Open Service Gateway Initiative Research Articles

Design and implementation of Android phone based access and control in smart space

As a new computing mode,the most essential features of ubiquitous computing,embodied in intelligent space,are physical integration and spontaneous interoperation.Due to them,Intelligent phone can get personalized service.A remote access and control system was proposed in this paper,which was based on the Open Service Gateway Initiative(OSGI) intelligent gateway technology.Firstly,the system architecture was introduced,then the realization of each module was analyzed,finally,testing on actual devices was carried out.Using surrounding services,Android mobile phone realizes the universal access and remote control on other devices.

Which middleware platform should you choose for your next remote service?

Due to the shift from software-as-a-product to software-as-a-service, software components that were developed to run in a single address space must increasingly be accessed remotely across the network. Distribution middleware is frequently used to facilitate this transition. Yet a range of middleware platforms exist, and there are few existing guidelines to help the programmer to choose an appropriate middleware platform to achieve desired goals for performance, conciseness, intuitiveness, and reliability. To address this limitation, in this article, we describe a case study of transitioning an Open Service Gateway Initiative service from local to remote access. In our case study, we evaluate five remote versions of this service, constructed using different distribution middleware platforms. These platforms are implemented by widely-used commercial technologies or have been proposed as improvements on the state of the art. In particular, we implemented a service-oriented version of our own Remote Batch Invocation abstraction. We compare and contrast these implementations in terms of their respective performance, conciseness, complexity, and reliability. Our results can help remote service programmers make informed decisions when choosing middleware platforms for their applications.

Design and implementation of an adaptive Web2.0 QoS‐based home appliance control service platform

SUMMARYThe rapid progress of information techniques enables people to have a relatively convenient environment and life. This study designs and develops the Web2.0‐based Home Appliances controL sErvice platform (WHALE) for users to easily control home appliances. WHALE is a three‐tier architecture, which consists of Device Detection and Registration Service Platform (DDRSP), Web2.0 Service Platform (WSP), and Common Service Platform (CSP). WHALE is based on the standards of Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS), Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi), and Web2.0 techniques. Users can use many kinds of handheld devices to get services from WSP. When DDRSP finds a new home appliance, this home appliance will be registered into CSP. CSP records the related information and services which are provided by this home appliance. WSP not only integrates and shows the related services of all home appliances but also provides controlling interfaces to control the actions of all home appliances. All delivered messages are based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Furthermore, for the Web QoS (Quality of Service) strategy, this study designs and proposes an Intelligent Web qualIty of Service‐aware maTching (iWIST) model to satisfy different characteristics of the user's requirements. iWIST consists of Components Classifier, Admission Controller, and Dynamic Content Adaptor. Component Classifier can classify users' requesting components with different QoS constraints. Admission Controller determines the maximum available components for the user. Dynamic Content Adaptor dynamically delivers component information to users. Experiment results illustrate that WHALE can provide appropriate contents with low response time to users. Finally, WHALE has integrity, scalability, operability, adaptivity, and extensibility functions. It can be a reference model for developing home appliance controllers in the future. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Research Java Web framework based on OSGi

OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) provides a programming model for service components. Programming based on OSGi can bring many advantages, such as modular, standardized, service oriented, dynamisms, and easy reuse, easy extension, easy deployment, and so on. At this issue, we integrate the OSGi and Java Web popular framework which includes Struts, Spring, Hibernate, and build an enterprise applications micro-core architecture called OSSH. Java programmers who are familiar with SSH can experience the benefits of OSGi.

Flexible management of smart homes

An approach is presented for flexible management of smart homes, covering both home automation and telecare. The aim is to allow end users to manage their homes without requiring detailed technical knowledge or programming ability. This is achieved at three levels: managing home components and their interactions, stating policies for how the home system should react to events, and defining high-level goals for what the user wishes to achieve. The component architecture is based on OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative). Policies and goals are formulated in the APPEL language (Adaptable and Programmable Policy Environment and Language), and supported by the ACCENT policy system (Advanced Component Control Enhancing Network Technologies). At run-time, high-level goals lead to selection of an optimal and conflict-free set of policies. These in turn determine how the home should react to various events. The paper closes with an evaluation of the approach from the points of view of functionality and usability.

Toward an agent‐based pluggable infrastructure for context‐awareness

PurposePervasive computing enhances the environment by embedding many computers that are gracefully integrated with human users. The purpose of this paper is to describe the creation of a smart context‐aware environment in which computation follows people and serves them everywhere. Building such smart environments is still difficult and complex due to lacking a uniform infrastructure that can adapt to diverse smart domains.Design/methodology/approachTo address this problem, the paper proposes an agent‐based pluggable infrastructure which integrates a mobile agent system named pvMogent, establishes an ontology‐based context model and introduces a workflow‐based application model with the open services gateway initiative (OSGi) framework. By plugging corresponding domain context in ontology model and different applications, the infrastructure can be customized to various domains.FindingsThrough the implementation of several context‐aware applications, it was found that the infrastructure can largely reduce the development complexity as well as keep the domain extensibility by plugging corresponding domain context in ontology model.Originality/valueIn this paper, a number of key techniques are explored which are suitable for building context‐awareness. The experiences and lessons learned from the system development could further facilitate and inspire the research in this direction.

IDTV Home Gateway convergence: an open software model integrating the Ginga middleware and the OSGi framework

Among the most promising uses for the interactive digital TV (iDTV) are the ones that enable TV sets to work as the central processing unit of a house. With the convergence of communication technologies and electronics devices in the home environment, a wide range of interactive applications have emerged, allowing to deliver new services to the user. The iDTV processing power has been expanded to support applications that interact with other electronic appliances in the smart home environment, performing the same role of a Home Gateway. Following this goal, this paper discusses the convergence of iDTV with home network at the software level, which facilitates novel combined iDTV home control experiences for users as well as new applications for businesses. Some models that implement convergence of open technologies for working with iDTV applications (DASE/ACAP and MHP middleware) and standards for managing services in a home network (UPnP, DLNA and OSGi framework) are presented. After that, we identify the most relevant features for our country to propose a new collaboration model supported by the Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) and the Brazilian reference middleware, Ginga. The design and implementation of software elements of the model is presented, modifying as little as possible core components of the two platforms and exploring the new Ginga capabilities, related to the procedural (Ginga-J) and declarative (Ginga-NCL) environments. Our work is unique because it combines Ginga with OSGi in a way that is transparent for application developers, while at the same time exploiting the declarative part of the Ginga middleware, thus allowing developers to easily write mixed iDTV home control applications. At the end, we built some validating scenarios for both platforms, allowing Ginga iDTV applications (Ginga-J xlets or Ginga-NCL scripts) to manage services of electronic devices in an integrated Ginga---OSGi home network.

Toward an SCA-OSGi based middleware for radio frequency identification applications

The radio frequency identification (RFID) technology progressing is becoming a increasing interest in several application areas. To accommodate diverse and changing requirements from applications, RFID middleware should be reconfigurable. However, current RFID middleware is limited in its ability to support reconfiguration. To solve this problem, we adopt the service-oriented component-based approach in building the middleware. Component-based design enables decomposition of middleware functionality and is easier than the current one to manage and modify the structure of the middleware both statically and dynamically. Applying service-oriented architecture (SOA) can further reduce the coupling between components and external software and ease the integration between middleware and applications. We propose a two-layered service component architecture (SCA) open service gateway initiative (OSGi) component model so as to enable reconfigurability. Based on the proposed component model, we build a standard-based RFID middleware—SCA-OSGi based RFID middleware (SORM) which supports flexible deployment topologies and reconfigurability. The design and implementation details of SORM are illustrated.

Context-aware personalization services for a residential gateway based on the OSGi platform

Ideally, smart homes should make its inhabitants’ lives more comfortable by anticipating their needs and satisfying their preferences. With this aim, we introduce an approach for context-aware personalized smart homes based on two main pillars: the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) platform and the Semantic Web philosophy. By combining both fields, we enrich the OSGi service-oriented architecture by providing a semantical conceptualization of (i) services at home, (ii) contextual information and (iii) inhabitants’ preferences. This ontological structure supports reasoning about the captured behavior and inferring new knowledge.

Semantic-Based Mashup of Composite Applications

The need for integration of all types of client and server applications that were not initially designed to interoperate is gaining popularity. One of the reasons for this popularity is the capability to quickly reconfigure a composite application for a task at hand, both by changing the set of components and the way they are interconnected. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has recently become a popular platform in the IT industry for building such composite applications with the integrated components being provided as Web services. A key limitation of solely Web-service-based integration is that it requires extra programming efforts when integrating non-Web service components, which is not cost-effective. Moreover, with the emergence of new standards, such as Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi), the components used in composite applications have grown to include more than just Web services. Our work enables progressive composition of non-Web-service-based components such as portlets, Web applications, native widgets, legacy systems, and Java Beans. Further, we proposed a novel application of semantic annotation together with the standard semantic Web matching algorithm for finding sets of functionally equivalent components out of a large set of available non-Web-service-based components. Once such a set is identified, the user can drag and drop the most suitable component into an Eclipse-based composition canvas. After a set of components has been selected in such a way, they can be connected by data-flow arcs, thus forming an integrated, composite application without any low-level programming and integration efforts. We implemented and conducted extensive experimental study on the above progressive composition framework on IBM's Lotus Expeditor, an extension of an SOA platform called the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) that complies with the OSGi standard.

A service-layer diagnostic approach for the OSGi framework

The open service gateway initiative (OSGi) framework is to provide an open environment for home services, which can be deployed by different service providers. However, currently there is no total solution for the OSGi framework to diagnose and recover from unexpected faults, especially those generated by resource conflicts between services, which would require user intervention. This paper summarizes the requirements for diagnosis in the open service platform and proposes an integrated approach to detect service conflict faults, handle general exceptions, and diagnose service errors on OSGi platforms. By providing user friendly diagnosis messages, and suggestions to fix exceptions, users can operate home gateways without a heavy learning burden, and service providers can reduce the overhead associated with user requests for technical support. The implementation is packaged as a service bundle running on the service layer of the OSGi platform. This is the first attempt to diagnose and handle the service conflicts on the OSGi platform during runtime.

Security-Enhanced OSGi Service Environments

Today's home and local-area network environments consist of various types of personal equipments, network devices, and corresponding services. Since such prevalent home network environments frequently deal with private and sensitive information, it is crucial to legitimately provide access control for protecting such emerging environments. As a result, the open services gateway initiative (OSGi) attempted to address this critical issue. However, the current OSGi authorization mechanism is not rigorous enough to fulfill security requirements involved in dynamic OSGi environments. In this paper, we provide a systematic way to adopt a role-based access control (RBAC) approach in OSGi environments. We demonstrate how our authorization framework can achieve important RBAC features and enhance existing primitive access control modules in OSGi service environments. Also, we describe a proof-of-concept prototype of the proposed framework to discuss the feasibility of our approach using an open source implementation of OSGi framework known as Knopflerfish.

Classification and Evaluation of Middleware Collaboration Architectures for Converging MHP and OSGi in a Smart Home

If Interactive Digital Television (IDTV) and Residential Service Gateway (RG) converge, i.e. to share services and resources, add-on values or new services could be created. We assume that a user will have an IDTV instance and an RG instance. These two can be implemented on a single machine or each on a separate machine connected by a network. Collaboration architectures of IDTV and RG support the converged IDTV and RG services. We first make a classification of the collaboration architectures to be: RG based on IDTV, IDTV based on RG, or networked IDTV-RG implementations. Secondly, we propose the use of Proxy design pattern for collaboration between IDTV and RG. Thirdly, we implemented the Proxy design pattern for all collaboration architectures. Finally, we evaluated (1) their required efforts in lines of code modified/enhanced, (2) quantitative performance metrics, such as memory usage, system startup time, object registry time and method invocation time, and (3) qualitative metrics, such as bilateral call, dynamic upgrade, cohesion, and coupling. The experimental target IDTV middleware was DVB/ MHP Java Profile, and the Residential Gateway middleware was Open Service Gateway initiative (OSGi).

A home automation proposal built on the Ginga digital TV middleware and the OSGi framework

Among the most promising applications provided by interactive Digital Television Systems (iDTV) are the ones that enable TV-Sets to work as the central processing unit of a house. This is supported by the extending of iDTV common functionalities making use of its processing power not only to deal with image and audio but also to execute interactive software applications. This paper proposes a new infrastructure that allows the exchange of data from the iDTV to Home Automation devices, such as sensors, mobile devices, and so on. The integration process among the involved technologies as well as each element in the proposed infrastructure is described in details. This model is supported by Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi), as a framework for networked devices, and the Brazilian reference middleware, Ginga. Thus it is possible to use devices services in OSGi-based Home Networks, through the Digital TV. In order to prove the model functionalities, we created validating scenarios of service management involving iDTV interaction with mobile phones and electronic sensor devices using WiFi and Bluetooth technologies.

A context-aware multi-model remote controller for electronic home devices

In the past few years, household remote control products have continuously emerged, and more equipment could be controlled at remote distance. With continuous growth in the number of home remote control devices, the number of remote controllers at home is increasing. In addition, with the increase of PC and notebook computer demands, technologies for controlling computer devices or digital home appliances within the home networks have been launched, such as UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), OSGI (Open Service Gateway Initiative), HAVI (Home Audio/Video Interoperability), and Jini. Because there are too many standards of home network, it is difficult to define a universal standard conformed to others. Many researches have focused on linking the various protocols of these devices, but most of them used the Web or PDAs to control the devices. In such situation, users must rely on computer equipment and face the battery problem of handheld devices. This study aims to develop a cross-heterogeneous network remote control system. In order to relieve the problem of excessive remote controllers, we built a context-aware multi-model remote controller for electronic home devices to relieve the user of a nuisance of enormous amount of remote controllers.

RFID-based seamless multimedia services for smart homes

As networks and technology progress, the concept of smart homes has become the main focus of major Computer, Communication and Consumer (3C) companies in recent years. To position specific mobile targets and to integrate all 3C devices in a home are the current main challenges in providing seamless multimedia services for smart homes. For these reasons, this study proposed an intelligent home network system by integrating Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) with Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) to provide a seamless video access system and household safety monitoring system.

A framework for managing the life-cycle of event-driven, embedded applications

Event-driven, embedded applications that embody the composition of many disparate components are emerging as an important class of pervasive applications. Realizing such applications often requires a breadth of expertise across many disciplines; consequently, managing the life cycle for this class of applications can be a very complex, time-intensive process. In this paper, we present a framework that eases the complexity of managing the life cycle of event-driven, embedded applications. We call this framework Rapid Integrated Solution Enablement or RISE. For solution creation, component composition and software reuse are two central concepts of RISE. Solutions in RISE are graphically composed from reusable components using a visual editor. For deployment and management of solutions, we exploit the concept of dynamic and remote deployment of components from the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi). We describe the RISE architecture and discuss our prototype implementation, which follows the model-driven methodology and leverages open source technologies, such as Eclipse. Additionally, we illustrate the efficacy of RISE with an example solution for RFID supply chain logistics.

Using management markup language for remote control of OSGi-based home server

This paper addresses building remote control of a home server based on a management markup language (MML). In this paper, we design XML-based MML as a communication language between managing and managed entities and implement a management server and a management agent for home server control in Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) infrastructure. The remote controllable entities include a bundle's life cycle, service's configuration, bundle permission, a start level of bundle, user management, user interface, log, and so on. The main feature of this implementation allows any 3rd parties to provide their management agent with OSG based home server and interoperate with other parties' solution by means of MML.

A gentle introduction to OSGi

The Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) is a framework that supports the implementation of component-based, service-oriented applications in Java. The framework man- ages the life-cycle of modules (called bundles in OSGi) and provides means to publish and search for services. Moreover, it supports the dynamic install and uninstall of bundles. Nowadays, OSGi is used in many application domains, including mobile phones, embedded devices, and application servers. In this paper, we provide a gentle introduction to the basic services provided by OSGi. The presentation is guided by a simple case study, involving the implementation of a Dictionary System.

A wrapper and broker model for collaboration between a set-top box and home service gateway

If interactive digital television (iDTV) and residential service gateway (RG) could converge, i.e. to share services and resources, add-on values could be created. We propose a wrapper (adaptor) and a broker model with cooperative interfaces and a communication mechanism to support the collaboration between instances of iDTV and RG. The proposed approach has a higher extensibility, and it is better suited to an object oriented approach. Our experimental target iDTV middleware is DVB/MHP Java Profile, and the Residential Gateway middleware is the open service gateway initiative (OSGi). The MHP and OSGi are implemented on a single Java virtual machine. The MHP application manager is wrapped as a bundle, and a broker is responsible for communication between the MHP and the OSGi. Hence, application developers do not need to know beforehand which services are on the iDTV or RG, and services are discovered dynamically.