Open Service Gateway Initiative Research Articles

An RFID Complex Event Processing Model Based on OSGi

Radio Frequency Identication (RFID) has been widely used in most applications. The RFID data generated are usually meaningless, real-time, and large-scale. Complex Event Processing (CEP) technology is used to extract meaningful information from the raw RFID data. This paper proposes a CEP model based on Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) platform with the features of recongurable, customized and so on. Moreover, the open-source Esper technique for processing complex event and event stream is also introduced.

The Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit: challenges and advances

The Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit (MITK) has been available as open-source software for almost 10 years now. In this period the requirements of software systems in the medical image processing domain have become increasingly complex. The aim of this paper is to show how MITK evolved into a software system that is able to cover all steps of a clinical workflow including data retrieval, image analysis, diagnosis, treatment planning, intervention support, and treatment control. MITK provides modularization and extensibility on different levels. In addition to the original toolkit, a module system, micro services for small, system-wide features, a service-oriented architecture based on the Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) standard, and an extensible and configurable application framework allow MITK to be used, extended and deployed as needed. A refined software process was implemented to deliver high-quality software, ease the fulfillment of regulatory requirements, and enable teamwork in mixed-competence teams. MITK has been applied by a worldwide community and integrated into a variety of solutions, either at the toolkit level or as an application framework with custom extensions. The MITK Workbench has been released as a highly extensible and customizable end-user application. Optional support for tool tracking, image-guided therapy, diffusion imaging as well as various external packages (e.g. CTK, DCMTK, OpenCV, SOFA, Python) is available. MITK has also been used in several FDA/CE-certified applications, which demonstrates the high-quality software and rigorous development process. MITK provides a versatile platform with a high degree of modularization and interoperability and is well suited to meet the challenging tasks of today's and tomorrow's clinically motivated research.

Web Application Integration Framework Based on OSGi

In the view of current application software appeared complex, huge demand and update frequently, the frame technology is introduced to the software development process in order to improve the software development speed and quality. OSGi (Open Service Gateway Initiative) as a field development framework provides a good environment, system development based on OSGi has many advantages, including the dynamic change system behavior, it has hot swap plug in system structure, and with high reusability and efficiency. The paper constructs a Web application integration framework based on OSGi, which can effectively solve those problems of the framework development in the territory is complex, the integration framework’s reusability is better , and with easy extension characteristics.

Dependable management system for ubiquitous camera array service in an elder-care center

The concept of smart homes (SH) has been extensively popularized, and there are a lot of technologies that need to be continuously utilized and integrated in such a concept. In this article, some applied problems of camera array (CA) in the SH are discussed and solved. Determining how to build an effective management method for CA in order to ensure that user privacy is not encroached upon is an important issue. In SH, the applications of CA are very diversified. We suggest that a satisfactory management method of CA should be based on the open service gateway initiative (OSGi) that includes resource management and monitoring (RMM) and UPnP security for the problems of resources and privacy, respectively. Finally, an applied example of CA is addressed in an elder-care center (EC). Simulation results show that the management strategy and application of CA based on an OSGi is satisfactory.

A Uniform and Coherent Mashup Technique Based on the OSGi Framework

A mashup is a web page or application that combines data from two or more sources so as to create new services or enhance original services. Mashup technique is usually implemented in web-based applications at web browser via drag-and-drop actions. These web-based applications usually require extra programming efforts when integrating with a non-web application, and they usually cannot drop out the APIs style programming. The developers require indicating specific data source for their new mashup applications, and usually the functions of these applications are limited due to developers’ design in developing time. This kind of programming style is difficult to mashup more data sources coherently, and it is high coupling, resource limited, and difficult to be extended. To solve these issues, this paper proposes a uniform and coherent mashup technique based on the OSGi (Open Service Gateway Initiative) framework. OSGi is a module system and service platform that implements a complete and dynamic component model. By using the OSGi’s dynamic and flexible features, applications could be easily to deploy, remove, discovery, and combine with each other. The key features of proposed mashup technique include the definition of uniform identity terms and invoking chains. The uniform identity term is used to match each application service. Developers can leverage non-web mashup applications by declaring the simple definition of uniform identity term without providing and using any APIs. The invoking chains could link and combine relative application services or data with unlimited length and irregular mixing. After that, the system could build up invoking chains to perform mashup technique automatically. Therefore, developers could mashup certain application functions or data to unknown applications in runtime phase. Finally, we present two different use cases to evaluate the capabilities of the proposed technique.

Towards an approach for managing dynamic deployment in distributed service oriented architectures

Pervasive systems modelling is emerging as an important class of applications. Such systems have to adapt their deployed architecture regarding to continuous changes in everyday user's requirements. This leads to own a modelling solution that aims at a specific platform to describe the deployment and its dynamic evolving management to meet such requirements. Therefore, we propose in this paper a modelling solution through a model-transformation process addressing the deployment and its dynamic management over the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) framework. The proposed solution is validated through a pervasive case study: ‘Follow Me’.

Table of Contents

Smart phones have pervaded almost all the environments where people perform their day-to-day activities. They are now equipped with embedded sensors, camera, touchscreen, more memory and processing capabilities as well as efficient power saving mechanisms. Together, these improvements enable the mobile devices to perform tasks that are normally run in personal computers like the provisioning of services to other devices. The idea of Mobile Host is not new and this paper tries to extend the research in the domain to the current generation platforms, technologies and standards such as Android OS, Open Services Gateway initiative framework, Zero Conf and Representational State Transfer. While the services provided from Mobile Host like the push notification mechanism and the feasible applications are interesting, for successful adoption of the technology, we need to provide better discovery mechanisms for the offered services. Mobile web service (MWS) discovery is highly dependent on the size of the network and the mobility of the nodes. A peer-to-peer based solution is proposed for the MWS discovery, to avoid the troubles with centralized registries. The approach is discussed thoroughly along with the extensions in semantic discovery support and overlay support discovery mechanism for small networks with low mobility using ZeroConf.

Ambient Assisted Living Devices Interoperability Based on OSGi and the X73 Standard

The need for interoperability among devices is an issue of vital importance in current telemedicine systems. Although a completely standardized system is an ideal solution, most commercially available devices include their own software and communication protocols, which cause serious problems and hinder the application of a standard. Patients' telemonitoring at home requires a wide variety of biometric and ambient sensors and devices that usually present a set of very specific features and characteristics. The present article introduces a system based on the Open Services Gateway Initiative architecture, which offers plug-and-play connectivity of ambient assisted living devices. Using a data model inspired by the X73 standard, we describe a set of bundles that reduces the interoperability problem and allows the data stored in the platform to be independent from the connected devices.

Remote health monitoring by OSGi technology and digital TV integration

Remote home care, enabled by Information and Communication Technologies, plays an important role in the delivery of pervasive health services. One of the most challenging drivers in the deployment of pervasive health care solutions is the population ageing phenomenon. In this paper, we present a wireless, home-centered, health monitoring system architecture that can efficiently manage medical devices in a blind manner, i.e. with very little or no action required by the user, in such a way as to be possibly targeted to elderly people. The Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) framework is used for constructing the service oriented architecture, according to a Declarative Services paradigm. The proposed architecture has been deployed in a prototype implementation, and some preliminary results are herein discussed.

Priority-Oriented Architecture Service Management on OSGi Home-service Platform

Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi) platforms integrate a variety of reusable applications and resources, packing them into bundles. These deployed services, which are offered by service providers, can expediently manage home appliances. However, in the user's daily life, various services or bundles access to other services directly or indirectly, creating a situation that is likely to generate problems involving non-supportable applications or insufficient hardware resources. OSGi platforms are no way to deal with these situations. Although much research has proposed methods to resolve specific issues, almost all of these methods are incomplete or are unsuitable for the limited resources in households. This paper addresses the wide range of such common home-network applications as those involving health care, home automation, and home security; and both our proposed priority-based principles of a management decision-making mechanism and our framework architecture help ensure the quality of service and or emergency responses.

Designing an extension API for bridging Ginga iDTV applications and home services

This paper presents the implementation process for an API that integrates interactive digital TV (iDTV) applications and home network (HN) services, mainly concerning issues of the Brazilian iDTV model. The research in this field is important because it represents current trends on the use of iDTV opening many business opportunities. With the convergence of service providers, modern communication technologies and consumer electronics devices at home, new iDTV applications have emerged, particularly those that use the set-top-boxes (or digital TV sets) processing power to provide additional services, which extends the possibilities of interaction between the user and the connected home. To implement this platform, a known model, which considers aspects of the Ginga middleware and the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) framework, was used. The idea behind the API model is to export service objects from one side to another, allowing the development of two types of applications: the first one on the Ginga-J machine and the last one on the Ginga-NCL machine. The main goals of this paper are (i) presenting the use of free tolls to perform such integration and (ii) showing the most relevant aspects in the core of the two models. Finally, a basic step-by-step process is shown in order to build integrated iDTVHN real applications using this platform.

Developing an Eclipse editor for MARC records using Xtext

SUMMARYIn this paper, we present the idea of developing an editor for MAchine‐Readable Cataloguing records that is part of a library management system. The idea was realized and implemented as a part of the library management system BISIS. The objective was to generate an Eclipse plug‐in of the editor in an Xtext environment by specifying the Xtext grammar and generating an Eclipse Modelling Framework model of the MAchine‐Readable Cataloguing record. The next step was to specify additional features of the editor in the Xtext environment such as content assist and constraints on the record used for checking the correctness of the input. The implementation of additional functionalities of the editor was carried out in the Eclipse plug‐in development environment, and user interface components were implemented by using Standard Widget Toolkit and JFace libraries. A special emphasis is placed on the Eclipse extension model that relies on the Open Services Gateway initiative standard and enables efficient implementation of the systems with a component‐based, service‐oriented architecture. We took advantage of that model and created an extensible and adoptable application that can be used by any database management system and can be integrated in other library management systems. Finally, we discuss a possible way of extracting applications from Eclipse by using Rich Client Platform technology. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sharing Human-Generated Observations by Integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web

Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C's Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers' observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound.

Flexible Service Composition Based on Bundle Communication in OSGi

Service provision and consumption platforms are more and more used to enable communication between sensors, actuators and intelligent devices, since they provide mechanisms that make possible the combination of components to create composed services. However, these kinds of platforms have limitations to adapt themselves to new and unknown devices. In this work we analyze the challenge of component or bundle communication by using the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) technology and we propose three mechanisms with the aim of contributing to flexible component communication: Common Service, Specific Service and WSIF Web Service Invocation. We provide these solutions with some architectural models and validate them through different example services. Finally we compare them regarding performance, flexibility and application complexity.

Arden2ByteCode: A one-pass Arden Syntax compiler for service-oriented decision support systems based on the OSGi platform

Patient empowerment might be one key to reduce the pressure on health care systems challenged by the expected demographic changes. Knowledge based systems can, in combination with automated sensor measurements, improve the patients’ ability to review their state of health and make informed decisions. The Arden Syntax as a standardized language to represent medical knowledge can be used to express the corresponding decision rules. In this paper we introduce Arden2ByteCode, a newly developed open source compiler for the Arden Syntax. Arden2ByteCode runs on Java Virtual Machines (JVM) and translates Arden Syntax directly to Java Bytecode (JBC) executable on JVMs. Arden2ByteCode easily integrates into service oriented architectures, like the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) platform. Apart from an evaluation of compilation performance and execution times, Arden2ByteCode was integrated into an existing knowledge supported exercise training system and recorded training sessions have been used to check the implementation.

A POWER CONSUMPTION ACTIVITY BASED HETEROGENEOUS SOA FRAMEWORK FOR CONTEXT-AWARE HOME SERVICES

The home network is one of the emerging areas from the last century. However, the growth of the home network market is stationary at present. This paper describes the limitations of the home network system and the requirements for overcoming the current limitations. Also described is a new home network service system known as COWS and its easy installation and scalable operation. COWS consists of power consumption monitor and control devices along with a service server that is a complementary combination of Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi) and web services. A home network system has a dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed, and scalable topology. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been proposed as a solution that satisfies the requirement of a home network, and OSGi and web services are two successful SOA-based frameworks. An included service server has a flexible architecture that consists of a core and extendable service packages. A power consumption monitor and control function provides useful context information for activity-based context-aware services and optimizes the power consumption. The system can be installed easily into existing and new houses to solve the current barrier of the popularization of home network services.

The Mainstreaming on Ambient Intelligence project

The Mainstreaming on Ambient Intelligence (MonAMI) project, funded under the European Commission’s IST e-Inclusion work programme (FP6 framework), set out to demonstrate that accessible, useful services for older, and disabled people can be delivered using mainstreamed systems and platforms. An open platform, based on an Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi Alliance™, 2011), framework, was developed to deliver a bouquet of Ambient Assisted Living services. The services were developed with a Design for All (European Commission, 2000) approach, in consultation with potential users in the following areas: • Monitoring: home (environmental and appliance control), health. • Time management. • Safety and security: safety at home, visitor validation, activity detection. • Communication and networking. The platform integrated elements from reliable self-organizing networks, wearable devices, user interaction technology, monitoring capability, and service infrastructures and delivered services on mainstream devices such as broadband internet and third-generation mobile telephones. In addition, to facilitate use and user interaction, the consortium designed an innovative user interface (UI), using Universal Control Hub architecture (Zimmerman, 2009). The services were first tested by older and disabled users in laboratory settings in six feasibility and usability centres across Europe (France, Germany, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK). Once the platform, services and UI were found to be feasible, usable, and appropriate to user needs, a living-scale field trial was carried out in three communities (Kosice, Slovakia; Stockholm, Sweden; and Zaragoza, Spain), where 70 users, 45 carers, and 14 care staff employed the services in users’ homes over a three-month period. In addition to testing the scalability of the platform, the trial evaluated the services’ potential of meeting the long-term care needs of older and disabled people and the support needs of caregivers. The commercial viability and economic effects on long-term care financing were also evaluated in order to understand the impact of mainstream implementation of the MonAMI concept, as part of the Ambient Assisted Living Open Association (AALOA, 2010) initiative. The MonAMI project ran for 57 months and came to completion in May, 2011.

Service-oriented smart home applications: composition, code generation, deployment, and execution

A smart home usually has a variety of devices or home appliance, instead of designing software for a specific home, this paper proposes a service-oriented framework with a set of ontology systems to support service and device publishing, discovery of devices and their services, composition of control software using existing control services that wrap devices, deployment, and execution of the composed service in an computing environment, monitoring the execution, and recovery from device failure. The ontology systems specify semantic information about devices, services, and workflows used in various smart home, and users can compose and recompose services for their specific needs. New devices, workflows, and services can be added into ontology. Most of the steps in this process can be automated including code generation. For example, service composition will be carried out in three steps: abstract workflow design, function construction, and device discovery, and different codes can be generated for different computing platforms such as Java and Open Services Gateway initiative environments. In this way, a variety of smart home can be constructed rapidly using the framework by discovery and composition using existing services and workflows. This paper illustrates this framework using a media control example to illustrate the ontology, discovery, composition, deployment, execution, monitoring, and recovery.

Practical design and implementation of recognition assisted dynamic surveillance system

Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) and Open-source Computer Vision (OpenCV) are widely used for developing applications. OSGi is constructed to provide a service platform with high application interoperability while OpenCV is used to provide many application programming interfaces (APIs) about image processing. In this paper, we design a recognition assisted surveillance system based on OSGi and OpenCV platforms. The system features dynamic monitoring by a camera carried by a robot and a Java 2 Micro-Edition (J2ME) viewer on a mobile phone. With the assistance of image recognition techniques, the captured frames are adaptively reproduced for handheld phones in a limited bandwidth environment. The proposed adaptive pause time control mechanism can efficiently improve the synchronization relationship between captured and viewed frames across heterogeneous networks. The evaluation results show that the proposed scheme can save power for the moveable camera and have a shorter time delay between the captured and viewed frames.

A component-oriented framework for experimental computer graphics

This paper provides a report about a framework that uses a variety of standards. Readers interested in 3D computer graphics or component-oriented technology in C++ will find a report about the integration of various standards by relying on yet another standard for component-oriented software engineering. The highly successful Java standard called Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) is employed in a C++ implementation called Open Service Platform.The application of this standard, which is primarily focused on network-centric software and embedded systems, in the field of real-time 3D computer graphics, provides novel insights into the usability of the OSGi standard.