The development of robots capable of accepting instructions in terms of familiar concepts to the user is still a challenge. For these robots to emerge it's essential the development of natural language interfaces, since this is regarded as the only interface acceptable for a machine which expected to have a high level of interactivity with Man. Our group has been involved for several years in the development of a mobile intelligent robot, named Carl, designed having in mind such tasks as serving food in a reception or acting as a host in an organization. The approach that has been followed in the design of Carl is based on an explicit concern with the integration of the major dimensions of intelligence, namely Communication, Action, Reasoning and Learning. This paper focuses on the multi-modal human-robot language communication capabilities of Carl, since these have been significantly improved during the last year.

Abstract: The increasing utilisation of QoS mechanisms creates many problems to commercial data networks. The multiplicity of requirements posed requires new and scalable approaches from the network operator. This paper discusses a

This paper describes the architecture and current capabilities of Carl, a prototype of an intelligent service robot, designed having in mind such tasks as serving food in a reception or acting as a host in an organization. The approach that has been followed in the design of Carl is based on an explicit concern with the integration of the major dimensions of intelligence, namely Communication, Action, Reasoning and Learning. The paper focuses on the multi-modal human-robot communication capabilities of Carl, since these have been significantly improved during the last year.

This paper describes the architecture and current capabilities of Carl, a prototype of an intelligent service robot, designed having in mind such tasks as serving food in a reception or acting as a host in an organization. The approach that has been .....

The increasing usage of multiple signalling mechanisms, with associated QoS extensions, creates several problems to commercial data networks. New and scalable approaches are required for the network operator to support this diversity. This paper discusses a highly flexible, scalable architecture for processing QoS Admission Control in public networks. The architecture relies on the cooperation of two different entities, an agent and a manager, with fully distributed implementation, and able to perform the required signalling, authorization, and admission control decisions. If required, the agent is capable of interfacing with different signalling mechanisms. Early implementation conclusions are also presented. This architecture is capable of operating with multiple QoS frameworks, with minimal added overhead.

Next generation wireless communication systems will need to support a wide range of services and applications across different network access technologies. This paper proposes an architecture for the evolution towards next generation All-IP networks and compares it to the traditional UMTS (Universal Mobile Terrestrial System) scenario. The signalling strategies used in both architectures, illustrated with message sequence charts, are analysed with a particular focus on the functional breakdown of tasks across the different network entities and on the interoperation between service and network level signalling required for supporting multimedia communication services with the required QoS. Although simpler than UMTS, the proposed All-IP architecture provides the flexibility to support a great diversity of applications across heterogeneous networks, and is in line with the latest trends in user requirements and expectations, providing new business opportunities to the operators.

This article presents results of an IP-based architecture for heterogeneous environments, covering UMTS-like TD-CDMA wireless access technology, wireless and wired LANs, that has been developed under

This paper describes the QoS architecture and the corresponding QoS signalling protocols to be developed inside the IST project Daidalos. We address the main results achieved in terms of the definition of the QoS components and its interfaces, the description of the application and network services, definition of the signalling scenarios for the integration of the QoS signalling with the application signalling and with mobility approaches, and specification of the intra- and inter- domain QoS control approaches. We also describe the QoS management of the system, through the Policy–based Management System, and a Real-time Network Monitoring system able to aid in admission control with the results of active and passive measurements. All the elements, interfaces and functionalities take into account multicast services and inherent broadcast networks.

Next generation wireless communication systems aim to handle diverse types of services across different types of access technologies in a seamless way. This paper proposes a next generation network architecture and evaluates possible associated signaling strategies, focusing in network-level QoS support aspects. The scenarios handled cover terminal-initiated signaling, network controlled signaling, and application-provider controlled signaling. Possible message sequence charts associated with these scenarios are presented and discussed. The paper compares the relative merits of each approach and concludes that the optimum QoS signaling solution depends on the QoS models that will be used, which are directly related to the business models chosen by the operators.

In a globally connected world filled with rich multimedia services, mobility means making the kind of services utilized independent of the access technology used. The current dependence of Technologies and Services acts as a barrier for the penetration of new markets with new products and services. Broadcast technologies such as DVB and DMB are being deployed over the world. New mobile terminals that carry two interfaces are now able to additionally connect to a broadcast network. Though these broadcast networks provide TV-like services, they lack flexibility and personalization. This paper shows how the Daidalos project has taken up these trends in terms of Mobility and Services Provisioning in a Heterogeneous Network Operator Environment towards a solution that integrates mobility and broadcast.

Next generation communication systems aim to handle diverse types of services across different types of access technologies in a seamless way. These future mobile networks, usually denoted as 4G networks, will integrate also broadcast networks, such as the TV/Radio networks. This paper presents a future 4G network architecture, based on IPv6, capable of supporting a broad range of multicast services, including multimedia services, like Video Streaming over IP networks, in addition to traditional Internet and Voice services. A architectural key first companion paper presented the elements. This paper proposes signalling scenarios for the set-up of multicast and broadcast sessions with QoS support in intra- and inter-domain scenarios, also addressing the mechanisms for the integration of current Broadcast networks in the architecture, describing a strategy that can be used to support technology.

Next generation communication systems aim to handle diverse types of services across different types of access technologies in a seamless way. These future mobile networks, usually denoted as 4G networks, will integrate also broadcast networks, such as the TV/Radio networks. This paper presents a future 4G network architecture, based on IPv6, capable of supporting a broad range of multicast services, including multimedia services, like Video Streaming over IP networks, in addition to traditional Internet and Voice services. This first part presents the key architectural elements. A second companion paper presents the signalling mechanisms required for the support of inherent broadcast networks in this architecture.

With the rapid advances in multimedia content delivery technologies and deployment of user-centric broadband infrastructures, there is an increasing challenge for efficient usage of the Internet resources and enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) support based on multicast. This paper discusses an architectural approach for provision of multicast services for content delivery on demand in the framework of converged fixed / mobile / broadcast infrastructures based on heterogeneous mobile IPv6 environment. Addressed issues include support of multicast transport protocols and mechanisms at access routers for different application requirements (reliable, streaming and real-time) considering asynchronous service requests and caching, QoS management of multicast transport for content delivery, seamless handover and selection of optimal access routers for multicast services. The concepts are based on the current state and possible enhancements of the mobile architecture developed in the European Community (EU) IST project DAIDALOS.

Keywords: Mobile communication,transport protocols

II NTRODUCTION Next generation wireless communication systems will handle diverse types of services, across different types of access technologies. This trend, already present in 3G networks and in the current explosion of

The wireless digital lifestyle comes to the expense of less privacy and security. This environment is prone to be monitored by rogue users, eager to learn from our lifestyle habits and use them for their own profit. The IP protocol provides very few mechanisms, in order to safeguard user privacy and impair efficient data-mining of user habits. This paper will address an identity architecture that makes use of both data (L2) and network (L3) layer identifiers in order to provide a pseudonimization function, based on virtual hoarding concepts. Our proposal is especially interesting when able to exploit the broadcast and promiscuous nature of wireless communications that usually is regarded as a security concern. A prototype implementation has been developed and tested.

Multimedia group communication over IP is an advanced service gaining growing interest from broadcast, fixed and mobile network operators. Next Generation Networks (NGN) will require that IP based multimedia services to be efficiently delivered to groups over heterogeneous networks with QoS. Although being acknowledged as the most efficient way of delivering group communication in packet switched networks, IP multicast still faces some problems associated with QoS that have limited its success in the past. Furthermore the nonexistence of true multicast in wireless technologies has led to an inefficient mapping between the IP and wireless layers. This paper proposes a technique for efficient dynamic mapping of IP Multicast, optimizing its usage for NGN. This technique is evaluated by a prototype on a WiFi environment.

Keywords: IP networks,mobile radio,multimedia communication,packet switching,quality of service,switching networks,wireless LAN

In the last 3 years a medium size NGN testbed was deployed at the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes of Aveiro in order to support the validation of the project IST-Daidalos. This paper intends to describe not only the work done in order to setup and maintain this testbed but also to elucidate the community of some of the caveats of creating and managing such a testbed in a environment where most of the prototypes are under specification and requirements change quickly. In this paper we also present some of the methodology used in order to extract results from this testbed and an insight to what can he done in the future.

Keywords: a4c,ad- hoc,daidalos,integration,mobility,multicast,multimedia,qos,testbed

The 3GPP consortium proposed in the release 7 of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) a Diameter interface for the resource admission communication process replacing the previous COPS solution. Although both academic and industry communities have deeply debate the advantages and disadvantages of each protocol, its impact in NGN may have not been thoroughly quantified. This paper compares both protocols in terms of messages exchanged between network entities, and of bandwidth requirements during the admission control process. Based on general network operator environment characteristics, we present several exploitation scenarios where it is analyzed the scalability and adequacy of each protocol.

Keywords: 3GPP IMS,COPS,Diameter,Network management

We describe a wireless testbed composed by 24 wireless nodes that can be used to perform a broad range of studies in the area of next generation networks. This paper addresses the difficulties and constrains faced by the authors throughout the deployment process of such testbed. Flexibility and controllability were key concerns driving the testbed design. The testbed can be remotely managed through a series of remotely accessible web services performing low-level management. Validation results are presented, showing the interference levels of the testbed as well as its maximum throughput capabilities.

This paper presents a context-aware content distribution architecture based on both a generic context framework and a service platform composed of smart service enablers which are reused by different applications. A general description of the architecture components is presented emphasising the context framework, its main features and functionalities. To prove the proposed concepts and evaluate the architecture three applications have been developed targeting different types of content and usage scenarios in Public Smart Spaces.

Keywords: adaptation,casting,content,context-aware applications have been,context-awareness,developed mainly,personalisation,pervasiveness,present the potential of,smart spaces,the proposed architecture some

Mobile Internet penetration has grown steadily over the last few years. Although most of today's users have access through their 3G Mobile Operators, there are still regions that are under-covered for various reasons. Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) can play an important role by providing the means to fully cover those underserved regions. Due to their intrinsic nature, WMN require a critical mass of nodes belonging to the mesh in order to be effective. In this paper we present a study conducted in Aveiro, Portugal which intends to draw some conclusions on the feasibility of deploying a WMN in small to medium cities based on the cooperation of its inhabitants and on off-the-shelf wireless equipment.

Keywords: Aveiro,Wireless,future Internet,location,mesh,simulation,simulations,survey,wardrive,wireless mesh networks

This paper analyzes the applicability of context-based multicast con- tent distribution (CBMCD) on the example of realistic push- and video-based mobile advertising services at a shopping centre. The technical results of the simulation of the service scenario show that CBMCD significantly reduces the number of unicast streams and the total volume of traffic in the network. The results of the financial analysis show that these technical benefits can be translated into considerable financial benefits due to costs savings. Taken together, these results suggest that CBMCD can be an efficient, cost-saving network traffic management approach and the basis for lucrative push services.

Keywords: Context Awareness,IP Multicast,Multicast Content Delivery,context awareness,ip multicast,multicast content delivery

In recent years several authors and projects have addressed the need for an architecture for collecting and managing context information. Most of the approaches have either been purely based in middlewares unable to address the heterogeneity of components and services platforms, or have been built around Web based technologies that are unable to cope with the realtime and reactiveness requirements that many context- aware use cases have. In this paper the authors propose a new Context Management Architecture able to solve these problems. Furthermore, this architecture, exploring the XMPP protocol, can be used as the basis for new developments in this area.

Keywords: Architecture,Context Awareness,Service,Service Oriented,XMPP

The evolution of telecommunications has allowed the coupling of networking features to an ever-increasing plethora of devices, enabling their connectivity and berthing of an Internet of Things (IoT). However, the assorted nature of such “things” implies disparate specifications, requirements and interfacing, for interaction with high-level decision modules, services and agents involved in the most distinct kind of scenarios. The joint operation of all networkable things in a truly integrated IoT vision requires a flexible framework able to facilitate interfacing with different elements and concepts. In this paper we present a framework that builds over the concept of Media Independence, further enhancing it to encompass the abstraction of different “things”, by providing the means for accessing their different interfacing procedures. We highlight the feasibility and flexibility of this framework by introducing it into an IoT scenario, enabling a flexible way for interface retrieval and control of different entities, paving the way for a truly universal and dynamic connectivity vision.

Keywords: 802.21,IoT,Sensors

The evolution on ambient intelligence technologies, such as sensor networks, propelled a universe of very diverse types of both data and hardware equipment creating one of the most heterogeneous network environments. This diversity brings to light the main issue we aim to address in this paper: the need for a common ground that enables communications between the different heterogeneous equipments and technologies. Starting from the well-established IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover standard, we propose its mechanisms and structure to be extended to provide the needed common ground for communication in ambient intelligence scenarios. In this work, we extend 802.21 to include sensor information, enabling different types of equipment and network technologies to communicate with each other under a common standard contributing to a truly heterogeneous network framework. To conclude, we address its viability through a comparison with other known solutions for communication on sensing devices.

Keywords: 802.21,sensors

With the ubiquity and pervasiveness of mobile com- puting, together with the increasing number of social networks, end-users have learned to live and share all kinds of information about themselves. As an example, Facebook reports that it has currently 500 million active users, 200 million of which access its services on mobile systems; moreover, users that access Facebook through mobile applications are twice as active as non-mobile users, and it is used by 200 mobile operators in 60 countries [1]. More specific mobile platforms such as Foursquare, which unlike Facebook only collects location information, reports 6.5 million users worldwide, and also has a mobile presence (both with a web application and iPhone / Android applications) [2]. Context- aware architectures intend to explore this increasing number of context information sources and provide richer, targeted services to end-users, while also taking into account arising privacy issues. While multiple context management platform architectures have been devised [3], this paper focuses primarily on Context- Broker-based architectures, such as the ones proposed in the projects Mobilife [4] and C-Cast [5]. More specifically, it focuses on the context management platform XCoA [6]. This platform uses XMPP for its main communication protocol, and publishes context information in a Context-Broker. This context informa- tion is provided by Context-Agents, such as mobile terminals, sensor networks and social networks. Due to the nature of the XMPP protocol, the context information is provided in XML form. This paper proposes the usage of a NoSQL storage system for the purpose of context information storage and retrieval in an XMPP broker-based context platform such as XCoA, together with a full-text searching engine. Through a comparison made through prototypes, the paper clearly demonstrates the advantages of NoSQL storage systems applied to the area of Context Management.

Keywords: Context Management,noSQL

Sensor networks, along with the sensorial output from their nodes, provide an information source to enhance and enrich upper layers mechanisms. The 802.21 MIH protocol provides a cross layer framework that can be extended for sensor information transport. At the same time, it creates an abstraction layer that removes hardware and software specificity from sensor nodes. On a higher level of the network stack, the XMPP protocol also provides an upper layer solution for content syndication on a platform with global access availability. We present a framework which integrates a cross-layer abstraction approach towards sensor devices of different families, while enabling the integration of media-independent sensor information into context consumers with the aim of optimizing network management, as well as application operation and usability. The work presented was also part of the first author's MsC dissertation.

Keywords: Adaptation,Context Management,Context-Awareness,IEEE 802.21,Media Independent Handovers,Mobile Terminal,Sensor networks,mobility

The integration of the digital world into every aspect of our lives is becoming more and more preeminent. Nowadays, not only humans but also devices and the environments where we dwell are also able to provide their own information, through the usage of sensors. Through their interconnection over communication networks, sensors enable Ambient Intelligent scenarios achieving a true Internet of Things, and crossing the gap between computer systems and the real world. However, the different sensing devices and information generated by them, are of such disparate nature that it becomes increasingly difficult to access and make use of such heterogeneous data. In this paper, we propose a framework which not only considers a media independent information access to sensors and their supplied data, but is also flexible enough to configure and provide different means to best transport collected sensor information via wireless gateways, facilitating its deployment in different scenarios. We demonstrate its usefulness by providing a throughput efficient approach towards the collection and dissemination of sensing data, through sensing information compression and aggregation of multiple sources.

The wide deployment of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) we are witnessing today increases connectivity opportunities for mobile terminal devices, such as smartphones. However, continuous scanning for WLAN points of attachment can be a power exhausting mechanism for such battery-powered devices. These mobile devices, besides being equipped with different wireless access interfaces, are also coupled with sensors such as accelerometer, GPS, luminance and magnetic compass. In fact, sensors are increasingly being coupled into different devices and environments and are able to convey sensing information through networks into decision entities able to optimize different processes. In this paper we propose a framework where media independent sensing information is used to enhance wireless link management towards energy-efficiency. This framework enables the dissemination of sensing information towards local and remote decision entities, enhancing other processes (e.g. mobility) with sensing information in order to provide true Ambient Intelligence scenarios. We introduce this framework into a wireless management scenario able to provide energy-efficient optimal network connectivity.

Keywords: Ambient Intelligence,Energy-Efficient,IoT,Sensors,Wireless Activation,Wireless Local Area Networks

The past few years, miniaturization has allowed usto imbue computers into everyday devices. This in turn hasenabled these devices to communicate with each other, and in doing so, allows us to collect a wealth of information, moreaccurately and with greater availability than ever before. Thisphenomenon is known as the Internet of Things. It allows smart environments to truly behave in an intelligent manner by using information collected from the devices mentioned above. However, it's necessary to model how the gathered data will influence the behavior of a smart environment. This open problem can be approached as a machine to machine (M2M) orchestration.In this paper we present a new architecture for M2Morchestration. This new architecture will be based around aplatform that creates orchestration processes through a graphical interface. Through this interface a business process execution language (BPEL) service will be made and deployed on an enterprise service bus (ESB). Alongside this, we are also developing a collection of services that will be used for the purposes of implementing a smart environment.

Keywords: M2M

With the increasing amount of mobile interfaces combining different kinds of access technologies, ranging from Wi-Fi to 3G and LTE, the integration of flexible and mediaindependent link control mechanisms becomes of paramount importance. By employing an abstract way of obtaining access link status information and exercising control over the network interface operations, these control mechanisms become able to optimize device connectivity and network attachment. This paper presents EMICOM, an Enhanced Media Independent COnnection Manager framework where a GNU/Linux Network Manager and Link Service Access Points for the IEEE 802.3 and 802.11 technologies were implemented and integrated through crosslayer Media Independent Handover (MIH) mechanisms from the IEEE 802.21 standard. Through an open-source implementation of the framework, the (MIH) command set capabilities are extended, allowing the support of network association and authentication, as well as Layer 3 services such as IP configuration, providing a generic solution for optimal network connectivity management.

Keywords: 802.21,link layer,network manager

A brave new world made of interconnected smart devices will soon revolutionize the world. The application of the Internet of Things vision will foster the creation of new businesses across different industrial sectors. Communication Service Providers need to set the pace of this change if they want to lead this transformation. They need to both leverage and evolve their architectures in order to support a flexible creation of innovative services over distributed networks, linking heterogeneous sensors and actuators. This paper presents the roles of the telecoms on the upcoming machine-to-machine markets and devises an advanced architecture able to withstand the demands of a new plethora of evermore clever and useful services.

Keywords: M2M

Cloud Computing provides computing resources, middleware and (web-based) software on an on-demand basis. This model helps customers saving costs and allows access to the latest technology. With the exponential growth of IT companies offering cloud services, deploying applications to the cloud has become a complex task to engage. Almost each and every provider has its own terminology, providers do not share the same (or even similar) API, and costs of operation greatly diverge according to provider, region or availability. This paper propounds a Cloud Service Broker (CSB), and describes an early prototype, where users are, intelligently and autonomously, aid to deploy, manage, monitor and migrate their applications in a cloud of clouds. A single API is required to orchestrate the whole process in tandem with two truly decoupled managers: a Platform as a Service Manager (PaaS Manager) and an Infrastructure as Service Manager (Iaas Manager). Users also interact with the CSB through a Web portal and a command-line interface.

Keywords: Cloud Interoperability,Cloud Service Broker,IaaS,PaaS,SOA

Future pervasive environments will take into consideration not only individual users' interest, but also social relationships. In today's scenarios, the trend is to make use of collective intelligence, where the interpretation of context information can be harnessed as input for pervasive systems. Therefore, social CSCW applications represent new challenges and possibilities in terms of use of group context information for adaptability and personalization in pervasive computing. The objective of this paper is to present two enterprise scenarios that support collaboration and adaption capabilities through pervasive communities combined with social computing. Collaborative applications integrated with pervasive communities can increase the activity's quality of the end user in a wide variety of tasks.

Keywords: Communities,context-aware groups,enterprise 2.0,pervasive computing,social network

The utilization of Media Independent Handover (MIH) mechanisms, such as the ones provided by the IEEE802.21 standard, allow the abstraction of control and information querying primitives of different wireless access technologies, using a common interface. This not only simplifies the design of high-level entities interfacing with said technologies, but by providing a transport protocol for that interface, such primitives can be used to extend controlling mechanisms towards remote entities. However, the standard only employs such flexible and abstraction capabilities towards handover optimization and facilitation scenarios. In this paper, we take advantage of the flexible design of the MIH mechanisms, and propose evolutions over their base design, allowing their integration into the areas of Internet Multimedia Optimization and the Internet of Things.

As personal information and context sharing applications gain traction more attention is drawn to the associated privacy issues. These applications address privacy using an unsatisfactory {"}whitelist{"} approach [1] [2], similar to social networks {"}friends{"}. Some of them also link location publishing with user interaction which is also a form of privacy control - the user has to explicitly say where he is. There are a few automatic location based-services (LBS) that track the user [3], but without more adequate privacy protection mechanisms they enable even bigger threats to the user. On previous work, an XMPP-based Context Distribution Architecture was defined [4], more suitable for the distribution of frequently changing context than other systems because it is based on the publish-subscribe pattern. In this paper the authors present an extension to this architecture that allows for the introduction of a complex degree of access control in context distribution. The devised changes enable the system to consider a number of interesting context privacy settings [1] for context distribution control. Also, this control must be enforced in a way that it doesn't interfere with the real-time nature of the distribution process. After describing the enhancements to the architecture, a prototype of the system is presented. Finally, the delivery latency and additional processing introduced by the access control components is estimated by testing it against the existing system.

Keywords: access contol,context,latency,privacy

Experimental testbeds for evaluating solutions in computer net- works, are today required as a complement to simulation and emu- lation. As these testbeds become larger, and accessible to a broader universe of the research community, dedicated management tools become mandatory. These tools ease the complex management of the testbed specific resources, while providing an environment for researchers to define their experiments with large flexibility. While there are currently several management tools, the research commu- nity is still lacking tools that smooth the experimentation workflow. These were key aspects that we considered when developing the management infrastructure for our wireless testbed[4] (AMazING). We developed a experimentation support framework supported by an attractive GUI, automation and scripting capabilities, as well as experiment versioning and integrated result gathering and analysis.

Keywords: experimentation,network,omf,orbit,testbed,web,wireless

The Internet, and networks in general, are in many ways part of our daily life. As their usage increases, their faults and limita- tions also become more apparent, motivating network researchers to evaluate and develop new solutions anticipating future scenar- ios and overcoming the challenges identified. These challenges vary across a wide range of networking areas, from traffic opti- mization in telecom operators, to scalability in wide area networks and broadband multimedia streaming, or even to the contextualiza- tion of communications in order to optimize usage. For researchers to create reliable network solutions, able to be included in our ev- ery day life, these solutions must be carefully designed, tested, and then put into a cycle of successive refinement. Currently, there are some testbed management systems available. The core of most existent solutions can be reduced to a couple of shell scripts to operate the testbed resources, without the proper support for experiment automation. Running experiments is thus possible and flexible, but cumbersome, labor intensive, and error prone. The existent solutions lack proper graphical interfaces fa- cilitating user interaction, while centralizing the whole process of configuring experiments, reserving resources, scheduling, and col- lecting its results. Furthermore, collaboration of multiple parties is vital in the current research environment. Experiment results must be shared with a closed number of peers in order to allow a better analysis and a more solid validation inside research terms.

Keywords: and networks in general,are in many ways,as their usage increases,experimentation,network,of our daily life,omf,part,testbed,the internet,their faults and limita-,web,wireless

Future pervasive environments will take into consideration physical and digital social relations. Nowadays it is important use to collective intelligence, where the interpretation of context information can be harnessed as input for context-aware applications, especially for group collaboration. The use of collective intelligence represents new possibilities but also new challenges in terms of collective information for adaptability and personalization in intelligent environments. This paper presents a collaborative context-aware framework focusing on social matching capabilities for session formation in collaborative activities.

Future pervasive environments will take into consideration physical and digital social relationships. Nowadays it is important to use collective intelligence, where the interpretation of context information can be harnessed as input for context-aware applications, especially for group collaboration. For collaborative applications this represents opportunities, but also new challenges in terms of using collective information for adaptability and personalization in pervasive environments. This paper presents the challenges in design and development of a context-aware framework CSCW supporting pro-behaviour capabilities in pervasive communities.

Keywords: CSCW,Cooperation,Pervasive computing,Social computing,cooperation,social computing

Smart environments are physical places that are richly and invisibly populated with sensors, actuators and computational elements. The objective of such environments is to adapt themselves to its users in order to increase their comfort and usefulness. This paper proposes a platform, named APOLLO, capable of inferring behaviour rules from a smart environment and apply them to provide an intelligent space. The APOLLO platform is built upon a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), in which collected context information is used to infer behaviour rules though statistical and machine learning techniques. The proposed platform is to be deployed in a home automation scenario.

Keywords: SOA,Smart environments,knowledge extraction,machine learning

Many organizations rely on a heterogeneous set of applications in virtual environment to deliver critical services to their customers. Different workloads utilize system resources at different levels. Depending on the resource utilization pattern some workloads may be better suited for hosting on a virtual platform. This paper discusses a novel framework for benchmarking the performance of Oracle database workloads such as Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), Web load and Email on two different hypervisors. Further, Design of Experiments (DoE) is used to identify the significance of input parameters, and their overall effect on two hypervisors, which provides a quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis to customers with high degree of accuracy to choose the right hypervisor for their workload in datacenters.

Although many environments are powered by M2M solutions, users do not have a simple way to gather their collective knowledge and program devices' behaviour. Also, Telco providers still lack proper components for enabling integrated services over their networks. We present the final architecture of the APOLLO project, which delivers a enhanced M2M platform encompassing sensors, management and applications platform for a major Telco provider. APOLLO builds on top of ETSI M2M specifications and rich service execution environments providing easy orchestration of services to end-users.

Keywords: IoS,IoT,M2M,Service Orchestration,Telco,apollo

Social networks have recently emerged to become vital tools for information and content dissemination among connections. Indeed, the immense increase of number of users of Facebook made it rise to become the largest existing social network with more than 1.2 billion active users. However, these numbers also rose the attention of hackers and attackers who aim at propagating malware and viruses for obtaining confidential information regarding social network users. In this manner, it is crucial that each Facebook user is able to easily access, control and analyse the information shared on the corresponding profile so that profile usage deviations can be more efficiently detected. However, despite the fact that Facebook allows an analysis of all user actions through the Timeline Review, this information is not comprehensively organized and there is no statistical analysis of the user generated data. In this paper, we propose a novel framework comprising a Facebook event collector, which by being provided with an authentication token for a user profile obtained through a Facebook application developed for this purpose, collects all the corresponding posted information and stores it in a relational database for \textit{a posteriori} analysis. Through the graphical interface of the developed application, users can access all stored information in a comprehensible manner, according to the type of event, thus facilitating the analysis of user behaviour. By storing each event with the corresponding timestamp, we are able to perform an efficient and comprehensive analysis of all posted contents and compute statistical models over the obtained data. In this manner, we can create a notion of normal usage profile and detect possible deviations which may be indicative of a compromised user account.

Keywords: Analytical models,Authentication,Computational modeling,Databases,Facebook,Facebook event collector framework,Monitoring,Monitoring Framework,Profile Hijack,Profile Hijack.,Social networks,Timeline Review,User Behavi,User Behaviour Modelling,authentication token,computer viruses,content dissemination,graphical interface,graphical user interfaces,information dissemination,malware,normal usage profile,posted content analysis,profile monitoring purposes,profile usage deviations,relational database,relational databases,social networking (online),social networks,statistical analysis,statistical models,viruses

The proliferation of user-owned connected devices has brought value to mobile application developers, which can make use of locally-available sensors and capabilities and send their information to the web, centralizing the data flows. A more distributed approach would have device capabilities offered directly on the network as services hosted by the user. These pervasive user-hosted services could be made discoverable and available over a public federated service infrastructure. The infrastructure would provide transport over an identity layer, where endpoints are addressed by their identities instead of network identifiers, and on top of which services can be exposed to be consumed by trusted friends or anonymous users, as the hosting user prefers. The work presented in this paper explores the possibility of implementing such a distributed social Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) over Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). This SOA, which would expose re-usable coarse-grained software components in a service ecosystem, differs from traditional SOA because it attempts to counter the centralization existing services, in favour of a fully-distributed service ecosystem where each peer can behave both as service consumer and provider. Finally, an analysis is done on how suitable XMPP is to serve as a base protocol for such infrastructure.

Keywords: Distributed computing,Method of moments,Middleware,Payloads,Protocols,Service-oriented architecture,Simple object access protocol,Software architecture,Web services,XML,XMPP,data flows,device capabilities,distributed social service-oriented architecture,extensible messaging-and-presence protocol,fully-distributed service ecosystem,identity layer,locally-available sensors,middleware,mobile application,mobile computing,pervasive user-hosted services,protocols,public federated service infrastructure,reusable coarse-grained software components,security of data,service-oriented architecture,software architecture,software reusability,user-hosted SOA infrastructure,user-owned connected devices

As the number of environmental sensors grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage, store and process all these sources of information. Several context representation schemes try to standardize this information, however none of them have been widely adopted. Instead of proposing yet another context representation scheme, we discuss efficient ways to deal with this diversity of representation schemes. We defined the basic requirements for flexible context storage systems, proposed an implementation and compared our implementation against two other approaches. Our solution provides more value than the remaining solutions without suffering a significant decrease in performance.

Keywords: Internet of things,M2M,context information

In recent years the Internet has grown by incorporating billions of small devices, collecting real-world information and distributing it though various systems. As the number of such devices grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage all these new information sources. Several context representation schemes have tried to standardize this information, however none of them have been widely adopted. Instead of proposing yet another context representation scheme, we discuss an efficient way to deal with this diversity of representation schemes. We define the basic requirements for context storage systems, analyse context organizations models and propose a new context storage solution. Our solution implements an organizational model that improves scalability, semantic extraction and minimizes semantic ambiguity.

Keywords: Context,Context modeling,Indexes,Information retrieval,Internet of things,M2M,Semantics,Sensors,context information

Keywords: Context,Context modeling,Information retrieval,Internet of things,M2M,Mathematical model,Organizations,Semantics,Sensors,context information

Sharing live experiences in social networks is agrowing trend. That includes posting comments and sentimentsabout TV programs. Automatic detection of messages withcontents related to TV opens new opportunities for the industryof entertainment information.This paper describes a system that detects TV highlights in oneof the most important social networks - Twitter. Combining Twit-ter's messages and information from an Electronic ProgrammingGuide (EPG) enriched with external metadata we built a modelthat matches tweets with TV programs with an accuracy over80%. Our model required the construction of semantic profilesfor the Portuguese language. These semantic profiles are usedto identify the most representative tweets as highlights of a TVprogram. Measuring semantic similarity with those tweets it ispossible to gather other messages within the same context. Thisstrategy improves the recall of the detection. In addition wedeveloped a method to automatically gather other related webresources, namely Youtube videos. TVPulse: Improvements on detecting TV highlights in Social Networks using metadata and semantic similarity. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284162175_TVPulse_Improvements_on_detecting_TV_highlights_in_Social_Networks_using_metadata_and_semantic_similarity [accessed Feb 23, 2016].

Sharing live experiences in social networks is a growing trend. That includes posting comments and sentiments about TV programs. Automatic detection of messages with contents related to TV allows a numerous quantity of applications in the industry of entertainment information. This paper describes a system that is capable of detecting TV highlights in one of the most important social networks - Twitter. Combining Twitter's messages and information from an Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) we built a model that matches tweets with TV programs with an accuracy over 80%. Our model required the construction of semantic profiles for the Portuguese language. These semantic profiles are used to identify the most representative tweets as highlights of a TV program. Far from finished, we intend to further develop our system to take advantage of external metadata in order to improve matching rates.

In recent years the technological world has grown by incorporating billions of small sensing devices, collecting and sharing real-world information. As the number of such devices grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage all these new information sources. There is no uniform way to share, process and understand context information. In previous publications we discussed efficient ways to organize context information that is independent of structure and representation. However, our previous solution suffers from semantic sensitivity. In this paper we review semantic methods that can be used to minimize this issue, and propose an unsupervised semantic similarity solution that combines distributional profiles with public web services. Our solution was evaluated against Miller-Charles dataset, achieving a correlation of 0.6.

Although many environments are powered by smart solutions, users do not have a simple way to gather their collective knowledge and program devices' behaviour. Telecommunication (Telco) providers wish to act as the facilitator, but still lack proper components for enabling integrated services over their networks, even though this work is already in active standardisation. In this work we present the architecture of a IoT solution developed in close collaboration with Telco providers, its evolution, which we call SCoT (Smart Cloud of Things), and the best practices from the several pilots we have been running. The architecture builds upon ETSI standards, combined with a rich service execution environment, providing facilitated orchestration of services and devices, as well as integrated portals for end users access.

The number of connected devices collecting and distributing real-world information through various systems, is expected to soar in the coming years. As the number of such connected devices grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to store and share all these new sources of information. Several context representation schemes try to standardize this information, but none of them have been widely adopted. In previous work we addressed this challenge, however our solution had some drawbacks: poor semantic extraction and scalability. In this paper we discuss ways to efficiently deal with representation schemes' diversity and propose a novel d-dimension organization model. Our evaluation shows that d-dimension model improves scalability and semantic extraction.

Keywords: Context information,IoT,M2M

© 2016 IEEE. In recent years the technological world has grown by incorporating billions of small sensing devices, collecting and sharing real-world information. As the number of such devices grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage all these new information sources. There is no uniform way to share, process and understand context information. It is our personal belief that IoT and M2M scenarios will only achieve their full potential when all the devices will work and learn together without human interaction. In this paper we review the most relevant semantic metrics and propose a new unsupervised model that minimizes sense-conflation problem. Our solution was evaluated against Miller-Charles dataset, outperforming our previous work in every metric.

Keywords: Context information,IoT,M2M,Semantic similarity

Copyright © 2017 by SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved. The increasing number of small, cheap devices full of sensing capabilities lead to an untapped source of information that can be explored to improve and optimize several systems. Yet, as this number grows it becomes increasingly difficult to manage and organize all this new information. The lack of a standard context representation scheme is one of the main difficulties in this research area (Antunes et al., 2016b). With this in mind we propose a stream characterization model which aims to provide the foundations of a new stream similarity metric. Complementing previous work on context organization, we aim to provide an automatic organizational model without enforcing specific representations.

Keywords: Context awareness,IoT,M2M,Machine learning,Stream mining

© 2017 IEEE. Despite many Internet of Things (IoT) Infrastructures having been implemented in recent years, none of them is truly prepared for a global deployment, where failure tolerance and scalability are an essential requirement. This article presents an alternative concept for IoT Infrastructures, which focuses on enhancing the traditional centralized architecture, usually operated by a single entity, into a decentralized architecture featuring multiple business roles. We propose a dynamic and self-configurable infrastructure on top of a structured Peer-to-Peer network. In addition, a set of communication protocols are provided in order to support heterogeneous devices, as well as data access, streaming and persistence. It is also an important focus of our proposal to have mechanisms that guarantee the privacy and security of the information flow and storage.

Keywords: Infrastructures,IoT,P2P,Privacy,Security

The increasing number of small, cheap devices full of sensing capabilities lead to an untapped source of information that can be explored to improve and optimize several systems. Yet, as this number grows it becomes increasingly difficult to manage and organize all this new information. The lack of a standard context representation scheme is one of the main difficulties in this research area. With this in mind we propose a tailored generative stream model, with two main uses: stream similarity and generation. Sensor data can be organized based on pattern similarity, that can be estimated using the proposed model. The proposed stream model will be used in conjunction with our context organization model, in which we aim to provide an automatic organizational model without enforcing specific representations. Moreover, the model can be used to generate streams in a controlled environment. Useful for validating, evaluating and testing any platform that deals with IoT/M2M devices.

© 2017 IEEE. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a very promising concept that by connecting numerous devices to the internet and extracting large sums of information (BigData) can enable the realisation of various futuristic scenarios. In order to develop and assess future applications and services, it is necessary the availability of datasets that can be used to train, test and cross validate. Project SCoT (Smart Cloud of Things) has developed an M2M platform capable of collecting information from heterogeneous devices and collide that information in a large data repository. During its pilot phase, the project made the assessment of the road conditions in the region of Aveiro, Portugal. In this work we make the dataset used on the previous mentioned pilot publicly available. With this dataset our road assessment algorithm reached 80% accuracy in the task of pothole detection, other scenarios (that take into account vehicular speed, position and acceleration) can also be explored. The dataset was not pre-processed in anyway, the only transformation was made to protect the identity of the volunteers.

Keywords: Dataset,IoT,M2M,Machine Learning

PASMO is a regional project aiming to bridge the gap between research and practice in the area of urban mobility support. It covers key access roads to the seaside villages of the Aveiro/Ilhavo region, in the center of Portugal, providing vehicular communications, regular WiFi access, and a myriad of useful mobility services (parking, bikes, jams, weather) under the umbrella of a smart region infrastructure dedicated to simply the involvement of industry in testing and developing new services.The infrastructure is currently being deployed, and the services will be operational by mid 2018.

Keywords: Intelligent Transport Systems,Living lab,Smart m

The evergrowing number of small devices with sensing capabilities produce massive amounts of diverse data. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage all these new data sources. Currently, there is no single way to represent, share, and understand IoT data, leading to information silos that hinder the realization of complex IoT/M2M scenarios. IoT/M2M scenarios will only achieve their full potential when the devices become intelligent: communicate, work and learn together with minimal human intervention. Pursuing these goals, we developed methods to estimate semantic similarity based on distributional profiles. Cluster algorithms were used to learn semantic categories and improve the model accuracy. In this paper, we discuss the impact of the clustering algorithm and respective heuristic to estimate input parameters for the task of learning semantic categories. Our evaluation has shown that K-means combined with silhouette methods achieved the higher result.

The existence of abnormal values in data sets of day-today actions is common. Usually denoted as outliers, these values are frequently excluded from the dataset. However, in fraud detection, disease diagnosis and other areas, outliers can often add relevant knowledge. In this paper, we present an application of a methodology to detect out-liers in multivariate time series by translating the multi-type variables into textual data (strings). After that, conventional classification algorithms can be applied to identify outliers. An application is performed into a real dataset extracted from the energy field. The proposed method was evaluated using a dataset that represents boiler operations and the main goal is to identify their faults. A major part of the work concerns the dataset processing steps that enable the application of common machine learning algorithms. It is worth mentioning that, besides the boiler malfunctions, normal operation cycles were also identified. We aim to improve the real-time fault identification of the operating devices allowing safer appliances.

Keywords: Machine Learning,Multivariate Time Series,Outlier Prediction

Estimating the knee/elbow point in error curves is a challenging task. However, most of the time these points represent ideal compromises or ideal parameters for several tasks, methods and algorithms. Our focus is determining the ideal number of clusters autonomously. In this paper, we formalize the notion of knee/elbow point, discuss known methods to determine it and propose our own method. Contrary to most methods, ours is resilient to long tails in the error curve. This behaviour is especially important when considering autonomous methods. The proposed method outperformed the competition on five datasets from UCI Machine Learning Repository.

In this paper, we propose an architecture based on NFV and SDN which allows to balance traffic analysis techniques using a Classifier. It steers flows to the appropriate Service Function Chaining (to open traffic or not) according to network requirements (such as, effectiveness, flexibility, scalability, performance, and privacy). The SSL/TLS traffic processing is carried-out by the centerpiece of this work, the SFC-enabled MITM. A Proof-of-Concept was conducted (focusing on our SFC-enabled MITM) which showed that functionalities lost due to encryption (Content Optimization, Caching, Network Anti-virus, and Content Filter) were recovered when processing opened traffic within its Service Function Chains. We also evaluated its impact on performance. The results show that cipher suite overhead plays a role but can be mitigated, the Classifier can alleviate the performance overhead of different traffic analysis techniques, network functions have lower impact to performance, and Service Function Chaining length influences page load time.

Estimating the knee/elbow point in curves is a challenging task. However, most of the time these points represent ideal compromises for parameters, methods and algorithms. Nowadays several IoT and M2M scenarios require autonomous systems that optimize themselves with minimal human intervention. Thus, knee/elbow estimation has become an important research area. Our focus is determining the ideal number of clusters autonomously. In this paper, we formalize the notion of knee/elbow point based on continuous curvature function and propose two theoretical methods based on the same function. We analyse and discuss well-known knee/elbow estimators and propose our own method. Contrary to most methods, ours is resilient to long tails in the curve. We also propose an iterative refinement method to increase the resilience to long heads. All the previously mentioned methods were implemented (and are publicly available) and evaluated against eight datasets. The proposed method is a viable stable solution for knee/elbow estimation.

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. The technological world has grown by incorporating billions of small sensing devices, collecting and sharing huge amounts of diversified data. As the number of such devices grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage all these new data sources. Currently there is no uniform way to represent, share, and understand IoT data, leading to information silos that hinder the realization of complex IoT/M2M scenarios. IoT/M2M scenarios will only achieve their full potential when the devices work and learn together with minimal human intervention. In this paper we discuss the limitations of current storage and analytical solutions, point the advantages of semantic approaches for context organization and extend our unsupervised model to learn word categories automatically. Our solution was evaluated against Miller-Charles dataset and a IoT semantic dataset extracted from a popular IoT platform, achieving a correlation of 0.63.

Keywords: Context information,IoT,M2M,Semantic similarity

The heterogeneity of 5G requirements commands more complex network architectures, imposing the need for network orchestration. ETSI MANO is the standard which defines a common framework for vendors and operators to integrate their orchestration efforts. In this paper, we evaluated how an ETSI MANO compliant orchestrator (OSM) fares while orchestrating an SFC-enabled SSL/TLS encrypted traffic processing architecture, which supports both edge and cloud deployments. A quantitative evaluation was carried-out, which assessed the responsiveness and overheads of OSM, as well as the actual functionality of our SSL/TLS processing architecture (with edge computing components). A qualitative evaluation was also carried-out, providing insight into the maturity of the current OSM release, what works well, what requires workarounds, and the actual limitations. A demonstration of the architecture evaluated in this work was accepted as a contribution to the ETSI OSM PoC Framework.

The increasing number of small, cheap devices full of sensing capabilities lead to an untapped source of information that can be explored to improve and optimize several systems. Yet, hand in hand with this growth goes the increasing difficulty to manage and organize all this new information. In fact, it becomes increasingly difficult to properly evaluate IoT and M2M context-aware platforms. Currently, these platforms use advanced machine learning algorithms to improve and optimize several processes. Having the ability to test them for a long time in a controlled environment is extremely important. In this paper, we discuss two distinct methods to generate a data stream from a small real-world dataset. The first model relies on first order Markov chains, while the second is based on GANs. Our preliminiar evalution shows that both achieve sufficient resolution for most real-world scenarios.

The fact that most IoT solutions are provided by 3rd-parties, along with the pervasiveness of the collected data, raises privacy and security concerns. There is a need to verify which data is being sent to the 3rd-party, as well as preventing those channels from becoming an exploitation avenue. We propose to use existing API definition languages to create contracts which define the data that can be transmitted, in what format, and with which constraints. To verify the compliance with these contracts, we propose a converging "Multi-Access Edge Computing" architecture which validates RESTalike API requests/responses against a Swagger schema. We deal with encrypted traffic using an SFC-enabled Man-in-the-Middle, allowing us to do verifications in "real-time". We devised a Proof of Concept and shown that we were able to detect (and stop) contract violations.

The recent expansion of metrification on a daily basis has led to the production of massive quantities of data, which in many cases correspond to time series. To streamline the discovery and sharing of meaningful information within time series, a multitude of analysis software tools were developed. However, these tools lack appropriate mechanisms to handle massive time series data sets and large quantities of simultaneous requests, as well as suitable visual representations for annotated data. We propose a distributed, scalable, secure and high-performant architecture that allows a group of researchers to curate a mutual knowledge base deployed over a network and to annotate patterns while preventing data loss from overlapping contributions or unsanctioned changes. Analysts can share annotation projects with peers over a reactive web interface with a customizable workspace. Annotations can express meaning not only over a segment of time but also over a subset of the series that coexist in the same segment. In order to reduce visual clutter and improve readability, we propose a novel visual encoding where annotations are rendered as arcs traced only over the affected curves. The performance of the prototype under different architectural approaches was benchmarked.

Heating appliances such as HVAC systems consume around 48% of the energy power spent on household appliances every year. With this in mind, it is relevant to increase the efficiency of those solutions. Moreover, a malfunctioning device can increase this value even further. Thus, there is a need to develop methods that allow the identification of eventual failures before they occur. This is only achievable when services capable of analyzing data, interpret it and obtaining knowledge from it, are created. This paper presents an infrastructure that supports the inspection of failure detection in boilers, making viable to forecast faults and errors. A major part of the work is data analysis and the creation of procedures that can process it. The main goal is creating an efficient system able to identify, predict and notify the occurrence of failure events. Our fundamental contribution is the possibility to scale the system to others datasets, being able to resolve different Big Data issues.