Networked Embedded Systems Research Articles

Optimizing Worst Case Data Freshness in RF-Powered Networked Embedded Systems

Maintaining real-time data freshness plays a critical role in ensuring system correctness and optimizing the system performance in networked embedded systems (NESs). To quantitatively measure the freshness of the collected real-time data, the concept of Age of Information (AoI) has been extensively studied in recent years. This article explores how to minimize the worst-case AoI of real-time data in RF-powered NESs. In such systems, one hybrid access point (HAP) transfers wireless power to a set of distributed sensor nodes, and in the meantime, receives the information from these sensor nodes. We utilize the metric of AoI to measure the data freshness and present a comprehensive analysis of the worst-case AoI of the real-time data in the target system. Based on the analysis, an optimal energy schedule solution is designed to judiciously determine individual sensor nodes’ energy and time allocation to minimize the worst-case AoI. Considering the varying importance of different information and sensor nodes in the target system, we further propose the optimal time and energy allocation scheme for minimizing the weighted worst-case AoI. A multi-node RF-powered NES testbed is implemented to validate the functional correctness of our solutions. The results show that our solutions significantly outperform the state-of-the-art solutions, reducing the worst-case AoI and weighted worst-case AoI by 69.3% and 75.1% on average, respectively.

Retraction Note to: UI design of visual communication of coastal city landscape based on embedded network system and remote sensing data

Now the development speed of cities is getting faster and faster, and many cities have reached the stage of urban landscape design. At this stage, the requirements for the urban landscape are mainly in the transmission of information, which can be summarized as the identification of information, the requirements for ideology and readability, which clearly tells urban planners that they need to receive information from the perspective of vision To design the urban landscape. After investigation, it is found that under the current technological development trend, the application of geographic information based on smart mobile terminals has become a development trend and has become one of the research hotspots in the field of geographic information science. With more and more methods of acquiring geographic information, such as smart phones, drones, and remote sensing satellites, a large amount of spatial data is continuously presented at an extremely fast speed. In recent years, the rapid development of the computer hardware manufacturing industry has made great contributions to the performance of embedded devices in improving computing speed and expanding memory. In this high-speed development environment, the fittest will survive, and the inadequate will be eliminated. Under the background of the information age, any new field will face the problem of short life cycle. Although UI also has it, the development of UI still has a long way to go. Therefore, the UI design industry still has great development prospects.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Application of embedded network system and distributed database in children’s psychological education

In embedded systems, embedded database systems are widely used as carriers for storing, managing, and accessing data. In internal database applications, the data associated with the system may be available in different database systems in different locations. How to determine the exchange of data and the consistency of the data and how to verify the integrity of these databases have become increasingly prominent issues in the development of systems and applications. The embedded database distribution system is an integral part of the embedded database system. Distributed database is an organic combination of computer network and database system. The rapid development of communication and network technology has promoted the development of distributed databases, but at the same time, it has also increased the complexity of the security issues of distributed databases. How to effectively ensure the security of distributed databases is a key issue that needs to be solved urgently in distributed database applications. On this basis, it also analyzes relevant data and conducts research. This article introduces the embryonic form of children’s mental health education—the development of PCT services—and focuses on the development of current mobile resources and terminal children’s mental health education. Implementing the mental health education application program, after recognizing the needs of children, we designed a mental health education platform based on the promotion of information dissemination through the use of ubiquitous learning theories and integration of current learning trends. Use the now popular micro-communication method to be embedded in the system, thereby increasing the usability of the system. The application of wireless local area network improves the comfort of platform applications and provides users with a variety of communication methods, accompanied by strong security and practical services.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: UI design of visual communication of coastal city landscape based on embedded network system and remote sensing data

Now the development speed of cities is getting faster and faster, and many cities have reached the stage of urban landscape design. At this stage, the requirements for the urban landscape are mainly in the transmission of information, which can be summarized as the identification of information, the requirements for ideology and readability, which clearly tells urban planners that they need to receive information from the perspective of vision To design the urban landscape. After investigation, it is found that under the current technological development trend, the application of geographic information based on smart mobile terminals has become a development trend and has become one of the research hotspots in the field of geographic information science. With more and more methods of acquiring geographic information, such as smart phones, drones, and remote sensing satellites, a large amount of spatial data is continuously presented at an extremely fast speed. In recent years, the rapid development of the computer hardware manufacturing industry has made great contributions to the performance of embedded devices in improving computing speed and expanding memory. In this high-speed development environment, the fittest will survive, and the inadequate will be eliminated. Under the background of the information age, any new field will face the problem of short life cycle. Although UI also has it, the development of UI still has a long way to go. Therefore, the UI design industry still has great development prospects.

Performance Analysis of Software Defined Network Concepts in Networked Embedded Systems

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been largely used in wired networks to separate the control plane and the data plane and enable users to programmatically change the networking capabilities. This investigation focused on understanding how SDN concepts could be applied in a networked embedded systems environment where the nodes have limited capabilities and the wireless links have limited bandwidth. The goals were to realize the benefits of SDN while maintaining the network’s topology and connectivity. A SDN controller was implemented on BeagleBone Black Board and interfaced with a networked embedded system via a SINK node. The approach was validated through simulations and experiments based on a physical testbed in multiple scenarios. In the future, the design can be extended to a fully capable Wireless-SDN system for use in a variety of applications such as Healthcare Systems, Internet of Things and Advanced Manufacturing Systems.

Energy-Constrained Data Freshness Optimization in Self-Powered Networked Embedded Systems

This article explores how to optimize the freshness of real-time data for energy harvesting (EH)-based networked embedded systems (NESs) with energy constraints. We introduce the concept of age of information (AoI) to quantitatively measure the data freshness and present a comprehensive analysis on the average AoI of the real-time data with stochastic update arrival and energy replenishment patterns for single-source EH-based systems. An optimal offline solution and an effective online solution are designed to select a sequence of real-time data updates (while discarding the remaining ones) and determine their corresponding transmission time to minimize the average AoI. We further extend these findings to multisource EH-based NESs, and present an optimal offline solution and an efficient online solution to schedule updates for each data source to optimize the average AoI. The correctness of the analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed solutions have been validated through extensive experiments by comparing to the state-of-the-art methods. According to the experimental results, the proposed solutions reduce the average AoI by 47.2% and 69.1% on average comparing to the state-of-the-art solutions for single-source and multisource EH-based NESs, respectively, with low harvesting rates.

An admission control method to provide higher sampling rates over space launchers networks

Nowadays, embedded network systems, like in space launcher application, trends to move from a bus communication to components off-the-shelf (COTS) such as Ethernet switched network in order to reduce the cost and the mass. In order to guaranty the real time and reliability constraints on an Ethernet switched network which is not deterministic, the network is oversized and redundant. In this way, lot of resources are not used. This paper focus on using these available resources to support higher sampling rates for better controllability, safety and freshness. A framework for rate admission control is defined and an algorithm is proposed to maximise the sampling rate (i.e. the throughput) of each flow while satisfying maximum end-to-end delays requirements. The purpose of using this algorithm has been brought to light through an experiment based on the next generation of space launcher network.

Steady-State Power Flow Model of Energy Router Embedded AC Network and Its Application in Optimizing Power System Operation

The energy router is an emerging device concept that is based on an advanced power electronic technique. It is able to realize flexible and dynamic electric power distribution in power systems analogous to the function of information routers in the Internet. It is of great interest to investigate how the energy router can be used to optimize power system operation. This paper formulates the steady-state power flow model of the energy router embedded system network and the related optimal power flow formulation. The role of the energy router in providing extra flexibility to optimize the system operation is studied. Case studies are carried out on a modified IEEE RTS-79 system and a modified IEEE 118 bus system with the energy router. The results show that the energy router is able to optimize the operation of the power system through controlling the power injections and voltage of ports of the energy router. Operating objective such as adjusting branch power flow, improving bus voltage, and reducing active power losses of the grid can be reached under different objective functions.

Post-Deployment Anomaly Detection and Diagnosis in Networked Embedded Systems by Program Profiling and Symptom Mining

Detecting and diagnosing anomalies in networked embedded systems like sensor networks is a very difficult task, due to the variable workloads and severe resource constraints. In this paper, we focus on how to aid bug diagnosis after the system has been deployed. We notice that most node-level debugging tools can provide detailed program information inside the node but fail to detect when and where a problem occurs in the network. On the other hand, most network-level diagnosis tools can effectively detect a problem from the network but fail to narrow down the problem within the node because they lack detailed program information. To close the gap, we propose D2, a new method for post-deployment anomaly detection and diagnosis in networked embedded systems by combining program profiling and symptom mining. D2 employs binary instrumentation to perform lightweight function count profiling. Based on the statistics, D2 uses PCA (Principal Component Analysis) based approach for automatically detecting network anomalies. Compared with previous methods, D2 is able to point programmers closer to the most likely causes by a novel approach combining statistical tests and program call graph analysis. We implement our method based on TinyOS 2.1.1 and evaluate its effectiveness by case studies in the development of a working sensor network. Results show that our method can aid programmers to diagnose problems quickly in real-world sensor network systems, and at the same time, incurs an acceptable overhead to the running system.

Highly-Efficient Bulk Data Transfer for Structured Dissemination in Wireless Embedded Network Systems

We identify the limitations of the existing structured dissemination protocols in wireless embedded network systems (WENS) and propose an out-of-order, XOR enabled transmission mechanism for structured dissemination.We propose a slot length optimization model, tailored for the proposed full-slot transmission mechanism to further enhance the propagation.We incorporate the above components into ULTRA, a full-slot reliable bulk data transfer mechanism for structured bulk data dissemination.We implement ULTRA in both testbed and simulation. The results show that ULTRA outperforms the state-of-the-art works. Recent years have witnessed the remarkable development of wireless embedded network systems (WENS) such as cyber-physical systems and sensor networks. Reliable bulk data dissemination is an important building module in WENS, supporting various applications, e.g., remote software update, video distribution. The existing studies often construct network structures to enable time-slotted multi-hop pipelining for data dissemination. However, the adopted transmission mechanism was originally designed for structureless protocols, and thus posing significant challenges on efficient structured data dissemination. In this paper, we investigate the problem of structured bulk data dissemination. Specifically, we propose reliable out-of-order transmission and bursty encoding mechanisms to transmit packets as many as possible in each transmission slot. As a consequence, the resulting transmission protocol (ULTRA) can fully utilize each transmission slot and propagate data in the network as fast as possible. The performance results obtained from both testbed and simulation experiments demonstrate that, compared to the state-of-the-art protocols, ULTRA can greatly enhance the dissemination performance by reducing the dissemination delay by 34.8%.

Dynamic Logging with Dylog in Networked Embedded Systems

Event logging is an important technique for networked embedded systems like wireless sensor networks. It can greatly help developers to understand complex system behaviors and diagnose program bugs. Existing logging facilities do not well satisfy three practical requirements: flexibility , efficiency , and high synchronization accuracy . To simultaneously satisfy these requirements, we present Dylog, a dynamic logging facility for networked embedded systems. Dylog employs several techniques. First, Dylog uses binary instrumentation for dynamically inserting or removing logging statements, enabling flexible and interactive debugging at runtime. Second, Dylog incorporates an efficient storage system and log collection protocol for recording and transferring the logging messages. Third, Dylog employs a lightweight data-driven approach for reconstructing the synchronized time of the logging messages. Dylog uses MAC-layer timestamping and drift compensation to achieve high synchronization accuracy . We implement Dylog on the TinyOS 2.1.1/TelosB platform. Results show the following: (1) Dylog incurs a small overhead. Indirections in Dylog incur an additional execution overhead of less than 1%. Dylog reduces the logging storage size by approximately 50% compared with the standard TinyOS radio printf library. Dylog reduces the patch size by more than 90%, compared with incremental reprogramming. (2) Dylog reduces the synchronization overhead by 78% in terms of transmission cost, compared with a traditional time synchronization protocol, FTSP, and it can achieve a high time synchronization accuracy of 5.4μs. (3) Dylog can help diagnose system problems effectively at the source-code level for three real-world scenarios.

EEWES: an energy-efficient wireless sensor network embed-ded system to be applied on industrial environments

<p class="Abstractandkeywordscontent"><span lang="EN-US">Nowadays, the vast majority of information monitoring in industrial plants is still carried out by wired technologies, in which the installation and maintenance cost is high. However, in outdoor applications, such as those used in the oil and gas industry, the use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is increasing due to mobility, reliability, and low cost of the sensor nodes that make up the network. Moreover, this solution reduces the risks of workers in classified areas (regions with high probability of accidents occurrence) to the extent that the equipment maintenance is optimized. This paper proposes the development of the EEWES, an energy efficient wireless sensor network embedded system, which can be applied on industrial environments. This development approach significantly reduces the energy consumption of the sensor nodes by using a method that alternates sleep periods of the transceiver/sensor set with data transmission/reception periods, which reduces the duty cycle while keeping the desirable parameters of the service quality (QoS). The results presented in this paper will be confirmed by field tests.</span></p>

Localized attacks on spatially embedded networks with dependencies.

Many real world complex systems such as critical infrastructure networks are embedded in space and their components may depend on one another to function. They are also susceptible to geographically localized damage caused by malicious attacks or natural disasters. Here, we study a general model of spatially embedded networks with dependencies under localized attacks. We develop a theoretical and numerical approach to describe and predict the effects of localized attacks on spatially embedded systems with dependencies. Surprisingly, we find that a localized attack can cause substantially more damage than an equivalent random attack. Furthermore, we find that for a broad range of parameters, systems which appear stable are in fact metastable. Though robust to random failures—even of finite fraction—if subjected to a localized attack larger than a critical size which is independent of the system size (i.e., a zero fraction), a cascading failure emerges which leads to complete system collapse. Our results demonstrate the potential high risk of localized attacks on spatially embedded network systems with dependencies and may be useful for designing more resilient systems.

Method of Recognition and Assistance Combining Passive RFID and Electrical Load Analysis That Handles Cognitive Errors

The integration of wireless sensor technologies has increased awareness of many laboratories on the field of embedded network system. Many researchers seek exploiting these advances to develop technological assistance for frail people in smart homes. However, to reach the full potential of applications using network embedded systems such as assistive smart home, the first challenge to overcome is the recognition of the ongoing inhabitant activity of daily living (ADL). Moreover, to provide adequate assistance, it is essential to be able to detect every perceptive error. Such an approach proposes the use of ubiquitous sensors hidden in the environment for monitoring and detecting behavioral abnormalities associated with cognitive deficits and then does a proper guidance by providing advice using different kinds of effectors (screen, light, sound, etc.). In this paper, we present an affordable system that exploits a combination of passive RFID and the load signatures of appliances to assist elders and to detect errors related to cognitive impairment. The entire multi-sensor system has been implemented and deployed in a real prototype smart home. We present the promising results of our experiment on real daily routines.

Optimizing Relocatable Code for Efficient Software Update in Networked Embedded Systems

Recent advances in Microelectronic Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and wireless communication technologies have fostered the rapid development of networked embedded systems like wireless sensor networks. System software for these self-organizing systems often needs to be updated for a variety of reasons. We present a holistic software update (i.e., reprogramming) system called R3 for networked embedded systems. R3 has two salient features. First, the binary differencing algorithm within R3 (R3diff) ensures an optimal result in terms of the delta size under a configurable cost measure. Second, the similarity preserving method within R3 (R3sim) optimizes the binary code format for achieving a large similarity with a small metadata overhead. Overall, R3 achieves the smallest delta size compared with other software update approaches such as Stream, Rsync, RMTD, Zephyr, Hermes, and R2 (e.g., 50%--99% reduction compared to Stream and about 20%--40% reduction compared to R2). R3’s implementation on TelosB/TinyOS is lightweight and efficient. We release our code at http://code.google.com/p/r3-dongw.

Research on Aerobics Movement Choreography Based on Embedded Network Technology

Embedded Internet has preset functions and strong adaptability, which can be used in household appliances, medical equipment, and industrial machinery and so on. Through the method of embedded network, it completely changed the way of people live. In this paper we use clustering algorithm to improve the embedded network system, and use JSP technology to enhance the real-time and interactive of system, develop the aerobics visualization movement system, which realizes the interactive action between teachers and students. In order to test the performance of the system, we use AMBE-2000 as communication module to test the video compression and processing functions of embedded system. The results show that the compression ratio is big, the flow is small, and compression time is short. It is a stable and reliable network system. It provides a new method for embedded computer system in sports teaching.

Formal Specification Based Automatic Test Generation for Embedded Network Systems

Embedded systems have become increasingly connected and communicate with each other, forming large-scaled and complicated network systems. To make their design and testing more reliable and robust, this paper proposes a formal specification language calledSENSand aSENS-based automatic test generation tool calledTGSENS. Our approach is summarized as follows: (1) A user describes requirements of target embedded network systems by logical property-based constraints usingSENS. (2) GivenSENSspecifications, test cases are automatically generated using a SAT-based solver. Filtering mechanisms to select efficient test cases are also available in our tool. (3) In addition, given a testing goal by the user, test sequences are automatically extracted from exhaustive test cases. We’ve implemented our approach and conducted several experiments on practical case studies. Through the experiments, we confirmed the efficiency of our approach in design and test generation of real embedded air-conditioning network systems.

R2: Incremental Reprogramming Using Relocatable Code in Networked Embedded Systems

We present R2, an incremental reprogramming approach using relocatable code, to improve program similarity for efficient incremental reprogramming in networked embedded systems. R2 achieves a higher degree of similarity than existing approaches by mitigating effects of both function shifts and data shifts. R2 adopts a content-aware differencing algorithm to generate small delta files for efficient dissemination. Besides, it makes efficient use of memory and does not degrade program quality. We implement R2 based on TinyOS 2.1 and demonstrate its advantages through detailed analysis of TinyOS examples. We also present case studies on the software programs of a large-scale sensor system GreenOrbs. Results show that R2 reduces the dissemination cost by approximately 65 percent compared to state-of-the-art network reprogramming approach Deluge, and reduces the dissemination cost by approximately 20 percent compared to Zephyr and Hermes the latest works on incremental reprogramming.

A Method of Algorithm Update Based on Multi-Agent for Embedded Networked Systems

A Method of Algorithm Update Based on Multi-Agent for Embedded Networked Systems

Performance evaluation of an automotive distributed architecture based on a high speed power line communication protocol using a transaction level modeling approach

With the increasing complexity of communication infrastructures in the automotive domain, approaches for modeling architectures at a high abstraction level have become mandatory to assist designers in the development process of such networked embedded systems. Simulation of architecture models, early in the design process, is also necessary to detect and fix errors and performance issues. In this context, transaction level modeling approaches, supported by languages like SystemC, represent promising solutions to allow performances of networked architectures to be assessed with a good compromise between accuracy and simulation speed. This article presents the application of a simulation-based approach for performance evaluation of a networked embedded system inspired by the automotive domain. The presented modeling approach is defined to efficiently capture the characteristics of architectures for real-time image processing applications. The originality of this paper concerns the considered case study which corresponds to the modeling of a video transmission system made of three electronic controller units and based on a specific power line communication protocol. Compared with traditional communication protocols used in the automotive domain, power line communication is considered here to improve integration of advanced real-time image processing applications. The created model incorporates the description of the different communication layers involved in the studied distributed architecture. Simulation of the model allows evaluating time properties of the architecture according to the various system parameters. Furthermore, the memory cost inferred is also evaluated. Architecture parameters can then be correctly tuned to fully meet the expected requirements.