that the identifies the state associated with ity. However, this profile is atypical start time of the game or activity can be every sensor reading. Our method is to among the thirty players involved in a identified in the data from each individ- convert the sensor stream to XML, given game. A more typical graph is ual sensor. which facilitates the subsequent seman- shown in Figure 2, corresponding to a tic enrichment process. In simple terms, defensive player. This graph is charac- This is necessary because sensor devices the synchronization process involves terized by short bursts of activity inter- may be activated asynchronously, since identifying one or more specific spersed with periods of rest, making it the device begins recording when it first moments in time, such as the beginning much more difficult to correctly iden- comes into contact with the player's or end of the game. Once the reading tify the state boundaries. This provides skin. While many sensor devices will corresponding to that time is identified, a significant challenge to creating a record a start time, this information is the data can be synchronized with the generic process for normalizing and not necessarily reliable as there is often data from all the other devices involved synchronizing sensor streams. no correlation between the system time in the experiment. and the time kept by the match officials, In order to perform our synchroniza- or indeed between the times on any two The sensors used in our experiments tion, we define a 'model' profile of the sensors. In addition, the devices may be record a heart rate value every 5 sec- ideal shape of the data graph. This com- unreliable and may malfunction, or the onds, and approximately 1200 values prises two periods of consistently high device may become detached during the are generated while the device is worn. activity on either side of a period of rel- course of the game. The six states corresponding to a Gaelic atively low activity. This model profile football match can be seen in Figure 1. is compared to the data from each sen- From an abstract perspective, sensors This example graph is for a midfield sor device until the closest match is can be regarded as generating values player who has a profile of gradually found, in terms of intensity and dura-
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 55 Special Theme: The Sensor Web
Figure 1: Midfielder data with distinct state boundaries. Figure 2: Defensive player data with blurred state boundaries.
tion of the activity. Identifying state to identify at least one, namely the boundaries for the resulting profile is beginning of the half-time period, reasonably simple, involving identify- when every player ceased intense ing the point at which the data changes activity and so their heart rates in intensity and applying some rules dropped significantly. Once this point from the domain experts to find the pre- is identified, the state durations Link: cise location on the curve at which the extracted from the model profile, http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~isg state changes. The durations of each which should correspond to the dura- state are then recorded based on these tions of the game periods, are applied Please contact: boundaries. and each sensor reading is marked up Dónall McCann, Mark Roantree, with state information. Niall Moyna, Michael Whelan For the data from the other sensor Dublin City University, Ireland devices, a single point is identified. In When all readings are assigned a state, E-mail: our experiments, we discovered that it is possible to query the data according [email protected], while in many cases it proved impossi- to state and across multiple sensors, [email protected], ble to find precise state boundaries for resulting in richer knowledge and the [email protected], all states, in every case it was possible potential for new knowledge discovery. [email protected]
Inertial Sensing: A Little Bit of CLARITY
by John Barton, Brian Caulfield & Niall Moyna
The increasing availability of cheap, robust and deployable sensor technology will usher in a new wave of ubiquitous information sources. A particular implementation of ambient sensors is in the area of wearable electronics in body area networks incorporating inertial sensing devices. As part of the CLARITY Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, the Tyndall Wireless Inertial Measurement Unit (WIMU) is being used in a number of projects focussing on two key themes: Health and Fitness, and Helping the Aged.
Wireless Inertial Measurement Unit a fixed frame of reference for position 25mm wireless node has been used to The Tyndall Wireless Inertial Measure- measurement (x, y, z), the Earth-Fixed develop a platform for low-volume ment Unit (WIMU) is a 6 Degrees of Frame, and utilizing a moving non- prototyping and research in the wire- Freedom (6DOF) inertial sensing inertial frame (u, v, w), the IMU-Fixed less sensor network domain. A number device, comprising triple-axis accelero- Frame, which has its axes parallel to of research projects currently under- meters, gyroscopes (angular velocity) those of the IMU sensors. way at the institute are using it as a and magnetometers. The triple-axis platform for sensing and actuating in acceleration and angular velocity sen- The 25mm WIMU was developed scalable, reconfigurable distributed sor output values can be combined in a based upon Tyndall's 25mm modular autonomous sensing networks, and it nonlinear matrix equation to give both wireless sensor node technology. It is is supported by Science Foundation position and orientation information. one of a large family of layers cur- Ireland (SFI) through Tyndall's The system can be visualized by using rently available for the Tyndall25. The National Access Program (NAP).
56 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 CLARITY - Centre for Sensor Web Technologies
The CLARITY Cenre for Sensor Web Technology focuses from the physical world in which we live and the digital on the intersection between two important research areas – world of modern communications and computing. CLAR- adaptive sensing and information discovery – to develop ITY commenced in June 2008 and represents a large-scale innovative technologies of critical importance to Ireland's academia-industry collaboration, accommodating more future and to improving quality of life in areas such as per- than 100 full-time researchers from University College sonal health, digital media and environmental manage- Dublin, Dublin City University and the Tyndall National ment. The theme of CLARITY's research programme – Institute, in partnership with more than ten industrial part- bringing information to life – refers to the harvesting and ners, including major multinationals and emerging Irish harnessing of large volumes of sensed information, both companies.
Inertial Sensing for Health for individuals across their lifespan. In field, to examine for example the 'cut- and Fitness addition, the technology has the poten- ting' movement of players when they The development of unobtrusive sens- tial to allow sports coaches and trainers make a rapid change in direction and ing elements embedded in the fabric of to monitor individual athletes in a train- the stresses and strains that these garments has opened countless possibil- ing or competitive environment. Cur- intense motions put on their joints and ities for the innocuous monitoring of rently, coaches/trainers are very limited muscles. athletes over extended periods of time in in what they can measure in real time in a variety of sport settings. Foster Miller a training or competitive environment. As part of a collaboration with Tennis (an independent company but part of the The information from the proposed sen- Ireland, tennis players will be fitted QinetiQ Inc. group) has recently devel- sor platform could be used to design with WIMUs to augment the already oped a T-shirt-based Ambulatory Physi- training programs that replicate the rich sensory environment available at ological Monitoring System, which movement patterns and/or physiologi- the tennis facilities at Dublin City Uni- monitors the vital signs of a person dur- cal responses for a given sport or for a versity. An all-weather tennis court has ing activity and transmits the data wire- specific position (eg fullback vs. centre been instrumented with nine Internet- lessly to a remote station. forward) in a team sport. enabled cameras with built-in micro- phones. Adding WIMUs to the tennis The combination of textile sensors with For biomechanical analysis, the ability players' bodies will enable us to deter- WIMUs will greatly assist in the ambu- to monitor athletes' movement in their mine the actions they are performing latory monitoring of healthy individuals natural environment is a huge leap for- and even the stroke they are playing. and of those with chronic diseases such ward compared to the current method of as obesity, diabetes, heart failure, and measuring them in a laboratory setting. Links: arthritis. The information will allow As part of CLARITY, critical markers http://www.clarity-centre.com/ patients and allied health professionals such as the speed and agility of top- http://www.tyndall.ie/mai/25mm.htm to monitor physiological response dur- level rugby players will be determined http://www.tyndall.ie/nap/ ing various forms of activity, and to in the lab. They will then be outfitted http://www.dcu.ie/shhp/index.shtml design individually tailored programs with WIMUs for assessment in the http://www.ucd.ie/physioperformsci/ http://www.foster-miller.com/ http://www.cdvp.dcu.ie/tennisireland/
Please contact: John Barton Tyndall National Institute, Cork, Ireland Tel: +353 21 4904088 E-mail: [email protected]
Brian Caulfield, University College Dublin, Ireland Figure 1: Tyndall Wireless Iner- Tel: +353 1 7166502 tial Measurement Unit showing E-mail: [email protected] yaw, pitch and roll. Niall Moyna, Dublin City University, Ireland Tel: +353 1 7008802 E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 57 R&D and Technology Transfer
Semantically Enhanced Representation of Legal Contracts for Web Applications
by Mihály Héder and Balázs Rátai
Carneades Contract Format (CCF) is a flexible and extensible representation framework for legal contracts. This new format makes it possible to represent equally the text, document structure and semantics of legally binding agreements. The concept was developed by Carneades Consulting and the Internet Technology Department of SZTAKI, which also played an important role in the selection of the optimal technical solution and developed the first demo implementation.
The majority of Web applications very easy to present to the court. Our the development of interoperable require the user's consent to various aim is to develop a format specifically Web solutions. types of contract before access to their to meet these criteria. To the best of our services can be granted. A typical exam- knowledge, this is a completely new In order to meet the above require- ple of such a contract is a 'terms of use' approach to developing a legal format. ments, a relatively simple XML schema document. Online commercial transac- was defined that describes the entire tions also result in contractual relation- In order to help to overcome the above- contract as a hierarchy of conditions ships (eg sales contracts in the case of mentioned shortcomings of present and sub-conditions, references and Web shops).
The current practice of online contract management has many shortcomings, the most significant of which are the fol- lowing: (i) agreements appear in the form of long and complex text docu- ments that cannot be processed with machines; (ii) overwhelmingly general contractual terms and conditions are used; and (iii) the transaction-specific contractual information is stored sepa- rately in databases.
One of the reasons for this situation is the lack of a generic standard for the representation of legally binding agree- ments that is simple and flexible enough to store the text of the agreement, the document structure and the related semantic data in the same document. Figure 1: The interplay of different namespaces in a contract. The CCF intends to be just such a for- mat. Instead of producing a rich seman- tic expression set or a data dictionary for a specific field, we have been focusing practice, we have defined the following annexes. The result is a CCF document on the structure of the document. Hav- design goals: that is capable of structuring the text of ing examined the everyday practice of • the format must be as simple as pos- the contract into a simple, hierarchical legal procedures and the requirements of sible form. It allows further annotation of the lawyers, we found that there is a strong • the format should capture only the text with existing, sophisticated, appli- need for electronic legal documents structure of a contract document, cation-specific formats such as Open which are usable as documentary evi- allowing the user to choose the Digital Rights Language (ODRL) or dence in legal procedures. For this to be semantic vocabulary (ie ODRL Data eXtensible Access Control Markup possible, all the relevant information dictionary elements or XACML Language (XACML). should be stored in the same place (ie expressions) of the annotation, thus not distributed in different databases, allowing a wide range of existing The next step is to embed the whole transaction logs and legal texts about the legal semantic markup formats to be document into another XML file, which general conditions of use), should be in used contains an Extensible Stylesheet Lan- a format readable by lay users (so that • the documents in this format must be guage Transformation (XSLT) docu- experts are not needed to interpret it), readable with a common Web browser ment. The result is a document that, and the document should be provably • it should be possible to embed the when opened by a Web browser, is a authentic (ie it should be signed). Ide- documents using the format into compound structure of ally, documentary evidence should be existing Web pages in order to allow XHTML+CSS+Javascript elements.
58 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 This kind of bundling of data and repre- (iii) implement smart searching in doc- sentation is a novel solution for legal uments based on semantics; and (iv) contracts. The flexible structure of the provide an overview of many contracts document also allows an enveloped or generate statistics based on large XML Digital Signature to be added. number of annotated documents.
A document created this way unifies the We are currently testing and evaluating advantages of accessible Web docu- our solution in the framework of a ments and the expression power of the research project called AAI-Based application-specific legal formats, Authorization Broker, an e-commerce which are capable of representing solution based on strong identity and pol- legally relevant and easily processed icy management. This is a sub-project of semantic information about the text. the Mobile Innovation Centre, a research and development program sponsored by As mentioned above, it is possible to the Hungarian government, in the area of embed, anywhere in the document, Figure 2: An ODRL-annotated usage agree- mobile telecommunication. valid XML from any namespace (eg ment document about some pictures bought in ODRL or XACML) in so-called exten- a Web shop. When opened in a browser, mov- Links: sion elements. ing the cursor over the annotated (light red) AAI project: text causes a pop-up containing the details. http://www.sztaki.hu/search/projects/ By default, the semantic annotations in project_information/?uid=00210 the document become simple visual CCF schema: annotations in the browser. If there are derive the current, consolidated view of http://www.carneades.hu/xml/ parts of the XSLT prepared to handle the original and the modifying contract. carneadescontract the particular namespace used in an On a technical level, however, the mod- extension element, the visual represen- ification schema is just like an external Please contact: tation becomes even more informative. schema to the contract, such as Mihály Héder XACML, ODRL or others. SZTAKI, Hungary A special kind of annotation is the con- Tel: +36 1 279 6027 tract modification, which we have There are many possible applications of E-mail: [email protected] placed in a different namespace. Using the format. Just to mention a few, it is the elements of this namespace, we can possible to (i) derive access control Balázs Rátai produce contracts which modify other decisions directly from XACML-anno- Carneades Consulting, Hungary contracts. Using the original contract tated usage agreements; (ii) provide a Tel: +36 1 394 2114 and the modifications we can always summary of an annotated document; E-mail: [email protected]
Contiki: Bringing IP to Sensor Networks by Adam Dunkels
The open-source Contiki operating system brings IP, the Internet Protocol, to sensor networks through the uIP (micro Internet Protocol), uIPv6 protocol stacks and the SICSlowpan IPv6-over-802.15.4 adaptation layer.
Contiki is an open-source, memory- The Contiki operating system is imple- Several of Contiki's mechanisms have efficient operating system for sensor mented in C and consists of an event- been released as separate open-source network nodes that was the first operat- driven kernel, on top of which applica- packages and have seen significant ing system to provide IP connectivity tion programs can be dynamically industrial uptake. The uIP embedded IP for sensor networks. Contiki incorpo- loaded and unloaded at run time. Con- stack, originally released in 2001, is rates many recent research results in tiki processes use lightweight pro- today used by hundreds of companies in wireless sensor networks, such as tothreads that provide a linear, thread- systems such as freighter ships, satel- power profiling, cross-layer simulation, like programming style on top of the lites and oil drilling equipment. Con- and low-power radio networking. The event-driven kernel. In addition to pro- tiki's protothread programming library, Contiki project was started in 2002 and tothreads, Contiki also supports per- first released in 2005, has been used in has subsequently grown to include process optional preemptive multi- digital TV decoders and wireless vibra- research institutions and major industry threading and interprocess communica- tion sensors. players. At SICS, we use Contiki for tion using message passing. Contiki several sensor network research proj- runs comfortably in a few kilobytes of For sensor network communication, ects. RAM. Contiki provides a low-power radio net-
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 59 R&D and Technology Transfer
working stack called Rime. The Rime the network scale without any additional In October 2008, major industry players stack implements sensor network proto- hardware. Contiki's power profiling Cisco and Atmel joined Contiki. Cisco, cols ranging from reliable data collec- mechanism is used both as a research Atmel and SICS jointly announced tion and best-effort network flooding to tool for experimental evaluation of sen- uIPv6, the world's smallest fully compli- multi-hop bulk data transfer and data sor network protocols, and as a way to ant IPv6 stack. uIPv6 builds on the uIP dissemination. IP packets are tunnelled estimate the lifetime of a network of stack and is integrated in Contiki. over multi-hop routing via the Rime sensors. stack. The Contiki team currently consists of Contiki provides a flash-based file sys- sixteen developers from SICS, SAP AG, Interaction with a network of Contiki tem, called Coffee, for storing data Cisco, Atmel, NewAE and TU Munich. sensors can be achieved with a Web inside the sensor network. The file sys- browser, a text-based shell interface, or tem allows multiple files to coexist on Adam Dunkels from SICS, Sweden, is dedicated software that stores and dis- the same physical on-board flash mem- the winner of the 2008 Cor Baayen plays collected sensor data. The text- ory and has a performance that is close Award for a promising young researcher based shell interface is inspired by the to the raw data throughput of the flash in computer science and applied mathe- Unix command shell but provides spe- chip. matics. cial commands for sensor network inter- http://www.ercim.org/activity/cor-baayen action and sensing. To ease software development and debugging, Contiki provides three simu- To provide a long sensor network life- lation environments: the MSPsim emu- Link: time, it is crucial to control and reduce lator, the Cooja cross-layer network http://www.sics.se/contiki/ the power consumption of each sensor simulator, and the Netsim process-level node. Contiki provides a software-based simulator. The development process for Please contact: power profiling mechanism that keeps software for Contiki typically goes Adam Dunkels track of the energy expenditure of each through all three simulation stages SICS, Sweden sensor node. Being software-based, the before the software runs on the target Tel: +46 70 773 1614 mechanism allows power profiling at hardware. E-mail: [email protected]
Preferential Text Classification: Learning Algorithms and Evaluation Measures
by Fabio Aiolli, Riccardo Cardin, Fabrizio Sebastiani and Alessandro Sperduti
Researchers from ISTI-CNR, Pisa and from the Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics at the University of Padova, are explicitly attacking the document classification problem of distinguishing primary from secondary classes by using 'preferential learning' technology.
In many contexts in which textual doc- ondary class. For instance, when a In a concerted attempt to address this uments are labelled with thematic patent application is submitted to the distinction, we define preferential text classes, a distinction is made between European Patent Office (EPO), a pri- classification, a task which we define as the primary and secondary classes to mary class from the International Patent the attribution to a textual document d of which a given document belongs. The Classification (IPC) scheme is attached a partial ordering among the set of primary classes of a document represent to the application, and that class deter- classes C. This partial ordering specifies the topic(s) that are central to the docu- mines the expert examiner who will be whether or not a given class 'applies ment, or that the document is mainly in charge of evaluating the application. more than' (or 'is preferred to') another about. The secondary classes instead Secondary classes are attached only for class in the document. In particular, we represent topics that are somehow the purpose of identifying related prior focus on a special case of preferential touched upon, albeit peripherally, and art, since the appointed examiner will TC; namely, the case in which each doc- do not represent the main thrust of the need to determine the novelty of the ument is associated to a 'three-layered' document. proposed invention against existing partial order. This consists of a top layer patents classified under either the pri- of one or more primary classes, each of This distinction has been neglected in mary or any of the secondary classes. which is preferred to those in a middle text classification (TC) research. We Thus, for the purposes of the EPO, fail- layer of secondary classes, which are in contend that it is important and ing to recognize the true primary class turn each preferred to those in a bottom deserves to be explicitly tackled since, of a document is a more serious mistake layer of 'non-classes' (ie classes that do in most contexts in which the distinc- than failing to recognize a true second- not apply at all to the document). tion is made, the degree of importance ary class. Similar considerations apply of a misclassification can depend on to other scenarios in which the distinc- The original contribution of our work is whether it involves a primary or a sec- tion is made. twofold. First, we propose an evalua-
60 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 tion measure for preferential TC, in draw a fine distinction between primary Link: which different kinds of misclassifica- and secondary classes in both the testing http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/ tions involving either primary or second- and learning phases, thus making use of F.Sebastiani/Publications/IRJ08b.pdf ary classes have a different impact on the different importance of primary and effectiveness. Second, we attack prefer- secondary classes to which a training Please contact: ential TC by using a learning model, document belongs. Experiments run on Fabrizio Sebastiani dubbed the Generalized Preference WIPO-alpha, a well-known benchmark ISTI-CNR, Italy Learning Model, that was explicitly dataset consisting of manually classified Tel: +39 050 3152 892 devised for learning from training data patents, show that the Generalized Pref- E-mail: [email protected] expressed in preferential form, ie in the erence Learning Model outperforms form "class c' is preferred to class c'' for standard (ie non-preferential) state-of- document d". This model allows us to the-art learning approaches.
DataCell: Exploiting the Power of Relational Databases for Efficient Stream Processing by Erietta Liarou and Martin Kersten
Designed for complex event processing, DataCell is a research prototype database system in the area of sensor stream systems. Under development at CWI, it belongs to the MonetDB database system family. CWI researchers innovatively built a stream engine directly on top of a database kernel, thus exploiting and merging technologies from the stream world and the rich area of database literature. The results are very promising.
Rather than simply transmitting the raw amounts of incoming data, meeting The DataCell is positioned as a data measured data, current state-of-the-art strict real-time deadlines even in periods refinery cell that acts as an easily pro- sensors are capable of a limited amount when the frequency of incoming data grammable data hub in a multi-network of processing. This feature has many explodes. environment. Its task is to collect, filter positive effects, such as keeping the net- and aggregate information from differ- work usage and costs as low as possible. Our work focuses on this part of the sen- ent sources to enable complex decision However, this is not enough to replace sor research. We are designing and making, such as control of the lighting the role of well-equipped nodes that developing a system called the Data- based on audio/video presentations. The gather streaming sensor data from mul- Cell, which is capable of efficiently col- challenge in an ambient environment is tiple sources and which account for the lecting and processing high volumes of to hide the computer from the casual biggest share of the processing cost. stream data. We are currently studying user, even while it is actively steering These nodes should be able to perform the DataCell over the stream application the environment. An example query in complex query processing on large scenario of an ambient home setting. the ambient scenario could be, “tune the
Figure 1: The DataCell in the ambient scenario.
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 61 R&D and Technology Transfer
television to my favourite show when I database literature already exists. Fur- ponents to interact with devices, RSS sit on the couch”; ie depending on the thermore, it allows for more flexible and feeds and SOAP Web services. The weight measured by a sensor in the seat, efficient query processing by allowing communication protocols range from and the time of day, different TV shows batch processing of stream tuples, as simple messages to complex XML doc- will appear on the screen. well as non-consecutive processing by uments transported using either UDP or selectively picking the tuples to process. TCP/IP. The adapters for the DataCell In stream applications, we need mecha- consist of receptors and emitters. A nisms to support long-standing queries The idea is that when stream tuples receptor is a separate thread that contin- over data that is continuously updated arrive in the system, they are immedi- uously picks up incoming events from a from the environment. This requirement ately stored in (appended to) a new kind communication channel and forwards is significantly different from what hap- of table called a basket. By collecting them to the DataCell kernel for process- pens in a traditional database system, tuples into baskets, we can evaluate the ing. Likewise, an emitter is a separate where data are stored in static tables and continuous queries (which are already thread that picks up events prepared by users fire one-time queries to be evalu- submitted to the system and are waiting the DataCell kernel and delivers them to ated over the existing data. Given this for future incoming data) over related interested clients, ie those that have sub- critical difference, the pioneering archi- baskets as if they were normal one-time scribed to a query result. tects of the data stream management queries. This allows us to reuse any kind system naturally considered existing of algorithm and optimization designed We designed and developed the Data- database architectures inadequate to for a modern database system. Each Cell at CWI in Amsterdam, funded by achieve the desired performance: query has at least one input and one out- the BRICKS project. It is implemented instead they designed new architectures put basket. It continuously reads data on top of the MonetDB, an open-source from scratch. from the input baskets, processes this column-oriented database system. Cur- data and creates a result which it then rently it is a research prototype and the However, working from scratch makes places in its output baskets. Once a tuple goal is to be able to disseminate the Dat- it difficult to exploit the existing knowl- has been seen by all relevant queries, it aCell soon as part of MonetDB. edge and techniques of relational data- is dropped from its basket. bases. This disadvantage became more pronounced as the stream applications This description of the process is some- Link: demanded more functionality. In Data- what simplified, since this process allows http://monetdb.cwi.nl/ Cell therefore, we started at the other the exploration of quite flexible strate- end of the spectrum, building an effi- gies. For example, the same tuple may be Please contact: cient data stream management system thrown into multiple baskets where mul- Erietta Liarou on top of an extensible database kernel. tiple queries are waiting, query plans may CWI, The Netherlands With careful design, this allows us to be split into parts, and baskets may be Tel: +31 20 59 24 127 reuse the sophisticated algorithms and shared between similar operators (or E-mail: [email protected] techniques of traditional databases. We groups of operators) of different queries, can provide support for any kind of allowing results to be reused. Martin Kersten complex functionality without having to CWI, The Netherlands reinvent solutions and algorithms for The periphery of a sensor stream engine Tel: +31 20 59 24 066 problems and cases for which a rich is formed by adapters, eg software com- E-mail: [email protected]
On looking FORWARD
by Sotiris Ioannidis, Evangelos Markatos and Christopher Kruegel
Computer systems, networks and Internet users are under constant threat from cyber attacks. FORWARD is an initiative by the European Commission to promote collaboration and partnership between academia and industry in their common goal of protecting Information and Communication Technology infrastructures.
The past few years have been marked by the necessary technology required to email messages. To reduce the effects of an ever-increasing number of cyber compromise remote computers. In turn, these cyber attacks, security researchers attacks. Motivated by fun, fame and this paved the way for professional are engaged in an arms race against the peer recognition, early attackers, more criminals motivated by profit to start ever-increasing sophistication of cyber widely known as 'hackers', pioneered using compromised computers for a attackers, by creating systems that the methods used to penetrate comput- wide variety of illegal activities, such as detect, and whenever possible mitigate, ers, compromise accounts and invade trading of credit card numbers, online the effects of these attacks. our personal lives. Even though these renting of compromised computers, early hackers usually meant no harm, online ordering and delivering of denial- To stay ahead in this arms race, FOR- their methods and techniques perfected of-service attacks, and sending spam WARD brings together European
62 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 researchers in network and information • Smart Environments: the increasing FORWARD will identify those research systems security to identify (i) the most miniaturization of computing sys- directions that will help lead to a safer probable security threats in the near tems is driving the penetration of and more secure cyberspace for all Euro- future, and (ii) those research areas that intelligent appliances in every human pean citizens. must be pursued to address and mitigate activity. As computing and communi- these emerging threats. By mobilizing a cating devices become increasingly For more information about the activities critical mass of researchers in Europe widespread, so does the potential of of FORWARD or if you are interested in and by complementing them with a attackers to disrupt our daily lives in participating, please contact Christopher select team of researchers from Asia a wide variety of ways. Kruegel or visit our Web site. and America, FORWARD is working • Critical Systems: Our daily functions, towards establishing a research agenda if not our lives, depend on a wide for cyber security in Europe and identi- variety of traditional and emerging Link: fying possible new areas and threats infrastructures, such as the power http://www.ict-forward.eu that must be addressed. FORWARD grid and communications networks. researchers have focused their activities As it becomes more common to con- Please contact: on three critical domains: nect critical infrastructures to the Christopher Kruegel • Malware and Fraud: malware is per- Internet using off-the-shelf technolo- Vienna University of Technology, haps the one arena in which attackers gies, the vulnerability of these utili- Austria have clearly demonstrated an ties increases to breaches and attacks E-mail: [email protected] increased sophistication. In its race to from the outside world. evade antivirus signatures and systems Sotiris Ioannidis and stay below the detection 'radar', By mobilizing cyber security researchers FORTH-ICS, Greece malware has evolved to be agile, in Europe and by consolidating their Tel: +30 2810391945 stealthy and highly sophisticated. efforts along those major research axes, E-mail: [email protected]
Enhancing Authentication in eBanking with NFC-Enabled Mobile Phones by Diego A. Ortiz-Yepes
In the past few months, a mobile phone-based authentication mechanism for eBanking has been devel- oped at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory. At the core of this mechanism, we have used NFC and CAP. The latter, Chip Authentication Program (CAP), is a specification developed by MasterCard that provides mechanisms for customer authentication based on smart cards compliant with EMV (Europay - Master- Card - Visa). The former, Near-Field Communication (NFC), is an emerging technology related to RFID that is already being incorporated into commercially available mobile phones, allowing them to commu- nicate over very short distances (in the order of a few centimetres) with other NFC-enabled devices. This ability, when employed in tandem with CAP — as we have done in our authentication mechanism — greatly enhances the overall usability of the authentication system.
Our NFC-based authentication mecha- its the Internet site of her bank, which return. Using this cryptogram – a bit- nism relies on dual-interface smart cards, requests her customer ID, eg her string cryptographically bound to the that is, cards with both contact and con- account or contract number. Once such challenge and the internal card state – tactless interfaces. These cards might an ID has been received by the bank, it the phone generates a numeric code, ie also be used for other financially related replies with a challenge, which consists the response, which is displayed to the purposes, eg as debit or credit cards. In of an unpredictable number of between customer. Subsequently, she sends the fact, this situation is desirable in order to 6 and 8 digits. Having received this response to the bank server by typing it avoid burdening the customer with an challenge, the customer starts the phone into the PC. When the response is additional card for eBanking purposes. application by touching her bank card received by the bank, the latter checks to the back of the phone (see Figure 1). whether it corresponds to the previously The customer authentication mecha- She then selects the log-in mode and issued challenge. If this is the case, the nism works by having the customer types in the server-issued challenge. bank presents the customer with her produce an appropriate response to an Prior to generating the corresponding account(s) summary, as well as some unpredictable challenge generated by response, the phone requests that the appropriate transaction options. the bank. In order to do so, she must customer provide her PIN in order to use her card and its PIN, which is used authenticate herself to the card. Once The mechanism outlined above replaces to authenticate the customer to the card. the customer has been authenticated by the Personal Card Reader (PCR) More precisely, when the customer the card, the phone sends the challenge required by some authentication wishes to engage in eBanking, she vis- to the card obtaining a cryptogram in schemes currently in use, yielding a
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 63 R&D and Technology Transfer
Select OK
OK
card CAP token detected generated
Figure 1: Using NFC-enabled phones for eBanking authentication.
more convenient authentication mecha- of security as a consequence of using the nism. This follows from the fact that phone and a secondary channel, whose the user needs only her phone and her compromise is much less likely than the card in order to authenticate herself to PC alone. the bank. On the one hand, phones are truly ubiquitous devices that can hardly In conclusion, we have developed an be considered a burden; on the other, eBanking authentication mechanism most people carry their bank cards with whose security properties are compara- them in their wallets or purses, making ble to PCR-based CAP. NFC-enabled the requirements of our authentication mobile phones are a key component of mechanism quite low. this mechanism, providing an enhanced level of usability, not only by replacing Please contact: Note that both the challenge and the the PCR altogether, but also being able Michael Baentsch, Michael Osborne, response could be sent directly from the to offer a more pleasant user experience. Diego A. Ortiz-Yepes bank server to the phone and back via Additionally, we have implemented this IBM Zurich Research Lab, Switzerland SMS, or some other suitable mecha- mechanism in such a way that it inte- E-mail: nism using the mobile phone network. grates seamlessly with an existing CAP [email protected], This would not only simplify the mech- infrastructure, allowing it to be used in a [email protected], anism, but would also increase the level real-life pilot by the end of 2008. [email protected]
64 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Sino-French IT Lab in Beijing Opens to European Institutions by Stéphane Grumbach
After twelve years, the Sino-French IT Lab in Beijing has opened its doors to European partners. Created in 1997 by INRIA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to promote cooperation between France and China in IT, LIAMA ('Laboratoire d'Informatique, d'Automatique et de Mathématiques Appliquées') has conducted more than 100 research projects associating laboratories in the two countries.
Last October, the organization of been a major partner in LIAMA's proj- regions vanish. The Institute of LIAMA was revisited in order to ects, and is hosting the LIAMA office Automation was the first in the Chinese strengthen its impact on cooperation for the consortium. Academy of Sciences to hire a perma- between Europe and China. A consor- nent foreign researcher, and to award tium was created to encourage interac- In June 2008, LIAMA also became a the habilitation to a foreigner, which tion between institutions sharing the National Centre for International demonstrates its strong trust and same vision in ICT, a field which is a Research, a newly created structure involvement in this partnership. top research priority for both Europe supported by the Ministry of Science and China. and Technology, to foster international Since LIAMA started as a spin-off from cooperation. Since its creation. LIAMA the National Laboratory for Pattern On the Chinese side, Tsinghua Univer- has enjoyed sustained support from the Recognition of the Institute of Automa- sity together with the three institutes of China's authorities and research institu- tion, image analysis has been one of the the Chinese Academy of Sciences spe- tions. important directions of research. Over cializing in IT in Beijing, the Institute of the years, our spectrum of activity has Automation, the Institute of Software, The strength of LIAMA is a result of broadened. Currently, LIAMA's and the Institute of Computing Technol- the presence of a large group of research is structured around the fol- ogy, joined the consortium. All these researchers and students from France lowing disciplines: institutions host research teams with staying for long periods. Currently, • computational medicine, with a spe- European partners working on joint seven French researchers from INRIA cial focus on brain imaging research projects. LIAMA also opened and CNRS are working in LIAMA proj- • environmental modelling, from the its consortium to companies active in ects for terms of several years. Among modelling of plant growth to the R&D, to develop links with the industry these, four are working in the School study of the turbulence of sand winds of both regions. France Telecom was the for Information Science and Technol- • secure software, formal methods for first company to join the consortium, ogy of Tsinghua University. These sus- embedded software, network and grid and discussions are taking place with tained relations with our Chinese part- programming, as well as open-source corporations and SMEs with which ners have allowed the development of software promotion LIAMA has cooperative projects. an atmosphere of confidence and trust, • graphics, computer-aided design and in which the geographic distance and interactive technology LIAMA is also a hub for European stu- the cultural differences between the two • pattern recognition and image under- dents to study in China or undertake standing and processing. internships in the framework of their European curriculum. Several dozen LIAMA has contributed to establishing foreign students work every year in a privileged partnership between France LIAMA in close partnership with their and China for research in ICT. The Chinese counterparts, giving them a LIAMA consortium will deepen our unique opportunity to understand better cooperation with the best partners in the culture and start learning the lan- Europe and China. guage. A reasonable proportion of the European students who work in European students can check for intern- LIAMA choose to stay or return later to ship offers online, or directly contact the China to work. researchers in their field of interest to find out more about available positions. Of course, the historical partners of Institutions or labs can contact the direc- LIAMA play a fundamental role in the tors of LIAMA for further information. consortium, the first steering committee of which met last October. LIAMA was Link: http://liama.ia.ac.cn/ created by Professor Ma Songde, who studied and worked in France in the Tomato profile from calibrated GreenLab Please contact: 1980s and became director of the Insti- model. GreenLab is a stochastic, functional Stéphane Grumbach tute of Automation after he returned to and interactive model for plant growth, one of INRIA, France, Director of LIAMA China. The Institute of Automation has LIAMA's research topics. E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 65 R&D and Technology Transfer
DocSearch: UHF RFID Technology for Document Localization
by Marina Buzzi, Marco Conti and Daniele Vannozzi
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) and sensor technologies are now enabling the Internet of Things. Ultra High Frequence (UHF) RFID readers and passive tags can be valuable tools for emerging pervasive services since they allow tags to be read at distances ranging from one-half to few meters, depending on antenna power, size and polarization. However, UHF has limits due to RF reflection, shadowing and absorption. Our experimental study investigates the feasibility of UHF RFID for reliable and efficient retrieval of archived documents.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) UHF reading: reflection, shadowing and Looking for a specific tag is less critical. uses radio waves to permit the automatic absorption: The success percentage is almost 100% identification of objects, people and ani- • metal reflects RF (however an appro- when searching a 50-document folder mals. It consists of two components, priate insulation between tag and (see Table 2). readers and tags; the tags store informa- object can improve reading) tion that can be retrieved by readers. • shadowing is present when several Since single document retrieval is the Tags may be passive, active (battery- tags are placed very close to one main operation in our scenario, the feasi- powered) or semi-active. Passive tags another and their antennas mask each bility study indicates that UHF RFID is a are especially convenient since they are other, and this decreases the read rate suitable technology for efficient docu- small, cheap and potentially can last • liquids (such as water) absorb RF and ment localization; thus we have devel- infinitely. hinder tag reading. oped a procedure for the storage and retrieval of documents using RFID tech- The DocSearch project is underway in The DocSearch project began in 2008 nology. Currently a preliminary proto- Pisa, Italy, at the Istituto di Informatica with a feasibility study aimed at measur- type (developed in C# language) is avail- e Telematica of the Italian National ing the reliability of UHF tag reading able for testing on a WorkAbout Pro 2 Research Council. It aims to develop a applied to document search. In the feasi- palm (Psion Teklogix) integrating an tool for improving the efficiency of the bility study we tested both multiple RFID reader (CAEN/Intel technology), ccTLD ".it" Registry which assigns and reads and single search. Multiple simul- with Win Mobile 6 OS. Documents were manages domain names under the coun- taneous reads (usually called inventory tagged with ALN 9540 "Squiggle" try code Top Level Domain "it". Specif- mode/command) make it possible to (Alien Technology). The development ically, the goal of the project is to aid discover multiple tags in the antenna environment is .NET, Visual Studio 2005 Registry staff to answer customer ques- field at the same time, by using an anti- and SQL server 2005. tions regarding paper documents sub- collision search algorithm. In order to mitted as part of a registration request. verify the amplitude of the shadowing The operator needs an efficient method problem, we tested the worst case when to retrieve the original document(s) each document consists of a single paper referred to by the customer from among sheet and all sheets are piled in a folder. Link: thousands of documents. The Doc- We carried out experiments in several IT NIC http://www.nic.it/ Search project is thus developing a tool configurations with different spatial that exploits RFID technology. Each positioning of tags. The best result was Please contact: document is archived with an RFID tag achieved by applying a thin dielectric Marina Buzzi, Marco Conti, Daniele and the document data and tag id are substrate, which separates the tag from Vannozzi, IIT-CNR, Italy stored in a database. Using RFID tech- the page (increasing distance between E-mail: [email protected], nology the operator can easily find the tags). In this configuration the mean [email protected], correct document even if the document read percentage was 85% (see Table 1). [email protected] was stored in the wrong place.
When applying RFID technology, the reliability of the reading is crucial. Raw % success Tag identified Reads Time in sec RFID data are large-volume streams characterized by duplicate, missed and Inventory 85 34/40 710 60 ghost reads. Therefore, data filtering and aggregation are necessary in order to Table 1: Reading results in inventory mode. extract reliable data. % success Tag identified Num tests Time in sec UHF tag reading can be challenging depending on object composition, pack- Single Search 100 1/50 50 5-10 aging, and tag size and placement. It is facilitated by motion. Three issues affect Table 2: Reading results for the tag retrieval operation.
66 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Integrated Site Security for Grids by Kate Bradshaw
Between 90 and 98% of the emails received each day by most organizations are spam. While some are nothing but a harmless nuisance, others are malicious and capable of causing substantial damage. This is just one of the ways in which Grid and other computing sites can be attacked. To increase awareness and provide security guidance, CERN has led a European Commission co-funded project entitled Integrated Site Security for Grids (ISSeG), which was completed at the end of March 2008. The final results of this 26-month project are available from the project Web site.
The ISSeG Web site provides a risk Creating Practical Expertise munities use this integrated approach to assessment tool, security recommenda- The project began in February 2006 and improve their site security measures. In tions and training material to help sites has been co-funded by the EU FP6 Pro- addition, there has been close collabo- improve their computer security. While gramme. The consortium comprised the ration with the security groups of the the project's focus has been on the secu- European Organization for Particle Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) rity of Grid sites, the material is applica- Physics (CERN) in Switzerland, project – the Operational Security ble to a wide range of computer centres, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) in Coordination Team (OSCT) and the particularly those in academic or techni- Germany, and the Science and Technol- Joint Security Policy Group (JSPG) – cal environments. ogy Facilities Council (STFC) formerly resulting in their continuous involve- known as the Council for the Central ment and input to help shape ISSeG Integrated Site Security Laboratory of the Research Councils development. The project's vision has been that Grid (CCLRC) in the UK. security, which focuses on middleware, The ISSeG Web Site authentication, authorisation and opera- ISSeG created and captured raw expert- Visitors to the Web site can download tion across multiple administrative ise through full-scale ISS deployment at and complete a risk assessment ques- domains, needs to be complemented by CERN and FZK including, for example, tionnaire. They will then, via a priori- tized list of threats specific to their site, receive tailored site security recommen- dations. A generic set of the top threats and top recommendations for Grid sites can also be viewed directly.
Training materials for general users, system administrators, software devel- The ISSeG project opers and managers are also available complements Grid from the site, including introductory security by providing material, training presentations, secu- recommendations rity checklists and downloadable print- and training for each able materials. Grid site. Acknowledging the usefulness of the content, the OSCT will take over the maintenance of the ISSeG Web site to ensure its continued availability beyond the lifetime of the ISSeG project. This agreement was formalized in a Memo- randum of Understanding between comprehensive site security at all partic- flexible and improved security for cen- ISSeG and phase three of the EGEE ipating Grid sites. To this end, the trally managed computers, strengthened (Enabling Grids for E-science) project ISSeG project has created and dissemi- policies for controls networks and (EGEE-III), which began in May 2008. nated practical expertise on the deploy- increased firewall protections. Experi- ment of Integrated Site Security (ISS). ence gained from the two site deploy- This article is based on one published in ments, as well as site security assess- the CERN Computer Newsletter. ISS is a practical approach to site security ments carried out by a subcontracted that integrates technical, administrative company, were used to develop training Link: and educational security solutions, and materials and recommendations as to http://www.isseg.eu develops them in a consistent and coordi- how security risks can be mitigated. nated way. This integration ensures that Please contact: policies, rules, awareness and training all Coordinated by STFC, results were dis- David Jackson evolve in step with technological or seminated via presentations and the STFC, UK administrative developments. ISSeG Web site to help scientific com- E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 67 Events
Book Review: FMICS 2009 - "From computers 14th International ERCIM to ubiquitous computing, Workshop on Formal by 2020" Methods for Industrial ERCIM was requested by the Royal Society to review the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: 366, Critical Systems 1881 pp 3663-3838: "From computers to ubiquitous com- puting, by 2020"; 28 October 2008; edited by Marta Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2-3 November 2009 Kwiatkowska, Tom Rodden and Vladimiro Sassone. The aim of the ERCIM FMICS workshop series is to provide The publication collects papers from a discussion meeting a forum for researchers who are interested in the develop- held at the Royal Society in March 2008. The 18 individual ment and application of formal methods in industry. In par- papers each tackle an aspect of Ubiquitous Computing (Ubi- ticular, these workshops bring together scientists and engi- Comp) ranging from RFID identifiers and global sensing, neers that are active in the area of formal methods and inter- software and architecture to support UbiComp and embedded ested in exchanging their experiences in the industrial usage systems through to properties of systems including self-* of these methods. These workshops also strive to promote properties, security and trust with additional short papers on research and development for the improvement of formal healthcare, ethics, engineering, modelling and living with methods and tools for industrial applications. UbiComp. Each paper is of high quality but no real linking themes emerged; the publication exhibits very good work by Topics include, but are not restricted to: researchers in a disconnected way. The introduction is more • Design, specification, code generation and testing based of a catalogue of what follows although in the early and late on formal methods. paragraphs the topic is introduced with application examples • Methods, techniques and tools to support automated and some challenges are presented, respectively. The short analysis, certification, debugging, learning, optimization papers on engineering (Crowcroft), modelling (Milner) and and transformation of complex, distributed, real-time sys- living in a ubiquitous world (Rodden) provide real broader tems and embedded systems. context and insight but are too short to allow the ideas to be • Verification and validation methods that address short- developed. comings of existing methods with respect to their industri- al applicability (eg, scalability and usability issues). The publication provides much useful material for • Tools for the development of formal design descriptions. researchers in individual aspects of UbiComp and for certain • Case studies and experience reports on industrial applica- aspects may well provide the base reference. For some tions of formal methods, focusing on lessons learned or aspects the work appears disconnected from parallel work identification of new research directions. where there are research results and a body of well-respected • Impact of the adoption of formal methods on the develop- publications. Anyone wishing to obtain a high-level view of ment process and associated costs. the significance of UbiComp, its importance in the future • Application of formal methods in standardization and knowledge society, the challenges in its achievement with industrial forums. their relative importance and difficulty or the potential util- ity of the technology in various application areas is likely to Publication of the workshop proceedings in the Springer be disappointed. series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) is by Keith Jeffery planned.
FMICS 2009 is part of the first Formal Methods Week More information: (FMweek), which will bring together a selection of events in http://publishing.royalsociety.org/index.cfm?page=1851 the area, including FM 2009 (16th symposium on Formal Methods), TESTCOM/FATES (conference on Testing of Communicating Systems and workshop on Formal Philosophical Transactions A is particularly interested in Approaches to Testing of Software), PDMC (Parallel and receiving unsolicited theme proposal For further informa- Distributed Methods of verifiCation),FACS (Formal Aspects tion, please visit of Component Software), CPA (Communicating Process http://publishing.royalsociety.org/philtransa/guest-editor/ Architectures), FAST (Formal Aspects in Security and Trust), FMCO (Formal Methods for Components and Objects) and the REFINE Workshop.
More information: http://2009.ecoop.org/ http://www.win.tue.nl/fmweek http://www.inrialpes.fr/vasy/fmics/
68 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 Advertisement
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More information: More information: http://www.ecdl2009.eu/ http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/etaps09/
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 69 Events
2nd Edition of the ERCIM-ETSI Infinity Initiative Sponsored by ERCIM Bio ICT - The Heart in the Computer 23rd European
Sophia Antipolis, France, 2-3 April 2009 Conference on
Systems Biology, the new science of complexity of living systems, will herald a fun- Object-Oriented damental change in paradigm with the appearance of life models and simulation sys- tems making possible computer assisted experiments for biological, medical and Programming pharmaceutical research. As such, the modelling and simulation of life is one of the most promising research areas with great hopes for humanity. Genova, Italy, 6-10 July 2009
Building on the success of last year's seminar on Ambient Computing, ERCIM and The European Conference on Object- ETSI will welcome recognized experts who will share their vision of modelling and Oriented Programming will be held in simulation of life while demonstrating how research and standards, supported by the July of 2009 at Palazzo Ducale in Gen- European Commission, can benefit society and business. Delegates will include sci- ova. ECOOP 2009 is the 23rd edition of entists, industry leaders, key EC decision-makers and major players in the field. the ECOOP Conference Series, which aims at bringing together people, indus- More information: trial and academic, interested in a wide http://www.etsi.org/WebSite/NewsandEvents/2008_InfinityInitiativeTeaser.aspx spectrum of technologies related to object-oriented areas. The ECOOP con- ference lasts for a week. Plenary ses-
Advertisement sions take place the last three days of the conference, whereas monday and tues- day are dedicated to workshops. Follow your calling ECOOP 2009 wishes to embrace a broad range of topics, including: • analysis, design methods and design patterns Innovation • concurrent, real-time or parallel systems Science • databases, persistence and transactions • distributed and mobile systems Training • frameworks, product lines and soft- Research ware architectures • language design and implementation • testing and metrics • programming environments and tools • theoretical foundations, type systems, formal methods Open Positions at INRIA for Tenured and • versioning, compatibility, software Tenure-track Research Scientists evolution • aspects, Components, Modularity, INRIA is a French public research institute in information and communication science and technology. It is Reflection an outstanding and highly visible scientific organization, a major player in the European Research Area hea- vily involved in most of the research and development programs. INRIA has eight research centers in Paris, • collaboration, Workflow. Bordeaux, Grenoble, Nancy, Nice, and Rennes that host 160 project-teams in partnership with universities and other research organizations. INRIA focuses the activity of over 1100 researchers and faculty members, 1200 PhD students and about 1000 post-docs and engineers, on fundamental research at the best interna- ECOOP 2009 will also host a Summer tional level, as well as on development and transfer activities in the following computer science and applied School consisting of prestigious tutori- mathematics areas: als on current topics in software, sys- § Modeling, simulation and optimization of complex dynamic systems tems, and languages research. The scope § Formal methods in programming secure and reliable computing systems § Networks and ubiquitous information, computation and communication systems of the ECOOP Summer School is the § Vision and human-computer interaction modalities, virtual worlds and robotics same as the conference itself: all areas § Computational Engineering, Computational Sciences and Computational Medicine relevant to object technology, including In 2009, INRIA is opening over 40 new positions within its 8 research centers: work that takes inspiration from or § Junior and senior level positions, § Tenured and tenure-track positions, builds connections to areas not com- § Research and joint faculty positions with universities monly considered object-oriented. Tuto-
These positions cover all the above areas of research. rials should introduce researchers to cur- INRIA centers provide outstanding scientific environments and excellent working conditions. The institute rent research in an area, and/or to show offers competitive salaries and social benefit programs. It welcomes applications from all nationalities; it will arrange if needed visa and working permits (also for the spouse). French schooling and social programs for important new tools that can be used in families are highly regarded. research.
Calendar and detailed application information at: http:www.inria.fr/travailler/index.en.html More information: email : [email protected] http://2009.ecoop.org/
70 ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 InIn BriefBrief
ERCIM elects President STFC Staff celebrate and Vice-Presidents Achievements
During the Board of Directors meeting of ERCIM in Porto of the Atlas Centre on 20 and 21 November, the current President of ERCIM, Keith G. Jeffery (STFC, UK) was re-elected as President for In December 2008, the IT staff at STFC - who had been cen- a further two-year term starting 1st January 2009. tred in the historic Atlas Building - held a small event to cel- ebrate the achievements since the installation of UK's first Three new Vice-Presidents (previously there were two) were supercomputer in 1964. In January the staff move to a new also elected for the same two-year term. We are pleased to building labelled R89. The Atlas Centre and its staff announce the following appointments: (although components of the central IT team were located at • Matthias Jarke (FhG, D), responsible for the External various times in other buildings on site) achieved much: from Relations Task Group, takes over from Arne Sølvberg superb 24/7 operations of a major computer centre over many (NTNU, Norway), who will retire mid-2009 and therefore years and with many different kinds of equipment (now 1100 did not stand for another term servers and 360000 users); provision of services in adminis- • Simon Dobson (UCD, Ireland), responsible for the Struc- tration and management for the organisation (and others) tural Task Group, takes over from Jan Karel Lenstra (CWI, front-ended by office systems, directories etc; provision of NL). Jan Karel did not wish to stand for re-election but systems for other scientific departments, the library and oth- will remain a member of this TG ers; development of websites and behind it all a powerful • Staffan Truvé (SICS, Sweden), responsible for the newly R&D capability from graphics, visualisation and virtual real- founded Innovation Task Group, was elected as the third ity through databases, information retrieval and office sys- Vice-President. tems to formal software engineering, knowledge engineering, trust/privacy/security and onwards via advanced user inter- faces and management to applied mathematics and computa- tional optimisation. From this team came the original UK e- ERCIM meets Science concept. Along the way companies were spun out and contibutions made to standards notably OSI networking, Günter Verheugen GKS, SVG and SMIL.
ERCIM, together with INRIA Transfert, a subsidiary of INRIA to create and develop IT companies, had a private Albert Benveniste wins meeting in Sophia Antipolis with Günter Verheugen, Vice- President of the European Commission and Commissioner the "France Telecom" 2008 Award
Albert Benveniste, a world-renowned expert in the fields of automatic control, computer science and telecommunica- tions, has been granted the "France Telecom" 2008 award by the French Academy of Sciences for the exceptional quality of his research work. Director of Research at INRIA Rennes - Bretagne Atlantique, Albert Benveniste is responsible for the embedded systems sector at the institute's scientific department. He is also scientific director of the INRIA - Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs joint research laboratory.
The originality of Albert Benveniste's profile lies in the extraordinary breadth of his expertise and the foresighted- From left: Keith Jeffery (ERCIM President), Laurent Kott (INRIA ness and depth of his contributions. In the 1980s, for exam- Transfert), Günter Verheugen and Jérôme Chailloux (ERCIM ple, he was the first person to recognise the importance of Manager). jointly managing algorithmic and software aspects for the design of telecommunication systems and embedded sys- for Enterprise and Industry, during the conference 'Towards tems. His ongoing, innovative activities at both the national World Class Clusters' organised by the French Presidency of and international levels have contributed significantly to the European Union on 13 November. Commissioner cross-fertilisation between the automatic control, signal pro- Verheugen was very interested in ERCIM's positioning as a cessing and computer science communities. This unique pro- 'European network of research' becoming also a 'European file puts him in a perfect position to tackle the fields of network of innovation'. He invited ERCIM to participate in telecommunication networks and services management as a working session on innovation to be organised by his well as Web services, subjects in which difficult software Directorate General in Brussels for a small number of and algorithmic aspects are closely linked and which are at invited participants. the heart of today's challenges.
ERCIM NEWS 76 January 2009 71 ERCIM – the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of European research and development, in information technology and applied mathematics. Its national member institutions aim to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry.
ERCIM is the European Host of the World Wide Web Consortium.
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Fraunhofer ICT Group Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Friedrichstr. 60 Számítástechnikai és Automatizálási Kutató Intézet 10117 Berlin, Germany P.O. Box 63, H-1518 Budapest, Hungary http://www.iuk.fraunhofer.de/ http://www.sztaki.hu/
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