Enabling a Mobile, Dynamic and Heterogeneous ...

Enabling a Mobile, Dynamic and Heterogeneous Discovery Service in a Sensor Web by Using AndroSIXTH Levent Görgü, Barnard Kroon, Abraham G. Campbell, and Gregory M.P. O’Hare CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies , School of Computer Science & Informatics University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

Our Ambient Intelligence Vision A world where devices adapt and anticipation our needs without intervention. To achieve this vision the multiple sensors that exist in each of these devices need to share their sensors as an ambient intelligent application requires a device to connect to multiple sensors on a plethora of different devices to function. This vision can be achieve through a Sensor Web.

What is a Sensor Web ? A Sensor Web is an innovative concept allowing sensors to share sensor data between themselves. It was originally envisaged in the form of environmental pods [1], where each sensor platform could act as an individual sensor or the platforms could co-ordinate as a whole. SIXTH is a network middleware targeted at J2SE-compliant platforms. It integrates sensed data from any source for which an adaptor has been created. Data sources include both physical sensing platforms (e.g. Android smartphones, Shimmer, WASPmote) and cyber sensors that gather data from programmatically-accessible sources (e.g. Twitter, or other middleware systems such as Xively or GSN). SIXTH is built on OSGi, which provides a flexible component framework enabling the addition, removal and update of services at runtime.

POrtable Discovery Service (PODS) Portable Discovery Service (PODS) includes a combination of network communication protocols, such as JmDNS and REST. It also includes a SIXTH Middleware implementation in its architecture. PODS uses JmDNS for remote device discovery and REST or Stream for both local and remote sensor communication. It targets both heterogeneous and seamless discovery within sensor networks. PODS wraps SIXTH Middleware’s existing sensor abstractions to create communication links between the real sensors and their virtual representations in middleware architecture. In theory, any new device or new networking protocol should be able to communicate with PODS as long as an appropriate a SIXTH Adaptor is implemented for it.

AndroSIXTH In the case of mobile devices, local sensors are typically the built-in sensors on the device itself and the Bluetooth enabled sensors in its vicinity. AndroSIXTH is the mobile extension of PODS ported successfully on various Android devices. It enables Bluetooth discovery and “complete mobility” for PODS. AndroSIXTH was possible by implementing an Gateway Library to enable the communication between OSGi and Android. This communication link was used by a SIXTH Adaptor to allow PODS/Android communication. Finally, Android’s AIDL mechanism is used to extend AndroSIXTH as a service to other Android applications. This work was possible with the help of modular architectures of all technologies used; OSGi, SIXTH and Android.

Future Work We believe that the concept of the Sensor Web will become an increasingly crucial underlying technology to provide the necessary infrastructure for the creation of Ambient Intelligence in applications. To help facilitate this research, SIXTH has been released under a non-commercial licence (http://sixth.ucd.ie). Currently, work has been proposed to explore the use of SIXTH in developing Ambient intelligent applications primarily in the field of indoor navigation and network management tools. It is also planned to explore AndroSIXTH’s abilities in generating adequate sensor data for sufficient quality of service to allow mobile AR applications. This work is supported by Science Foundation Ireland under grant 07/CE/I1147. References: [1] Kevin A Delin and Shannon P Jackson. Sensor web: a new instrument concept. In Symposium on Integrated Optics, pages 1–9. International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2001.

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