Internet-based Monitoring and Control of Embedded Systems

(PROGRESS project EES.5413)

 

The project addresses the issues that arise when connecting arbitrary embedded systems to the Internet. From the point of view of a user the value concerns inspecting the system remotely (monitoring) and controlling it. In addition, The technical aspects concern the design of the logical connection between local and remote system, including questions of correctness, distribution, authorization, security and discovery. The distribution aspect dictates that the system should be designed such that local and remote system can be developed separately.

 

The project started officially in spring 2001. Project leader is dr. J.J. Lukkien. Six persons were (or have been) working in the project, two junior researchers, one post-doc and one PhD student;  the two junior-researcher positions have been extended by TU/e into PhD positions starting from spring 2005.

 

Postdoc: dr. P.H.F.M.Verhoeven (finished in 2002)
Junior Researcher: T.Tranmanh MTD (until June 2004)

Junior Researcher: Y. Mazuryk MTD (from September 2003 until January 2005)

PhD student: M. Tjiong, PdEng (from March 2005)

PhD student: R. Bosman, M.Sc (from June 2005)
Ph.D student: Jinfeng Huang M.Sc., graduated in September 2005

 

User group

The user group concerns a group of people from other instutes or from industry for which the research is directly useful. They provide input to the project and comments on the result. The user group consists of

  • Vasco Security (Meesters)
  • Philips Research (van Hartskamp)
  • Industrial Design (Feijs)
  • Gymna (Temmerman)
  • TNO Industry (Niesten)
  • Electrical Engineering (Voeten)

PhD student Huang works partly within TNO and is supervised by dr.ir.Voeten which makes their role a bit different.

 

Brief overview

The project has started with developing a simple protocol to connect to and control a remote system. We have studied some sample systems, including one provided by the user group. We have developed a coherent view on the evolution of networked embedded systems, from completely standalone to fully networked. We have developed a workshop in which participants learn to connect a system to the Internet.

 

In parallel we have been looking at special properties of connected systems of which mobility is a dominant one. We addressed the modeling issue as well as protocol issues, e.g. by developing prototype systems that support mobility (e.g. implementations of wireless Corba and the Session Initiation Protocol, both in close collaboration with Philips Research).

 

We have seen that the distribution aspect in combination with mobility calls for methods in which systems can find each other instead of having this information beforehand. In fact, since embedded systems need to interact also with each other rather than only with an end-user we require methods that support building such a cooperation dynamically. We have taken up UPnP (Universal Plug ‘n Play, a recently introduced Internet standard targeted towards consumer electronics) as an example and developed a reference implementation. UPnP and other similar models lead to a distributed system that consists of well-defined services that can be accessed by client applications. These are called Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

 

Given these SOAs a central question becomes how these are put into operation. First, if after the introduction of these SOAs their use boils down to just another level of programming, the contribution is limited. In the project we proceed with studying methods that describe system targets such that the use of individual services can be derived rather than explicitly described. Second, the question is what overall services can be developed based on a SOA, i.e., which overall functionality can be described consisting of services. A persistent memory was developed in this way.

 

Our study has resulted in the development of a more generic service interface model, which includes controls not only to the service functionality (the “classical” actions), but also to the non-functional properties of the service, such as resource use, access control and error monitoring. Furthermore, this model includes a binding interface, which allows services to be connected and composed into an application. We also aim at the automation of mapping this generic model to a service oriented standard like UPnP or webservices.

 

An important process in SOA is the service discovery, which allows services be found. We aim at developing a secure and controllable discovery such that service owners can control the visibility of their assets (services). The idea is to organize the scope of service discovery in a logical way, rather than the physical network scope. The scope then defines the trusted environment in which services are exposed and cooperate with each other.

 

Another important aspect of embedded systems concerns their real-time behavior, in particular when it concerns a networked architecture. From a design perspective there is a large gap between a model analysis of a real-time system and the actual realization running on specific hardware and operating system. The main focus of the PhD work of Huang is to narrow this gap. This is described in more detail in his PhD project description. Huang graduated in September 2005.

 

Ongoing work (time of writing: 11-9-2006)

Our current and recent work addresses the following questions

·         Design and implementation of a programming language to specify services and to specify applications (i.e., collections of cooperating services). This language should admit the specification of policies such that autonomous service cooperation results.

·         Security and privacy within the service discovery and cooperation of services.

·         Scenarios, demonstrating mobility, context-dependent system behavior and security.

.

 

Output

 

Papers, conference contributions

  • J.J.Lukkien, Ontwikkelingen op het gebied van de thuisnetwerken, Informatie, Volume 42, pp.16-17, December 2000.
  • M. Manders, J.J.Lukkien, Embedded Internet geen pad zonder gevaar, PT Embedded Systems, Maart 2001, p18-21.
  • J.J.Lukkien, Embedded Internet, mogelijkheden en complicaties, In: Embedded Internet, seminar proceedings, FHI, April, 2001.
  • J.J.Lukkien, Moore + Metcalfe + Gilder = Embedded Internet, Bits & Chips, April 2001.
  • J.J. Lukkien, P.J.F. Peters; Embedded Internet vereist aanpassing van de architectuur; PT Embedded Systems, December 2001, pp. 16-19; 2001-12-01
  • J.J. Lukkien, M.F.A. Manders, P.J.F. Peters and L.M.G. Feijs; An Architecture for Web-Enabled Devices; proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Internet Computing, Las Vegas; 2001-06-25
  • M.F.A. Manders, P.J.F. Peters, J.J.Lukkien, L.M.G. Feijs; Taxonomy, Architecture and Protocols for Web-enabled Embedded Systems; Proceedings of the 2nd workshop on Embedded Systems, p167-172, STW; 2001-10-18
  • P.H.F.M.Verhoeven, J.Huang, J.J.Lukkien; Network Middleware and Mobility; Proceedings of the 2nd workshop on Embedded Systems, p287-292, STW; 2001-10-18
  • A Calculus for Mobile Network Systems, Jinfeng Huang, Ad Verschueren, Henri Aaldrink and Johan Lukkien, 4th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods, Shanghai, China. Full version
  • J.J. Lukkien, T. Tranmanh, P.H.F.M. Verhoeven, P.J.F. Peters; Service Discovery Mechanisms: two case studies; proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications, Las Vegas, pp. 1187-1192; 2002-06-24
  • T.Tranmanh, L.M.G. Feijs, J.J. Lukkien; Implementation and validation of UPnP for embedded systems in a home environment; Proceedings of the 2002 international conference on Internet, communication and information technology, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; 2002-11-18
  • T.M. Tran, P.J.F. Peters, J.J. Lukkien, P.H.F.M. Verhoeven; Controlling networked devices: a validation of two middleware architectures; Proceedings of the 3rd workshop on Embedded Systems, STW; 2002-10-01
  • Jinfeng Huang, Jeroen Voeten, Piet van der Putten, Andre Ventevogel, Ron Niesten and Wout vd Maaden; Performance Evaluation of Complex Real-time Systems: a case study; Proceedings of the 3rd workshop on Embedded Systems, STW; 2002-10-01
  • Richard Verhoeven and Walter Dees; Defining services for mobile terminals using remote user interfaces Vivian-Robocop workshop, Lausanne, September 16, 2002
  • Jinfeng Huang, Jeroen Voeten, Marc Geilen, Real-time Property Preservation in Approximations of Timed Systems; In: Proceedings of  First ACM & IEEE International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for Codesign, France, June 2003.
  • J. Huang, Jeroen Voeten, Andre Ventevogel and Leo van Bokhoven; Plaform-independent design for embedded real-time systems, In: Proceedings of Forum on specification and Design Languages (FDL 03), Frankfurt, Germany, September 2003.
  • Jinfeng Huang, Jeroen Voeten, Andre Ventevogel and Leo van Bokhoven; Towards correctness-preserving synthesis for real-time software, Proceedings of the 4th workshop on Embedded Systems, STW; 2003-10-01
  • Y. Mazuryk, J.J. Lukkien, Improved eventing protocol for Universal Plug’n Play, Proceedings of the 5th workshop on Embedded systems, STW; 2004-10-01
  • Y. Mazuryk, J.J. Lukkien, Analysis and improvements of the eventing protocol for universal plug and play, Proceedings of the 2004 international conference on Internet, communication and information technology, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; 2004-11-20
  • Jinfeng Huang, Jeroen Voeten, Andre Ventevogel and Leo van Bokhoven, Platform-independent design for embedded real-time systems, In book: Languages for System Specification, Chapter 3, pp.30-50, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004, ISBN: 1-4-2-7990-7.
  • Jinfeng Huang, Jeroen Voeten and Marc Geilen, Real-time Property Preservation in Concurrent Real-time Systems, In proceedings of 10th International Conference on Real-time and Embedded Computing Systems and Applications, Sweden, Aug. 2004, LNCS series, Springer-Verlag Publisher.
  • Jinfeng Huang, Jeroen Voeten and Andre Ventevogel Predictability in Real-time System Development: (1) Semantics Support from Development Languages, In proceedings of Forum on specification and Design Languages (FDL' 04), France, Sep. 2004.
  • Jinfeng Huang, Jeroen Voeten, Piet van der Putten and Andre Ventevogel Predictability in Real-time System Development: (2) A Case Study, In proceedings of Forum on specification and Design Languages (FDL' 04), France, Sep. 2004.
  • Oana Florescu, Jeroen Voeten, Jinfeng Huang and Henk corporaal,  Error Estimation in Model-Driven Development for Real-Time Software, Accepted by Forum on specification and Design Languages (FDL’ 04), France, Sep. 2004.
  • Jinfeng Huang, Predictability in real-time software design,  PhD. Thesis. ISBN 90-386-1733-x. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven (The Netherlands), 2005.
  • Jinfeng Huang,  Jeroen Voeten, Oana Florescu, Piet van der Putten and Henk        Corporaal, Predictability in Real-Time System Development,  In: Advances in Design and Specification Languages for SoCs, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005

 

Master theses

 

 

Presentations

·         J.J. Lukkien, When Wireless meets Internet: options and complications of embedded internet. At a meeting for industry about intelligent products on 26-9-2000 in Zaandam.

·         J.J. Lukkien, Embedded Internet, ontwikkelingen, mogelijkheden en complicaties. A presentation on April 4, 2001, at the embedded Internet seminar at "Electronics and Automation", a 4-days event in the Utrecht Jaarbeurs.

·         J.J. Lukkien, Web enabled devices and home networking. A presentation in the EESI colloquium series "embedded Internet" on April 11, 2001.

·         P.J.F. Peters, Service Discovery Mechanisms: two case studies, A presentation at the 2002 International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications, Las Vegas.

·         J.J. Lukkien, Middleware: a survey, A presentation at the IPA "lentedagen" a three days programme for students of the "Instituut voor Programmatuurkunde en Algoritmiek", April 3, 2002

·         J.J. Lukkien, Implementation and validation of UPnP for embedded systems in a home environment, A presentation at the international conference on Internet, Communication and Information Technology, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, November 20, 2002.

·         Tang Tranh Manh, Universal Plug ‘n Play, Introduction, design and implementation, A presentation at the IPA "lentedagen" a three days programme for students of the "Instituut voor Programmatuurkunde en Algoritmiek", April 3, 2002

·         P.H.F.M. Verhoeven, Wireless Corba, A presentation at the IPA "lentedagen" a three days programme for students of the "Instituut voor Programmatuurkunde en Algoritmiek", April 3, 2002

·         Y. Mazuryk, Service Oriented Architectures in Heterogeneous Environments, a presentation at the SAN group meeting in november 2003.

·         .J.J. Lukkien, Service Oriented Architectures, Motivation and concepts, a presentation in the IPA school on Software Architecture.

·         J.J. Lukkien, Networked Components, the architecture of Ambient Intelligence, a presentation at the Embedded World seminar in 2005.

 

Special activities: output and dissemination

·         Development of the workshop “Connect your embedded system to the Internet”. This workshop has been given a few times for both people from the user group as well as for students.

·         Best poster award on PROGRESS 2001.

·         Report on the design of a UPnP API and

·         A JAVA-based UPnP API

·         Report on a Real-time Operating System (Philips internal)

·         Three presentations at the IPA lentedagen on middleware.

·         Development of some tangible demonstrators in the form of web-controllable devices (garden lights, coffe maker, one device of a partner).

·         A simple protocol for web-enabled devices, DMCP, and a realization described in a report “DMCP at work” (classified, for partner)

·         An implementation of wire-less Corba on a PSION (EPOC-5)

·         An implementation, demonstration and analysis of the Session Initiation Protocol.

·         An implementation and demonstration of the Remote User Interface on a PDA.

·         Several articles and presentations outside the academic community.

·         Presentation at the IPA lentedagen on software architecture

·         Presentation at the Embedded World seminar of Bits & Chips

 

Conference and workshop visits (see also the publications)

 

Reports and user group meetings