Contribution to service provision on interoperable mobile devices in cyber-physical systems

Resumo

This PhD Thesis is framed under the Cyber Physical System (CPS) concept, and contributes to the provision, process and optimization of the service provision in smart environments. The smart environment model promotes the creation of interoperable relationships between all the elements present in the network. As everyday objects in our lives are continuously incorporating smart capabilities, an appropriate system can improve the end-user experience. The overall goal of this PhD Thesis work is to design and validate a service provision environment for CPS with smart devices that improve the functionalities and interoperable capabilities of the service environment. Based on a service environment for CPS, several particularities of smart devices and services adapted to specific conditions will be provided. One of the current top trends in the smart environment paradigm is the service-oriented system, which frameworks the interaction between the physical infrastructure of the platform and the service offered to the final users. Applications can be then built on top of the layers that manage the smart system in seamless user experience. In this manner, these services may be used to work in applications deployed by technological experts, or might be included in a “prosumer” environment where non-expert users can design, build and deploy their own services in a dynamic way. Additionally, these deployments are often located in distant locations and supported by the addition of smart environment features. This flexible paradigm offers the capability of being adaptable to each application, but even so, several problems exist that may decrease the reliability and the advantages of the smart systems in real world deployments. With this work, I contribute to service provision by defining a process that supports the configuration and provision of the system in an automated form, by including a domain expert at the primary phase and a supporting architecture to interact and manage the system. Service provision is then decomposed and focused in several aspects where I propose to include mechanisms and procedures to improve the user experience in the whole system, based on CPS constraints, and trying to achieve an extensible system framework that can be adapted to the future trends needs. Furthermore, I propose the addition of several supporting elements to the basic CPS architecture in order to optimize the resource allocation, monitoring process and communication efficiency of a deployed system. These contributions allow the system to be aware of the changes of the infrastructure and provide a dynamic adaptation of the system resources, battery utilization and device capabilities changes that can emerge in a running smart environment. To validate the contributions, experimental measures based on simulated and real scenarios have been conducted. The solutions have been verified and relevant conclusions have been extracted.