A Framework for Service Morphing and Heterogeneous Service Discovery in Smart Environments

Abstract

The openness and dynamicity of smart environments makes it a necessity to adopt a flexible software architecture. Service oriented architecture (SOA), and more specifically Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi), has emerged to be one of the most suitable choices; however, our experience using OSGi exposes its several shortcomings as an SOA platform: 1. The number of services required to be designed and implemented for each sensor, actuator and external system can be prohibitively high; 2. Cross-architecture interaction with non-OSGi software artifacts is challenging and inelegant; 3. There is a need for a more systematic approach to allow mobile devices remote access to OSGi services and enable opportunistic utilizations of local resources. We propose a framework to address these challenges by introducing a mechanism to support morphing a core service implementation of underlying communication protocols and software libraries to customized services using configuration files and a cross-architecture service directory for both OSGi and web services (WS). Our solution allows mobile devices to discover, access and adjust for local resources and results in more open, less cumbersome, and more integrative interactions among computing, communicative, sensing and actuation elements in smart environments.