DOT's SPACE

The US is about to ramp up a large scale effort to provide a test environment for Future Internet research. The initiative is called GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation) and its budget is immense (some hundreds of millions).

The scope for GENI encompasses fixed Internet, wireless Internet and wireless sensing from the hardcore physical layer space over routing to service environments.

But keep in mind, GENI only intends to provide the test environment; it does not perform the actual research to be tested. So you can think of GENI as taking Planetlab and blowing it massively up in terms of scale (so no surprise that Larry Peterson from Princeton University has a central role in GENI).

Within GENI, there is a task force to define the wireless environment together with the wireless sensing part. It is good to see that the current direction of the system specifications envisions the notion of GENI-compliant information gateways towards non-GENI sensor networks. This largely targets scenarios for participatory sensing, apart from rather static gateway scenarios where local deployments are remotely connected to some backend infrastructure.

What does participatory sensing stand for? Take the idea of end users participating in a GENI-like experiments with their own mobile devices (such as their phones), connecting permanently or temporarily (e.g., when passing by) to sensor networks that are deployed in the field, delivering particular information back to other users or dedicated servers in the infrastructure, e.g., providing large scale services for pollution or traffic monitoring.

I’ve been looking into such types of scenarios with the work around NORS, developing a Java-based platform for mobile phones that allows for exactly these types of scenarios. For instance, in a project with Cambridge University (UK), pollution monitoring is one of the objectives in such participatory sensing, involving the community members directly. Another interesting activity in this space is the work of Matt Welsh in CitySense, in which some hundred light poles in and around Harvard University are to be equipped with such information gateways, potentially complemented with mobile devices carried by students. Also Deborah Estrin’s work on multiscaled actuated sensing is very well aligned with these ideas.

As a member of the GENI wireless working group, I’ve been working to marry the concepts of NORS with the specifications for this future networking test environment. Many of the concepts of NORS do map quite well onto the thoughts and work in GENI. But more is needed, keeping the research going in this field of mobile-centric wireless sensing (probably fueling future releases of NORS as well).

All in all, it is an exciting area and shows the increasing possibilities and opportunities of end users directly participating in making services happening by contributing towards a common goal. Creating incentives for end users to participate in such services will be one of the more non-technical key questions to answer in the future. But this is a topic for another entry…

So where is Europe here and its collection of test beds and initiatives, one might ask? There are indeed many European initiatives for test beds in different areas. The ambition to build a GENI type of facility (in particular with the Global ambition for such environment) does not really exist. But there is ample research in Europe around the same problems and any activity, be it GENI or some local test bed facility, will benefit from this research. The EIFFEL initiative is currently trying to create some upwind for more explorative types of research projects. And there is also increasing interest in the European community to extend many of the sensor network deployments towards participatory scenarios (I attended an invited event by the European Commission last year on this topic). So there is momentum, not only in the US, but worldwide when it comes to participatory sensing.

As promised here an update on the EIFFEL initiative, introduced first here.

As said in the earlier blog entry, the findings of the EIFFEL discussions were revealed on December 15th in the form of a series of presentations that were based on the EIFFEL whitepaper, released publicly the very same day.

Prof. Petri Mahonen led off the presentation series, after welcoming words from Dr. Joao DaSilva. It was my pleasure to present the findings on technological and socio-economic drivers for the Future Internet, followed by Dimitri Papadimitriou’s presentation on the technology challenges that the development of the Future Internet will face. After a brief excursion on policy challenges, Petri revealed the dedicated actions that were developed by the EIFFEL Think Tank as a proposal to the Commision, namely the creation of a supporting action (SSA) for explorative Future Internet research and the establishment of a School of Architects project in the Framework Program 7.

After the actual presentations, a round table was held in conjunction with the representatives of the European Technology Platforms on future actions towards a coherent European Future Internet initiative. I felt many positive tendencies towards the actions that are proposed by EIFFEL, while there was certainly also some feeling of opposition (in essence EIFFEL can be seen as competition for a limited pot of money, right?).

What are the next steps now? The next few weeks will see activities in putting some concrete meat behind the proposed actions, i.e., the SSA and the School of Architects. Also, it will be required to further politicize the issue and advocate the proposed actions and the outlined approach of the whitepaper. Here, it is crucial to highlight that EIFFEL does not attempt to oppose the well established ETP approach rather than to complement them. This will create a strong proposition of evolutionary and explorative research for the Future Internet that can set Europe really apart. Let’s hope that politics will not prevent us from that!

For the future, you are invited to follow discussions through the EIFFEL website and the mailing list (needs registration). Feel free to also post comments or send emails for further inquiries.

Just before Christmas a new version of NORS was uploaded to SourceForge! The new version includes the following changes:

• removed SMS sending in BT scan within SSI handler
• changed remaining server window titles to NORS from N-RSA
• commented lifetime validity check for sensor discovery data in server middleware – new publish in gateways makes this obsolete (since any change is reported)
• debug window in remote sensing now has Exit button
• added PositioningHandler as framework handler for positioning based on location information, using the LocationHandler
• added AudioHandler for audio sampling, allowing for sampling frequency (AF) and level (AL) but not at same time
• added proper JSR availability check in HandlerManager and HandlerManagerUI so that midlet now only shows and enables handlers when the optional JSR is available
• improved stability of SymbianServer interface. Can now stop & restart Symbian server during midlet running
• IMEI is now stored in RMS once read in TCPClient via SymbianServer, no user input anymore after that for IMEI!
• when server fails in remote sensing mode, the GW code correctly goes in offline mode, i.e., restart required
• added option asking for user content, set in General Settings. With this on, every subscription needs to be confirmed by the user.
• included certificate in package for generating signed midlets, if required
• added GPS code to LocationHandler (reads only simple sequence xxGGA) but has not been tested yet!

Download the new version and try it out! Feedback is welcome!