Pervasive Systems (PS)

Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS)

Section Head: Prof.dr.ing. P.J.M. Havinga

Keywords: distributed data processing, wireless communication, embedded systems, sensor networks, self-organization, real-time

The Pervasive Systems (PS) group investigates new distributed systems paradigms for bringing the flexibility of information technology to bear in every aspect of daily life. It foresees that people will be surrounded by embedded and flexibly (wirelessly) networked systems that provide easily accessible yet unobtrusive support for an open-ended range of activities, to enrich daily life and to increase productivity at work.

These networked embedded systems contain a mixture of hardware and software: their scope may be as simple as a sensor, or as complex as a portable device, or even an entire building or city. Cooperation is a necessity, to perform their tasks with sufficient quality or efficiency, and to reach the required functionality and support real time interactions. The specific nature of these systems require them to be open, scalable, adaptable and dependable, while integrating heterogeneous devices ranging from tiny actuators to larger computers.

In this context our mission is:

‘to design, develop, implement and evaluate architectures, protocols, and mechanisms that support effective and efficient interactions between devices, people, and the environment’.

In pervasive systems a vast number of components cooperate to support an application as unobtrusively as possible (transparency), making efficient use of scarce resources independent of growth (scalability), and in such a way that the system adapts to a dynamically changing environment (evolvability). Mainly due to resource constraints, devices and connections are inherently unreliable, yet the system should be able to provide reliable services (dependability). Users, applications and devices will compete for resources such as processing time, memory, communication bandwidth, and sensors/actuators, and they will need to be able to negotiate access (competition), and there will be many different types of nodes (heterogeneity). Most of the processing will take place in the network as the number of nodes is too large for centralised control and distributed data processing.

All of this means that the supporting architectures should be open, distributed and scalable, naturally integrating heterogeneous devices ranging from tiny actuators to large computers.

Our mission is to design, develop, implement and evaluate architectures, protocols, and mechanisms that support effective and efficient interactions between devices, people, and the environment.

Currently the research themes are focused on the following topics and their interaction:

·	Wireless embedded networking dealing with the networking aspects of pervasive systems, and

·	distributed data processing and reasoning, dealing with the processing and interpretation of distributed data.

The common theme in these areas is the development of large-scale, heterogeneous, wireless, and distributed systems. Research covers a wide design space including architectures, protocols, programming paradigms, algorithms, deployment, and applications.

Key persons: Prof.dr.ing. P. Havinga, Ir. J. Scholten, Dr.ir. N. Meratnia, prof.dr. S.J. Mullender

Projects:

European funding:

·	CLAM (FP7/STREP) (2010-2013)

·	eSense (EU FP6 / IP)

·	Genesi (FP7/STREP) (2010-2013)

·	IS-Active (AAL)

·	iLAND (Artemis)

·	SENSEI (EU FP7 STREP)

National funding:

·	FREE (Point-One)

·	HDHB-WSN (Point-One)

·	SeaSTAR (STW) (2010-2014)

·	Senior (Pieken in de Delta)

·	Saril (Point-One)

·	Sensor Networks for Public Safety (COMMIT)

·	User Centric Reasoning for Well-working (COMMIT)

·	Personalised Climate and Ambience Control for Zero-Energy Buildings (NWO/STW Smart Energy Systems)

Publications PS group