Chain routing:a new routing framework for the Internet based on complete orders

A new framework to perform routing at the autonomous system (AS) level is proposed here. This mechanism, called chain routing framework (CRF), uses complete orders as its main topological unit. Since complete orders are acyclic digraphs that possess a known topology, it is possible to use these acyclic structures to route consistently packets between a group of ASs. The adoption of complete orders also allows easy identification and avoidance of persistent route oscillations, eliminates the possibility of developing transient loops in paths and provides a structure that facilitates the implementation of traffic engineering. Moreover, by combining CRF with other mechanisms that implement complete orders in time, the authors propose that it is possible to design a new routing protocol, which can be more reliable and stable than the border gateway protocol. © 2011 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Modeling high-speed network traffic with truncated α-stable processes

It has been reported that high-speed communication network traffic exhibits both long-range dependence (LRD) and burstiness, which posed new challenges in network engineering. While many models have been studied in capturing the traffic LRD, they are not capable of capturing efficiently the traffic impulsiveness. It is desirable to develop a model that can capture both LRD and burstiness. In this letter, we propose a truncated a-stable LRD process model for this purpose, which can characterize both LRD and burstiness accurately. A procedure is developed further to estimate the model parameters from real traffic. Simulations demonstrate that our proposed model has a higher accuracy compared to existing models and is flexible in capturing the characteristics of high-speed network traffic. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH.

EPiCS:engineering proprioception in computing systems

Modern compute systems continue to evolve towards increasingly complex, heterogeneous and distributed architectures. At the same time, functionality and performance are no longer the only aspects when developing applications for such systems, and additional concerns such as flexibility, power efficiency, resource usage, reliability and cost are becoming increasingly important. This does not only raise the question of how to efficiently develop applications for such systems, but also how to cope with dynamic changes in the application behaviour or the system environment. The EPiCS Project aims to address these aspects through exploring self-awareness and self-expression. Self-awareness allows systems and applications to gather and maintain information about their current state and environment, and reason about their behaviour. Self-expression enables systems to adapt their behaviour autonomously to changing conditions. Innovations in EPiCS are based on systematic integration of research in concepts and foundations, customisable hardware/software platforms and operating systems, and self-aware networking and middleware infrastructure. The developed technologies are validated in three application domains: computational finance, distributed smart cameras and interactive mobile media systems. © 2012 IEEE.

Architectural aspects of self-aware and self-expressive computing systems:from psychology to engineering

Work on human self-Awareness is the basis for a framework to develop computational systems that can adaptively manage complex dynamic tradeoffs at runtime. An architectural case study in cloud computing illustrates the framework's potential benefits.

General-purpose autonomic computing

The success of mainstream computing is largely due to the widespread availability of general-purpose architectures and of generic approaches that can be used to solve real-world problems cost-effectively and across a broad range of application domains. In this chapter, we propose that a similar generic framework is used to make the development of autonomic solutions cost effective, and to establish autonomic computing as a major approach to managing the complexity of today’s large-scale systems and systems of systems. To demonstrate the feasibility of general-purpose autonomic computing, we introduce a generic autonomic computing framework comprising a policy-based autonomic architecture and a novel four-step method for the effective development of self-managing systems. A prototype implementation of the reconfigurable policy engine at the core of our architecture is then used to develop autonomic solutions for case studies from several application domains. Looking into the future, we describe a methodology for the engineering of self-managing systems that extends and generalises our autonomic computing framework further.

Software engineering techniques for the development of systems of systems

This paper investigates how existing software engineering techniques can be employed, adapted and integrated for the development of systems of systems. Starting from existing system-of-systems (SoS) studies, we identify computing paradigms and techniques that have the potential to help address the challenges associated with SoS development, and propose an SoS development framework that combines these techniques in a novel way. This framework addresses the development of a class of IT systems of systems characterised by high variability in the types of interactions between their component systems, and by relatively small numbers of such interactions. We describe how the framework supports the dynamic, automated generation of the system interfaces required to achieve these interactions, and present a case study illustrating the development of a data-centre SoS using the new framework.

Remote sensing applied to slope stability in mountainous roads in Iran

The Alborz Mountain range separates the northern part of Iran from the southern part. It also isolates a narrow coastal strip to the south of the Caspian Sea from the Central Iran plateau. Communication between the south and north until the 1950's was via two roads and one rail link. In 1963 work was completed on a major access road via the Haraz Valley (the most physically hostile area in the region). From the beginning the road was plagued by accidents resulting from unstable slopes on either side of the valley. Heavy casualties persuaded the government to undertake major engineering works to eliminate ''black spots" and make the road safe. However, despite substantial and prolonged expenditure the problems were not solved and casualties increased steadily due to the increase in traffic using the road. Another road was built to bypass the Haraz road and opened to traffic in 1983. But closure of the Haraz road was still impossible because of the growth of settlements along the route and the need for access to other installations such as the Lar Dam. The aim of this research was to explore the possibility of applying Landsat MSS imagery to locating black spots along the road and the instability problems. Landsat data had not previously been applied to highway engineering problems in the study area. Aerial photographs are better in general than satellite images for detailed mapping, but Landsat images are superior for reconnaissance and adequate for mapping at the 1 :250,000 scale. The broad overview and lack of distortion in the Landsat imagery make the images ideal for structural interpretation. The results of Landsat digital image analysis showed that certain rock types and structural features can be delineated and mapped. The most unstable areas comprising steep slopes, free of vegetation cover can be identified using image processing techniques. Structural lineaments revealed from the image analysis led to improved results (delineation of unstable features). Damavand Quaternary volcanics were found to be the dominant rock type along a 40 km stretch of the road. These rock types are inherently unstable and partly responsible for the difficulties along the road. For more detailed geological and morphological interpretation a sample of small subscenes was selected and analysed. A special developed image analysis package was designed at Aston for use on a non specialized computing system. Using this package a new and unique method for image classification was developed, allowing accurate delineation of the critical features of the study area.

How the web of things challenges requirements engineering

As a subset of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Web of Things (WoT) shares many characteristics with wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) and ubiquitous computing systems (Ubicomp). Yet to a far greater degree than the IoT, WSANs or Ubicomp, the WoT will integrate physical and information objects, necessitating a means to model and reason about a range of context types that have hitherto received little or no attention from the RE community. RE practice is only now developing the means to support WSANs and Ubicomp system development, including faltering first steps in the representation of context. We argue that these techniques will need to be developed further, with a particular focus on rich context types, if RE is to support WoT application development. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Form follows function:model-driven engineering for clinical trials

We argue that, for certain constrained domains, elaborate model transformation technologies-implemented from scratch in general-purpose programming languages-are unnecessary for model-driven engineering; instead, lightweight configuration of commercial off-the-shelf productivity tools suffices. In particular, in the CancerGrid project, we have been developing model-driven techniques for the generation of software tools to support clinical trials. A domain metamodel captures the community's best practice in trial design. A scientist authors a trial protocol, modelling their trial by instantiating the metamodel; customized software artifacts to support trial execution are generated automatically from the scientist's model. The metamodel is expressed as an XML Schema, in such a way that it can be instantiated by completing a form to generate a conformant XML document. The same process works at a second level for trial execution: among the artifacts generated from the protocol are models of the data to be collected, and the clinician conducting the trial instantiates such models in reporting observations-again by completing a form to create a conformant XML document, representing the data gathered during that observation. Simple standard form management tools are all that is needed. Our approach is applicable to a wide variety of information-modelling domains: not just clinical trials, but also electronic public sector computing, customer relationship management, document workflow, and so on. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

The handbook of engineering self-aware and self-expressive systems

When faced with the task of designing and implementing a new self-aware and self-expressive computing system, researchers and practitioners need a set of guidelines on how to use the concepts and foundations developed in the Engineering Proprioception in Computing Systems (EPiCS) project. This report provides such guidelines on how to design self-aware and self-expressive computing systems in a principled way. We have documented different categories of self-awareness and self-expression level using architectural patterns. We have also documented common architectural primitives, their possible candidate techniques and attributes for architecting self-aware and self-expressive systems. Drawing on the knowledge obtained from the previous investigations, we proposed a pattern driven methodology for engineering self-aware and self-expressive systems to assist in utilising the patterns and primitives during design. The methodology contains detailed guidance to make decisions with respect to the possible design alternatives, providing a systematic way to build self-aware and self-expressive systems. Then, we qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated the methodology using two case studies. The results reveal that our pattern driven methodology covers the main aspects of engineering self-aware and self-expressive systems, and that the resulted systems perform significantly better than the non-self-aware systems.

Meta level component-based framework for distributed computing systems

Adaptability for distributed object-oriented enterprise frameworks in multimedia technology is a critical mission for system evolution. Today, building adaptive services is a complex task due to lack of adequate framework support in the distributed computing systems. In this paper, we propose a Metalevel Component-Based Framework which uses distributed computing design patterns as components to develop an adaptable pattern-oriented framework for distributed computing applications. We describe our approach of combining a meta-architecture with a pattern-oriented framework, resulting in an adaptable framework which provides a mechanism to facilitate system evolution. This approach resolves the problem of dynamic adaptation in the framework, which is encountered in most distributed multimedia applications. The proposed architecture of the pattern-oriented framework has the abilities to dynamically adapt new design patterns to address issues in the domain of distributed computing and they can be woven together to shape the framework in future. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.