A New Design Paradigm for Designing Reactive Pervasive Concurrent Systems with an Ambient Intelligence Example

Abstract

Modern ubiquitous computing systems are created with large number of embedded sensing and actuation devices, which together form complex distributed collaborative systems. While the advancements in underlying embedded sensing, actuation and control technologies are tremendous, the system designers still lack proper software approach that can handle systems with complex and concurrent control flow on distributed networked infrastructure. In this paper, a system-level design language, SystemJ, which is based on a formal Model of Computation, is used to provide a new design paradigm for ambient intelligence systems. SystemJ has a set of kernel statements for modeling reactivity, preemptions and concurrency, which allow intuitive handling and composition of complex systems based on concurrent software behaviors. It also provides high level objects called signals and channels, to abstract away the underlying hardware devices and communication mechanisms. The run-time support of the language provides functionalities similar to middleware. An access and environment control system demonstrates the use of SystemJ in implementing typical reactive behaviors in ambient intelligence applications.