Vision and Challenges for Realising the Internet of Things

NDEI-
Service
InformationBrokerage
Awareness
Reactivity
Situational
Interaction
Ubiquitous
Notification
Table 4.2-2: Services for realising a Networked Devices Enabled Intelligence.
Key Capabilities Communication Autonomy Security
Context based
access rights
Call-back access
Self-diagnosis
Sensor integration
Tracking encountered
devices
Event-based operation
Detection/ analysis
of events
Networked Devices
based user
interface
Network knowledge
retrieval
Satellite communication
Self-localisation
Assuring transparent
access between
services on application
layer.
Coordination of
monitoring via a
network of master
nodes
Virtualisation of
devices to actively
represent passive
hardware behaviour
Managing diversity
of network nodes
using characteristics
and functionalities
of available peers
Satellite multicast
and mesh based
transparent communicationchannels
Decoupled generation
of access rights,
routing details and
content encapsulation
Distributed and
decoupled event
stream processing
and monitoring
Coordinating running
components &
generation of functionality;considering
functionality
routing
Autonomous selection
of appropriate/
optimal peers to
fulfil context related
requirements
Identification of
communication
requirements.
Multilevel authorisation,
intersecting
domains and decentralised
access
rights revocation
Actor & device authentication
and
authorisation;
linked local name
spaces
Certificate based
authentication and
verification of remote
and mobile
agents
Assuring integrity
and confidentiality
of exchanged data
and communication
Decentralised authentication
From a software engineering perspective the application layer related functionality for assuring
an autonomous behaviour within decentralised and decoupled infrastructures, will mainly
be based on a multi-agent platform. Instances of such platforms deployed on distributed devices
will be able to transparently connect via the communication platform, that covers the
transport layer functionality, providing so-called binding components. Finally security framework
as integral part will enable the separation of information and communication amongst
NDEI devices into protected domains within the supply chain.
Envisaged functionality will be provided by both software agents as well as software services.
Therefore, the runtime environment needs also support the combination of both technologies.
While an agent and agent platform can quite easily cope with the characteristics of a software
service, a service execution environment is lacking the ability to coordinate agent related functionality.
Therefore, it is still being researched how to realise a type of a service integration
framework that will mediate between the agent and the service world.
A concept for a controlled storage area (CSA) is applied for facilitating the distributed and
decentralised data-exchange between systems. Actors can put their own data in a CSA which is
also available for access by other agents. In addition, other agents can be permitted to store
data in the CSA as well. This approach enables data-exchange between actors without directly
exposing their existing systems.
CERP-IoT – Cluster of European Research Projects on the Internet of Things
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