Hypermedia-based Web Services as System Integrators

As we move more closely to the practical concept of the Internet of Things and, our reliance on public and private APIs increases, web services and their related topics have become utterly crucial to the informatics community. However, the question about which style of web services would best solve a particular problem, can raise signi cant and multifarious debates. There can be found two implementation styles that highlight themselves: the RPC-oriented style represented by the SOAP protocol’s implementations and the hypermedia style, which is represented by the REST architectural style’s implementations. As we search examples of already established web services, we can nd a handful of robust and reliable public and private SOAP APIs, nevertheless, it seems that RESTful services are gaining popularity in the enterprise community. For the current generation of developers that work on informatics solutions, REST seems to represent a fundamental and straightforward alternative and even, a more deep-rooted approach than SOAP. But are they comparable? Do both approaches have each speci c best suitable scenarios? Such study is brie y carried out in the present document’s chapters, starting with the respective background study, following an analysis of the hypermedia approach and an instantiation of its architecture, in a particular case study applied in a BPM context.

Interoperability on low power devices

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Using an LED as a sensor and visible light communication device in a smart illumination system

The need for more efficient illumination systems has led to the proliferation of Solid-State Lighting (SSL) systems, which offer optimized power consumption. SSL systems are comprised of LED devices which are intrinsically fast devices and permit very fast light modulation. This, along with the congestion of the radio frequency spectrum has paved the path for the emergence of Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems. VLC uses free space to convey information by using light modulation. Notwithstanding, as VLC systems proliferate and cost competitiveness ensues, there are two important aspects to be considered. State-of-the-art VLC implementations use power demanding PAs, and thus it is important to investigate if regular, existent Switched-Mode Power Supply (SMPS) circuits can be adapted for VLC use. A 28 W buck regulator was implemented using a off-the-shelf LED Driver integrated circuit, using both series and parallel dimming techniques. Results show that optical clock frequencies up to 500 kHz are achievable without any major modification besides adequate component sizing. The use of an LED as a sensor was investigated, in a short-range, low-data-rate perspective. Results show successful communication in an LED-to-LED configuration, with enhanced range when using LED strings as sensors. Besides, LEDs present spectral selective sensitivity, which makes them good contenders for a multi-colour LED-to-LED system, such as in the use of RGB displays and lamps. Ultimately, the present work shows evidence that LEDs can be used as a dual-purpose device, enabling not only illumination, but also bi-directional data communication.

Semantic architecture for sensors

Based on the report for the unit “Sociology of New Information Technologies” of the Master on Computer Sciences at FCT/University Nova Lisbon in 2015-16. The responsible of this curricular unit is Prof. António Moniz

From a NoSQL data source to a business intelligence solution: An experiment

We are living in the era of Big Data. A time which is characterized by the continuous creation of vast amounts of data, originated from different sources, and with different formats. First, with the rise of the social networks and, more recently, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which everyone and (eventually) everything is linked to the Internet, data with enormous potential for organizations is being continuously generated. In order to be more competitive, organizations want to access and explore all the richness that is present in those data. Indeed, Big Data is only as valuable as the insights organizations gather from it to make better decisions, which is the main goal of Business Intelligence. In this paper we describe an experiment in which data obtained from a NoSQL data source (database technology explicitly developed to deal with the specificities of Big Data) is used to feed a Business Intelligence solution.

Child abuse monitor system model: a health care critical knowledge monitor system

The Childhood protection is a subject with high value for the society, but, the Child Abuse cases are difficult to identify. The process from suspicious to accusation is very difficult to achieve. It must configure very strong evidences. Typically, Health Care services deal with these cases from the beginning where there are evidences based on the diagnosis, but they aren’t enough to promote the accusation. Besides that, this subject it’s highly sensitive because there are legal aspects to deal with such as: the patient privacy, paternity issues, medical confidentiality, among others. We propose a Child Abuses critical knowledge monitor system model that addresses this problem. This decision support system is implemented with a multiple scientific domains: to capture of tokens from clinical documents from multiple sources; a topic model approach to identify the topics of the documents; knowledge management through the use of ontologies to support the critical knowledge sensibility concepts and relations such as: symptoms, behaviors, among other evidences in order to match with the topics inferred from the clinical documents and then alert and log when clinical evidences are present. Based on these alerts clinical personnel could analyze the situation and take the appropriate procedures.

enControl wear

Aquest projecte s'endinsa en l'ecosistema Android Wear, ampliant l'aplicació d'smart home "enControl" als dispositius smart watch. Durant el projecte s'han seguit totes les fases de desenvolupament de l'aplicació: des dels primers dissenys fins a la implementació final que funciona correctament.

Control de la temperatura i el llum mitjançant dispositius sense fils

El concepte Internet de les Coses va néixer fa molt poc, cap a l’any 2010, i es refereix a la connexió d’objectes a Internet, de manera que puguin interactuar en xarxa entre ells o amb les persones per transmetre o rebre informació, i realitzar, així, les accions programades en funció de les dades disponibles. Des de llavors la gran majoria d’institucions, tant públiques com privades, s’han interessat en aquest concepte, ja que pot suposar un augment molt important de la qualitat de vida de les persones, un estalvi de recursos i beneficis econòmics. D’aquí neix aquest Treball Final de Grau, ja que des de la Fundació Eduard Soler de Ripoll tenen el desig d’introduir-se en aquest camp. L’objectiu principal d’aquest Treball Final de Grau és crear una xarxa sense fils que pugui controlar la temperatura i la il·luminació de l’edifici C de la Fundació Eduard Soler i que, a més, es pugui connectar a Internet. Una de les conclusions a què he arribat gràcies a aquest treball és que la utilització d’eines de baix cost (Arduino, Xbee, MySQL, PHP...) permet introduir-se en l’apassionant món de l’Internet de les Coses i, a més, aconseguir molt bons resultats.

Reframing the relationship between service design and operations: a service engineering approach

The significance of services as business and human activities has increased dramatically throughout the world in the last three decades. Becoming a more and more competitive and efficient service provider while still being able to provide unique value opportunities for customers requires new knowledge and ideas. Part of this knowledge is created and utilized in daily activities in every service organization, but not all of it, and therefore an emerging phenomenon in the service context is information awareness. Terms like big data and Internet of things are not only modern buzz-words but they are also describing urgent requirements for a new type of competences and solutions. When the amount of information increases and the systems processing information become more efficient and intelligent, it is the human understanding and objectives that may get separated from the automated processes and technological innovations. This is an important challenge and the core driver for this dissertation: What kind of information is created, possessed and utilized in the service context, and even more importantly, what information exists but is not acknowledged or used? In this dissertation the focus is on the relationship between service design and service operations. Reframing this relationship refers to viewing the service system from the architectural perspective. The selected perspective allows analysing the relationship between design activities and operational activities as an information system while maintaining the tight connection to existing service research contributions and approaches. This type of an innovative approach is supported by research methodology that relies on design science theory. The methodological process supports the construction of a new design artifact based on existing theoretical knowledge, creation of new innovations and testing the design artifact components in real service contexts. The relationship between design and operations is analysed in the health care and social care service systems. The existing contributions in service research tend to abstract services and service systems as value creation, working or interactive systems. This dissertation adds an important information processing system perspective to the research. The main contribution focuses on the following argument: Only part of the service information system is automated and computerized, whereas a significant part of information processing is embedded in human activities, communication and ad-hoc reactions. The results indicate that the relationship between service design and service operations is more complex and dynamic than the existing scientific and managerial models tend to view it. Both activities create, utilize, mix and share information, making service information management a necessary but relatively unknown managerial task. On the architectural level, service system -specific elements seem to disappear, but access to more general information elements and processes can be found. While this dissertation focuses on conceptual-level design artifact construction, the results provide also very practical implications for service providers. Personal, visual and hidden activities of service, and more importantly all changes that take place in any service system have also an information dimension. Making this information dimension visual and prioritizing the processed information based on service dimensions is likely to provide new opportunities to increase activities and provide a new type of service potential for customers.

Sensor communication in Smart cities and regions: An efficient IoT-based remote health monitoring system

Recent advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), especially those related to the Internet of Things (IoT), are facilitating smart regions. Among many services that a smart region can offer, remote health monitoring is a typical application of IoT paradigm. It offers the ability to continuously monitor and collect health-related data from a person, and transmit the data to a remote entity (for example, a healthcare service provider) for further processing and knowledge extraction. An IoT-based remote health monitoring system can be beneficial in rural areas belonging to the smart region where people have limited access to regular healthcare services. The same system can be beneficial in urban areas where hospitals can be overcrowded and where it may take substantial time to avail healthcare. However, this system may generate a large amount of data. In order to realize an efficient IoT-based remote health monitoring system, it is imperative to study the network communication needs of such a system; in particular the bandwidth requirements and the volume of generated data. The thesis studies a commercial product for remote health monitoring in Skellefteå, Sweden. Based on the results obtained via the commercial product, the thesis identified the key network-related requirements of a typical remote health monitoring system in terms of real-time event update, bandwidth requirements and data generation. Furthermore, the thesis has proposed an architecture called IReHMo - an IoT-based remote health monitoring architecture. This architecture allows users to incorporate several types of IoT devices to extend the sensing capabilities of the system. Using IReHMo, several IoT communication protocols such as HTTP, MQTT and CoAP has been evaluated and compared against each other. Results showed that CoAP is the most efficient protocol to transmit small size healthcare data to the remote servers. The combination of IReHMo and CoAP significantly reduced the required bandwidth as well as the volume of generated data (up to 56 percent) compared to the commercial product. Finally, the thesis conducted a scalability analysis, to determine the feasibility of deploying the combination of IReHMo and CoAP in large numbers in regions in north Sweden.

Kiihtyvyyteen perustuva langaton iskuvoimanmittausjärjestelmä

Tämä lopputyö esittelee Diter Oy:n toimeksiannosta läpiviedyn projektin, jonka tarkoituksena oli luoda langaton etäluettava ja -ohjattava kiihtyvyyden mittaukseen perustuva iskuvoimanmittausjärjestelmän prototyyppi. Projektin tarkoitus ei ollut luoda viimeisteltyä mittausjärjestelmää, vaan selvittää onko tällaista järjestelmää ylipäätään mahdollista toteuttaa järkevästi. Mittajärjestelmän idean taustalla oli vahvasti Internet-of-Things (IoT) -konsepti, minkä seurauksena hallinta ja seuraaminen toteutettiin esitettyjen vaatimusten mukaan Android-pohjaiselle mobiililaitteelle. Langaton tiedonsiirto toteutettiin Bluetoothyhteydellä, jonka välityksellä mobiililaitteelle toteutetun sovelluksen avulla pystytään ohjaamaan Bluetooth-moduulin kytkettyä mikrokontrolleria. Mikrokontrolleri lukee AD-muuntimeen kytkettyä analogista kiihtyvyysanturia, jota käytetään tallentamaan kappaleeseen kohdistuvien voimien aiheuttama kiihtyvyys. Toimeksiantoon kuului koko laitteisto- ja ohjelmistoarkkitehtuurin suunnittelu ja toteutus alusta alkaen. Järjestelmän lisäksi projektiin kuului verifiointitestausten suunnitellu ja toteutus, jotka ovat myös kuvattuna tässä työssä. Tärkeänä osana verifiointia olivat kiihtyvyysanturin kalibroinnin tarkastaminen sekä kalibrointimenetelmän toteutus. Verifiointitestauksissa käytettiin servo-ohjattua sähkömoottoria luomaan ympyräliike, josta voitiin vertaamalla kierrostaajuutta ja kiihtyvyysarvoja toisiinsa todentaa kiihtyvyysanturin kalibrointi. Lisäksi rakennettiin Newtonin kehtoon perustuva testipenkki, jonka avulla pyrittiin selvittämään järjestelmän mahdollista iskuvoimanmittauskykyä. Vaikka suoritettujen testausten tulokset olivat aluksi lupaavia, eivät ne lopulta olleet yksiselitteiset. Tämän seurauksena työ ei pystynyt sille kohdennettujen resurssien puittessa ottamaan kantaa annettuun tutkimuskysymykseen. Tulokset kuitenkin osoittivat, mitä on otettava huomioon jatkosuunnittelussa ja verifiointitestausten kehittämisessä.

Interoperability for IoT Health Systems Using HL7 Standard

Internet of Things or IoT is revolutionizing the world we are living in, similarly the way Internet and the web did few decades ago. It is changing how we interact with the things surrounding us. Electronic health and remote patient monitoring are the ways of utilizing these technological improvements towards the healthcare. There are many applications of IoT in eHealth such as, it will open the gate to provide healthcare to the remote areas of the world, where healthcare through traditional hospital systems cannot be provided. To connect these new eHealth IoT systems with the existing healthcare information systems, we can use the existing interoperability standards commonly used in healthcare information systems. In this thesis we implemented an eHealth IoT system based on Health Level 7 interoperability standard for continuous data transmission. There is not much previous work done in implementing the HL7 for continuous sensor data transmission. Some of the previous work was limited to sensors which are not continuous in nature and some of it is only theatrical architecture. This thesis aims to prove that it is possible to implement an eHealth IoT system by using sensors which require continues data transmission, such as respiratory sensors, and to connect it with the existing eHealth information system semantically by using HL7 interoperability standard. This system will be beneficial in implementing eHealth IoT systems for those patients, who requires continuous healthcare personal monitoring. This includes elderly people and patients, whose health need to be monitored constantly. To implement the architecture, HL7 v2.5 is selected due to its ease of implementation and low size. We selected some open source technologies because of their open licenses and large developer community. We will also review the most efficient technology available in every layer of eHealth IoT system and will propose an efficient system.

Prof Les Carr interviews Bebo White

Prof Les Carr interviews Bebo White about the Early Web and the Future Web – the Internet of Things

Contribución al estudio de estrategias de acceso al medio en redes ópticas no guiadas

Programa de doctorado: Cibernética y telecomunicación

Un framework per applicazioni di monitoraggio e domotica basato su tecnologie android e arduino

Questa tesi tratta dello sviluppo di un progetto chiamato Faxa e di una sua concreta applicazione nell’ambito della domotica (CasaDomotica). Faxa è un framework per la comunicazione via wireless tra dispositivi che supportano il sistema operativo Android e dispositivi Arduino Ethernet, comunicazione che avviene localmente attraverso il wi-fi. Il progetto si inserisce nel panorama più ampio chiamato “Internet of Things”, ovvero internet delle cose, dove ogni oggetto di uso domestico è collegato ad Internet e può essere quindi manipolato attraverso la rete in modo da realizzare una vera e propria “smart house”; perchè ciò si attui occorre sviluppare applicazioni semplici e alla portata di tutti. Il mio contributo comincia con la realizzazione del framework Faxa, così da fornire un supporto semplice e veloce per comporre programmi per Arduino e Android, sfruttando metodi ad alto livello. Il framework è sviluppato su due fronti: sul lato Android è composto sia da funzioni di alto livello, necessarie ad inviare ordini e messaggi all'Arduino, sia da un demone per Android; sul lato Arduino è composto dalla libreria, per inviare e ricevere messaggi. Per Arduino: sfruttando le librerie Faxa ho redatto un programma chiamato “BroadcastPin”. Questo programma invia costantemente sulla rete i dati dei sensori e controlla se ci sono ordini in ricezione. Il demone chiamato “GetItNow” è una applicazione che lavora costantemente in background. Il suo compito è memorizzare tutti i dati contenuti nei file xml inviati da Arduino. Tali dati corrispondono ai valori dei sensori connessi al dispositivo. I dati sono salvati in un database pubblico, potenzialmente accessibili a tutte le applicazioni presenti sul dispositivo mobile. Sul framework Faxa e grazie al demone “GetItNow” ho implementato “CasaDomotica”, un programma dimostrativo pensato per Android in grado di interoperare con apparecchi elettrici collegati ad un Arduino Ethernet, impiegando un’interfaccia video semplice e veloce. L’utente gestisce l’interfaccia per mezzo di parole chiave, a scelta comandi vocali o digitali, e con essa può accendere e spegnere luci, regolare ventilatori, attuare la rilevazione di temperatura e luminosità degli ambienti o quanto altro sia necessario. Il tutto semplicemente connettendo gli apparecchi all’Arduino e adattando il dispositivo mobile con pochi passi a comunicare con gli elettrodomestici.