Rule-based Autonomous Configuration in the AllJoyn Framework for the Internet of Things

物聯網的崛起，歸功於成長快速的硬體（智慧手機、穿戴式裝置、嵌入式感測器）、通訊科技（Wi-Fi、藍牙低功耗、IEEE 802.15.4、6LowPAN、LTE、NFC）和軟體（雲端服務、資料科學）。各種聰明的服務已經成為我們生活的一部分，像是自動駕駛、能源網、智慧農業、智慧家庭和健康照護等等。 由於不同的公司各自提供了各種的物聯網產品與服務，互通性將會是個嚴重的問題。為了解決此問題，有些公司從硬體切入，像是使用支援多種無線通訊技術的閘道（像是SmartThings）來解決。然而，只有特定的裝置才支援，無法支援大部分的裝置。另外一方面，有些方法能從軟體方面去解決，像是AllJoyn或是IoTivity，提供良好的廣播與查找的機制，去支援多種無線通訊技術與平台的問題。雖然這些軟體在網路層上解決了互通性上的問題，我們發現為了布置、管理或設置這些裝置與服務，過程中仍存在大量的使用者介入，當參與的裝置與服務變多，這樣靜態且手動的設置方式將無法規模化。此外，靜態的設置缺乏彈性，服務將會不適用於裝置狀態或是環境時常改變的情況下。 為了解決無法規模化以及缺乏彈性的問題，我們提出了一種條件式設置的架構，叫做AutoNet。透過此架構，裝置可以在分散式架構下，不斷的調整自己去達到自動設置。使用者能透過條件來設置裝置與服務，而這些條件建構於一些屬性，其中包含裝置本身的狀態、裝置間的關係以及環境資訊。 為了驗證提出的架構，我們將它實作在一個智慧家庭的應用中。此應用讓使用者得以用手機簡單的控制跟使用者同區域的物品。在這應用中，手機以及這些物品透過條件式的方法設置，藉由不斷收集動態分享的資訊，採取相對應的行動。另外，我們在一個Wi-Fi網路中，測量了兩個效能基準來評估效能。第一，最短的平均接收更新資訊的時間為1.266秒。第二，最大支援AutoNet的AllJoyn裝置為42個。這些結果皆證明了對很多的物聯網應用，此方法是可行且有前途的。The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a reality, thanks to the rapid growth of technologies in hardware (smartphones, wearable devices, embedded sensors, actuators), communication technologies (Wi-Fi, BLE, IEEE 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, LTE and NFC) and software (lightweight operating systems, cloud-based services, data science). Smart and creative services such as automatic driving, energy grid, smart farming, smart home, healthcare systems and so on, are expected to become a seamless part of our daily lives. Given that various IoT-related products and services will be provided by different vendors, interoperability will be a critical issue. To solve the interoperability issue, some hardware solutions using a multi-radio gateway (such as SmartThings) is developed. However, only specific devices are supported, which is not interoperable for most of IoT products. On the other hand, there are software solutions (such as AllJoyn and IoTivity) that solve interoperability by supporting radio/platform agnostic methods and providing advertisement and discovery mechanisms. Although these software solutions address the interoperability issue at the network level, we found that heavy human involvements are still needed in order to deploy, manage and configure these devices and services. When the number of involved devices and provided services becomes larger, such a manual and usually static approach will not scale up. In addition, static configuration suffers from the lack of flexibility, especially when devices operate in a dynamic or even mobile environment. To address the scalability/flexibility issue, a rule-based configuration scheme called AutoNet is proposed. By applying this scheme, devices can (re)configure themselves to achieve an autonomous configuration in a distributed manner. These rules are constructed by some attributes including (1) the properties of devices themselves, (2) the relations between devices or (3) sensory data acquired from the environment. In order to validate the proposed scheme in real services, we implement a smart home application by applying the proposed scheme on AllJoyn. This application enables users to use smartphones to control appliances in the room where users are located. In this application, dynamic information is shared by appliances and users'' smartphones. Two metrics are evaluated to validate the performance of the proposed scheme. First, the minimal average reception period to detect an updated announcement message is 1.266 second. Second, the maximal number of supported devices to apply AutoNet on AllJoyn is 42 on average in a network. The results show that AutoNet on AllJoyn is practical and promising for various IoT applications