A practical framework to generate and manage synthetic sensor data

Abstract

A huge number of sensors are around us and they generate different kinds of data. Data owners, e.g. the companies need IT environments and applications to handle these datasets. The collected data often contain sensitive information about the operation of the companies and the production processes. Therefore, artificial sensor data are strongly needed in the development and testing phase of these applications. In this paper, we introduce a complex application with three main modules to manage synthetic sensor data. The first component is the data generator module, which is capable of creating synthetic sensor data according to the user-defined distributions and parameters. The second module is in charge of storing the generated data in a flexible relational database, developed by us. The third component ensures the filtering and the visualization of the collected or generated data. A common interface was created to bring together the components and to provide a unified interface for the users. The adequate user management was an important aspect of our work. Accordingly, four different user types and authorities were defined.