ISA5428: Research Issues

Source

Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges M. Satyanarayanan, Carnegie Mellon University

IEEE Personal Communications,

pp. 10-17, August 2001

Pervasive Computing

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Outline

Related fields

Distributed System Mobile Computing Pervasive Computing

Example scenario Drill down Conclusion

Pervasive Computing

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Distributed Systems
Research involving two or more computers connected by a network Areas foundational to pervasive computing:

Remote communication: protocol layering, RPC, end-to-end argument Fault tolerance: atomic transactions, two phase commit High availability: replica control, mirrored execution, recovery Remote information access: caching, function shipping, distributed file system Security: authentication, privacy
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Pervasive Computing

Mobile Computing (1/2)

Research on building distributed systems with mobile clients Principles in distributed system design still apply 4 constraints to distinguish it from distributed systems and demand new research

Unpredictable variation in network quality Lowered trust and robustness of mobile elements Limited local resources imposed by weight and size Battery power consumption

Pervasive Computing

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Mobile Computing (2/2)

Research areas:

Mobile networking: mobile IP, ad hoc protocols, improving TCP performance in wireless networks Mobile information access: selective control of data consistency Support for adaptive applications: transcoding by proxies System-level energy saving techniques: energyaware adaptation, variable speed processor scheduling Location sensitivity: location sensing, locationaware system behavior
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Pervasive Computing

Pervasive Computing

Pervasive computing environment:

An environment saturated with computing and communication capability, yet so gracefully integrated with users that it becomes a technology that disappears

Subsume distributed computing and mobile computing, but incorporate 4 additional research thrusts (next figure)

Pervasive Computing

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Pervasive Computing

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4 Additional Research Areas (1/2)

Effective use of smart spaces:

Space: an enclosed area or a well-defined open area Smart space: embedding computing infrastructure in building infrastructure => physical/virtual converge Enable sensing and control of one world by the other

Example?

Invisibility:

Minimal user distraction is a more practical goal

Ex.: the environment continuously meets user expectations and rarely presents him with surprises Some alerts may still be needed

Pervasive Computing

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4 Additional Research Areas (2/2)

Localized scalability:

Increasing complexity in interactions between a users personal computing space and surroundings as well as other persons Must consider scalability with physical distance
Different environments will have huge differences in their smartness, causing user distraction
One solution: have users personal computing space to compensate Complete invisibility may be impossible, but reduced variability is possible

Masking uneven conditioning

Pervasive Computing

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Outline
Related fields Example scenario

Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Miss Capabilities

Drill down Conclusion

Pervasive Computing

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Scenario 1
Jane is at Gate 23 of an airport and would like to e-mail her edited files through wireless connection, but the bandwidth is miserable Aura, the pervasive computing environment, detects the situation, consults airport servers, and finds Gate 15 will have no flight in 1.5 hour Aura suggests Jane to go to Gate 15 and prioritize her email Jane accepts the suggestions Files are transmitted at Gate 15 and Aura informs Jane when she needs to be back to gate

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Scenario 2
Fred has to walk to a meeting from his office to give a presentation, but he is not quite ready yet Fred grabs a handheld computer and starts walking to the meeting Aura transfers his state from desktop to handheld, and Fred does final editing with voice Aura infers Freds schedule, downloads materials to projection computer and warms up projector Rooms face detection system recognizes some unfamiliar faces and advises Fred not to show sensitive data

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Some Key Aspects

Scenario 1:

Proactivity: Aura can estimate how long the whole process takes and look ahead on her behalf Combining knowledge from different layers: wireless congestion and boarding time Smart space: provide information of wireless BW, flight time and gates, distance between gates Moving execution state across diverse platforms Automatic adjusting behavior to fit circumstances: voice inputs Proactivity and smart space
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Scenario 2:

Pervasive Computing

Missing Capabilities

Component technologies are simple and basic

They are available today

The challenge:

The seamless integration of component technologies into a pervasive computing system

Architecture Component synthesis System-level engineering

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Outline
Related fields Example scenario Drill down

User intent Cyber foraging Adaptation strategy High-level energy management Client thickness Context awareness Balancing proactivity and transparency Privacy and trust Impact on layering
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Pervasive Computing

Conclusion

The Model
Each user is immersed in a personal computing space that mediates all interactions with the pervasive computing elements in surroundings As a command center

System design: wearable computer? personal assistant? thicker or thinner? what sensors and networking? Context aware: how to know users state and surrounding, and modify behavior How to cooperate and interact with infrastructure? with other persons? How to roam and adapt? reconfigurable? => PDA with 802.11b, Java

Pervasive Computing

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Issue: Smart Object/Environment

Provide services

System design: which embedded system? web server? sensors and actuators? NW? Naming, registration, discovery Physical/virtual mapping Mobile management, energy management Service composition, I/O matching, adaptation, environment monitoring

Pervasive Computing

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Issue: Infrastructure Support

Infrastructures in real life

e.g., electricity, roads, ... Just there or even invisible, open platform Domain name service (DNS registry) Services: cooperating routers, time servers TCP/IP: common formats/protocols Web standards

Internet infrastructure

Extend the Internet to everyday objects

Pervasive Computing

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Infrastructure for Smart Objects

Guarantee

Provide services

For applications built with smart Security, privacy, availability, reliability objects

Location (Where am I?) For smart Context (Are we in a meeting?) objects Event delivery (Tell me when... happens) Brokering (Find something that) Directory, discovery, registry How do we organize billions of Mobility, roaming, mobile smart objects that are ... highly dynamic, short living,?
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Pervasive Computing

Issue: User Intent (1/2)

A pervasive computing system must track user intent

Determine which actions will help, not hinder, user Ex.: suppose a user is viewing video over a network, whose bandwidth suddenly drops. Should the system
Reduce the fidelity of the video? Pause briefly to find another higher-bandwidth connection? Advise the user that the task can no longer be accomplished? Correct choice depends on what user is trying to accomplish

Pervasive Computing

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User Intent (2/2)

Todays applications either have no idea about user intent (e.g. to support adaptation and proactivity), or do it badly Issues:

Can user intent be inferred, or does it have to be explicitly provided? How is user intent represented internally? What are represented? How does one characterize accuracy of knowledge? Is incomplete or imprecise information useful? Will obtaining intent place an burden on the user?
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Pervasive Computing

Issue: Cyber Foraging (1/2)

Dynamically augment computing resources of end user devices with wired hardware infrastructure => surrogate Usage:

On entering a neighborhood, a device detects the presence of surrogates and negotiates its use Surrogates serve as gateway to the Internet and server for heavy computation When the device leaves the neighborhood, surrogate binding is broken and staged data are discarded

Pervasive Computing

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Cyber Foraging (2/2)

Issues:

How to discover the presence of surrogates? How to establish an appropriate level of trust? How to amortize the cost of establishing trust? How to balance the load of surrogates? How to minimize latency in serving devices? How to deploy surrogates? How scalable? How to make surrogate uses seamless and minimally intrusive for a user?

Pervasive Computing

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Issue: Adaptation Strategy (1/2)

Necessary when there is significant mismatch between the supply and demand of a resource, e.g. bandwidth, energy, computing cycles, ... Three strategies for adaptation

The client guides applications in changing their behavior The client asks the environment to guarantee a certain level of a resource The client suggests a corrective action to the user

Pervasive Computing

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Adaptation Strategy (2/2)

Issues:

How does a client choose between adaptation strategies? How strategies be changed seamlessly as user moves? How to do resource reservation in a smart space? What are appropriate admission control policies? What API are needed to make reservation? Will corrective actions be intrusive? How to do it, e.g. API, programming model? What is the relationship between lowing fidelity and adaptation?
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Pervasive Computing

Issue: High-Level Energy Management

Necessary because low-level techniques, e.g. battery and circuit design, are insufficient Issues:

What high-level systems can be managed for energy efficiency? (memory, application adaptation, ) Are they intrusive to the user? Can user intent help? Can smart spaces and surrogates be used to reduce energy demand on a mobile device? How to tradeoff the energy used in remote execution with wireless connection?

Pervasive Computing

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Issue: Client Thickness

How powerful does a mobile client need to be?

From bare-bones devices (high-resolution displays thru wireless to servers) to full-function clients (standalone & disconnected operation)
How to quantify thickness with env. conditioning, e.g., sensors added and better networking? How to migrate app. between clients of different thickness? How to cooperate with infrastructure? Can clients be reconfigurable to adapt to env.? Semi-portable infrastructure for less hospitable env.? How to roam transparently? especially from a benign environment to a poor one? How to lower the cost of diversity in devices?
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Issues:

Pervasive Computing

Issue: Context Awareness

Needed for an environment minimally intrusive

Recognize user state and surroundings Make decisions proactively, modify behavior accordingly
Obtaining information needed to function How to represent context internally? How to combine it with system and application state? Where to store? How often to update and consult context information? What services does the infrastructure have to provide? How to track location? sense surroundings?
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Issues:

Pervasive Computing

Issue: Proactivity and Transparency

How not to annoy a user in a proactive system? => self-tuning according to user expertise and experiences Issues:

How are user preferences and tolerances specified and taken into account? How to determine the right level of balance?

Pervasive Computing

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Issue: Privacy and Trust

A pervasive computing environment needs to monitor user actions almost continuously in order to be effective Need mutual trust between environment and user Issues:

Tradeoff between seamless system behavior and privacy/trust enforcement Any appropriate authentication techniques? How to specify security constraints? How to specify ones identity?
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Pervasive Computing

Issue: Impact on Layering

Pervasive computing often requires merging information from different layers a system Issues:

Relationship between layering and pervasive computing How to create a new layer?

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Conclusions

Almost all sub domains in CS are affected

System infrastructures, networking, security, user interfaces, embedded systems, AI, perception, speech recognition,...
XML, UDDI, mobile IP, Jini, ...

We are already moving in this direction

Systems integration is the key Many new and fascinating research problems emerge!

Pervasive Computing

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The Field Is Burgeoning

IEEE Pervasive magazine Springer Personal and Ubiquitous Computing

Ubicomp
Various links to universities, research institutes, companies

Pervasive Computing

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