Development of a Service Oriented Middleware for Real-Time Applications on Pervasive Networks-SORAPNet

Recent innovations in networking technology have dramatically expanded their applicability in day-to-day life. We believe, this development will have the most dramatic impact on real-time applications. The applications that were thought to be impossible a decade ago have now become possible. For example, real-time management and monitoring of natural disasters such as earth quacks, flooding, terrorism and epidemic disease spread should definitely benefit from these developments. Other real-time applications may be classified as mission based applications such as crop health, factory operation and social behavior monitoring can also benefit.

The above mentioned applications and other possible future applications require interaction and communication between different entities, anytime anywhere and under any adverse situation. For example, interaction between a sink and the sensor nodes in a Wireless Sensor Actor Network (WSAN) gives us a picture of the environment, in response to natural disasters. Obviously pervasiveness of the networking infrastructure is a must for such application domains. This will imply the employment of fixed and mobile stations on integrated wired as well as wireless communication mediums. Particularly, mobility and wireless aspect brings energy conservation forward as a critical resource that need to be used with higher efficiency. To acieve pervasiveness for real-time application envoronments, new communication protocols and new interaction interfaces are required at both application and system levels.

The main objective of this project is the development of a Service Oriented Middleware for generic Real-time Applications on Pervasive Networks, hence the acronym SOMRAPNet. The task involves service-oriented configurable application interface and adaptive protocols that allow dynamic coordination and monitoring of different communication environment(s), in response to real-time requirements.
Specifically, the project involves the following tasks, which are also expected outcomes:
1. Drawing the requirements for providing an ability for dynamically monitoring diverse network environments involved, as well as applications.
2. Designing self-adapting generic protocols for real-time applications as part of the middleware, particularly for those aimed at emerging networking technologies such as wireless sensor actor networks (WSAN).
3. Designing and developing middleware interface for real-time applications in connection with the previous task mentioned.
4. Interface development for different network environment(s), for example TCP/IP, GSM, and WSAN
5. Development of a component that provides interoperability of different real-time applications, for possible integration at higher level.
6. Formation of databases to aggregate and utilize the data on the performance of the applications and the networks to monitor, analyze and draw conclusions on the realization of the required quality of services.

The scalability, adaptability, interoperability and maintainability are important issues both for the applications as well as the middleware and the networking infrastructure to be developed and utilized. Also, there will not be any assumption on the kind or classes of applications, other than real-time requirements. The applications such as traffic control, production plant control, crop care, natural disaster and hazard management, network breakdowns and others can be candidate for the target application domains as mentioned earlier.

Real-time applications,
quality of services,
communication protocols,
middleware,
pervasive networks,
real-time networks,
real-time operating systems,
sensor actor networks.

Partners with  experience in one or more of the following areas:

• networking issues,
  
• communication protocols,
  
• operating systems,
  
• modeling and simulation of communication protocols, 
  
• real-time applications software,
  
• sensor actor networks modeling and simulation
• development of real-time networks.

• During the initial phase of the project, all the partners will take part in sharpening the boundaries of the tasks and also prepare a document on the high level requirements analysis and design of the project.
• Then each partner will be responsible in detailed specification, design and implementation of the assigned tasks.
• During the last phase of the project, all the partners will take part again in integrating different components in the whole project.
• All stages of the project require conducting validation & verification and also testing.

• University research groups working in the related fields
• Research organizations working in the field
• SME, working on networking infrastructure or telecommunications
• SME, possessing expertise in software development in communications protocols, interoperability and standards

Yes