@proceedings {639, title = {Internet of Things Network Infrastructure for The Educational Purpose}, journal = {IEEE Frontiers in Education 2020 (FIE2020)}, year = {2020}, month = {12/2020}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Uppsala. Sweden}, abstract = {

In this innovative practice full paper we present the implementation of the distant laboratory for the Internet of Things teaching and training. The recent outbreak of the SARS-COV-2 virus and related COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world has caused governments across the world to shut down schools and universities, to slow down the spread of the coronavirus that is causing the disease. As a result, some universities and schools have switched from physical classrooms to virtual or online classrooms. This approach is working well for theoretical subjects and courses, but it is not straight forward in the case of laboratory subjects and courses that require access to hardware resources. The IOT-OPEN.EU remote laboratory infrastructure presented in this paper is a timely solution. In this paper, we present current advances in distant learning, distant laboratory models, and the IOT-OPEN.EU remote laboratory implemented as part of the IOT-OPEN.EU ERASMUS+ project, along with short analysis on current advances in distant learning, where students are interacting with physical hardware remote way.

}, issn = {978-1-7281-8962-8}, doi = {10.1109/FIE44824.2020.9274040}, url = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9274040}, author = {Krzysztof Tokarz and Piotr Czekalski and Gabriel Drabik and Jaros{\l}aw Paduch and Salvatore Distefano and Riccardo Di Pietro and Giovanni Merlino and Carlo Scaffidi and Raivo Sell and Godlove Suila Kuaban} } @book {611, title = {Internet of Things Laboratory Guide}, series = { IOT-OPEN.EU}, volume = {2}, year = {2019}, pages = {130}, publisher = {IOT-OPEN.EU consortium: 2016 - 2019. The content is Copyrighted and distributed under CC BY-NC Creative Commons Licence, free for Non-Commercial use.}, organization = {IOT-OPEN.EU consortium: 2016 - 2019. The content is Copyrighted and distributed under CC BY-NC Creative Commons Licence, free for Non-Commercial use.}, author = {Raivo Sell and Rim Puks and Mallor Kingsepp and Piotr Czekalski and Gabriel Drabik and Oleg Antemijczuk and Jaros{\l}aw Paduch and Salvatore Distefano and Riccardo Di Pietro and Giovanni Merlino and Carlo Scaffidi and Blanka Czekalska and Ma{\l}gorzata Wiktorczyk} } @book {560, title = {Introduction to the IoT}, series = {IOT-OPEN.EU}, volume = {1}, year = {2019}, pages = {362}, publisher = {IOT-OPEN.EU consortium: 2016 - 2019. The content is Copyrighted and distributed under CC BY-NC Creative Commons Licence, free for Non-Commercial use.}, organization = {IOT-OPEN.EU consortium: 2016 - 2019. The content is Copyrighted and distributed under CC BY-NC Creative Commons Licence, free for Non-Commercial use.}, author = {Aleksandr Kapitonov and Dmitrii Dobriborsci and Igor Pantiukhin and Valerii Chernov and Raivo Sell and Rim Puks and Mallor Kingsepp and Agris Nikitenko and Karlis Berkolds and Anete Vagale and Rudolfs Rumba and Piotr Czekalski and Krzysztof Tokarz and Oleg Antemijczuk and Jaros{\l}aw Paduch and Raivo Sell and Salvatore Distefano and Rustem Dautov and Riccardo Di Pietro and Antonino Longo Minnolo and Blanka Czekalska and Ma{\l}gorzata Wiktorczyk} } @article {549, title = {An IoT service ecosystem for Smart Cities: The $\#$SmartME project}, journal = {Internet of Things - Elsevier}, volume = {5}, year = {2019}, pages = {12-33}, abstract = {

$\#$SmartME has been one of the first initiatives in Italy to realize a Smart City through the use of open technologies. Thanks to the use of low cost sensor-powered devices scattered over the city area, different {\textquotedblleft}smart{\textquotedblright} services have been deployed having the Stack4Things framework as the common underlying middleware.\ In this paper, we present the results obtained after 2 years of project highlighting the vertical solutions that have been proposed in different areas ranging from environmental monitoring to parking management.

}, keywords = {Arduino, Blockchain, cloud computing, IoT, OpenStack, Smart city}, issn = {2542-6605}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iot.2018.11.004}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Maurizio Giacobbe and Antonino Longo Minnolo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Davide Mulfari and Alfonso Panarello and Giuseppe Patan{\`e} and Antonio Puliafito and Carlo Puliafito and Nachiket Tapas} } @proceedings {557, title = {Virtual Study Partner: A Cognitive Training Tool in Education}, journal = {5th IEEE International Workshop on Sensors and Smart Cities in conjunction with the 5th IEEE Conference on Smart Computing (SmartComp)}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, pages = {192-197}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Washington D.C., US}, author = {Riccardo Di Pietro and Domenico Giacomo Campanile and Salvatore Distefano} } @proceedings {535, title = {Building a Smart City Service Platform in Messina with the $\#$SmartME Project}, journal = {The 32nd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (IEEE AINA-2018)}, year = {2018}, month = {05/2018}, address = {Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland}, abstract = {

Some words mark an era, and "Smart City" is definitely one of these. A Smart City is an urban area where the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are employed to improve citizens{\textquoteright} Quality of Life (QoL) in areas such as: mobility, urban surveillance, and energy management. Throughout this paper, we present the $\#$SmartME project, which aims to create an infrastructure and an ecosystem of "smart" services by exploiting existing devices, sensors, and actuators distributed in the city of Messina. We also present the Stack4Things framework, which is the management core of the $\#$SmartME project.

}, keywords = {$\#$SmartME, Arduino, Blockchain, cloud computing, IoT, OpenData, OpenStack, Smart city, Stack4Things}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Sebastiano Chillari and Salvatore Distefano and Maurizio Giacobbe and Antonino Longo Minnolo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Davide Mulfari and Alfonso Panarello and Giuseppe Patan{\`e} and Antonio Puliafito and Carlo Puliafito and Marco Scarpa and Nachiket Tapas and Giancarlo Visalli} } @article {Dautov201829822, title = {Data Processing in Cyber-Physical-Social Systems Through Edge Computing}, journal = {IEEE Access - IEEE}, volume = {6}, year = {2018}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {29822-29835}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, abstract = {

Cloud and Fog computing have established a convenient and widely adopted approach for computation offloading, where raw data generated by edge devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) context is collected and processed remotely. This vertical offloading pattern, however, typically does not take into account increasingly pressing time constraints of the emerging IoT scenarios, in which numerous data sources, including human agents (i.e., Social IoT), continuously generate large amounts of data to be processed in a timely manner. Big data solutions could be applied in this respect, provided that networking issues and limitations related to connectivity of edge devices are properly addressed. Although edge devices are traditionally considered to be resource-constrained, main limitations refer to energy, networking, and memory capacities, whereas their ever-growing processing capabilities are already sufficient to be effectively involved in actual (big data) processing. In this context, the role of human agents is no longer limited to passive data generation, but can also include their voluntary involvement in relatively complex computations. This way, users can share their personal computational resources (i.e., mobile phones) to support collaborative data processing, thereby turning the existing IoT into a global cyber-physical-social system (CPSS). To this extent, this paper proposes a novel IoT/CPSS data processing pattern based on the stream processing technology, aiming to distribute the workload among a cluster of edge devices, involving mobile nodes shared by contributors on a voluntary basis, and paving the way for cluster computing at the edge. Experiments on an intelligent surveillance system deployed on an edge device cluster demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, illustrating how its distributed in-memory data processing architecture can be effective. {\textcopyright} 2013 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Apache NiFi, Big Data, Cameras, Cellular telephone systems, cloud computing, Cluster computing, Computer architecture, Cyber physical social systems, Cyber Physical System, Edge computing, Fog computing, Horizontal and Vertical Offloading, Internet of Things, Media streaming, Network security, Servers, Stream processing, Streaming media}, issn = {21693536}, doi = {10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2839915}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85047619039\&doi=10.1109\%2fACCESS.2018.2839915\&partnerID=40\&md5=48b52a73084c2f6396c4ce1dd6a690f4}, author = {Rustem Dautov and Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Bruneo201857, title = {I/Ocloud: Adding an IoT dimension to cloud infrastructures}, journal = {Computer}, volume = {51}, number = {1}, year = {2018}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {57-65}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, issn = {00189162}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85042913312\&partnerID=40\&md5=237eb8a281bcad75b510b4802802d1ec}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Dautov20181475, title = {Metropolitan intelligent surveillance systems for urban areas by harnessing IoT and edge computing paradigms}, journal = {Software - Practice and Experience - John Wiley \& Sons, Ltd.}, volume = {48}, number = {8}, year = {2018}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {1475-1492}, publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Ltd}, abstract = {

Recent technological advances led to the rapid and uncontrolled proliferation of intelligent surveillance systems (ISSs), serving to supervise urban areas. Driven by pressing public safety and security requirements, modern cities are being transformed into tangled cyber-physical environments, consisting of numerous heterogeneous ISSs under different administrative domains with low or no capabilities for reuse and interaction. This isolated pattern renders itself unsustainable in city-wide scenarios that typically require to aggregate, manage, and process multiple video streams continuously generated by distributed ISS sources. A coordinated approach is therefore required to enable an interoperable ISS for metropolitan areas, facilitating technological sustainability to prevent network bandwidth saturation. To meet these requirements, this paper combines several approaches and technologies, namely the Internet of Things, cloud computing, edge computing and big data, into a common framework to enable a unified approach to implementing an ISS at an urban scale, thus paving the way for the metropolitan intelligent surveillance system (MISS). The proposed solution aims to push data management and processing tasks as close to data sources as possible, thus increasing performance and security levels that are usually critical to surveillance systems. To demonstrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of this approach, the paper presents a case study based on a distributed ISS scenario in a crowded urban area, implemented on clustered edge devices that are able to off-load tasks in a {\textquotedblleft}horizontal{\textquotedblright} manner in the context of the developed MISS framework. As demonstrated by the initial experiments, the MISS prototype is able to obtain face recognition results 8 times faster compared with the traditional off-loading pattern, where processing tasks are pushed {\textquotedblleft}vertically{\textquotedblright} to the cloud. Copyright {\textcopyright} 2018 John Wiley \& Sons, Ltd.

}, keywords = {Big Data, cloud computing, Distributed Smart Cameras, Edge computing, Face recognition, Information management, Intelligent surveillance systems, Internet of Things, monitoring, Multiple video streams, Network security, Public safety and securities, Security systems, Smart city, Stack4Things, Stream processing, Surveillance systems, Technological advances}, issn = {00380644}, doi = {10.1002/spe.2586}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85049578094\&doi=10.1002\%2fspe.2586\&partnerID=40\&md5=25de910451975bb24c9cfbdf6ca69066}, author = {Rustem Dautov and Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito and Rajkumar Buyya} } @proceedings {KiranBhattacharjee2017, title = {Extending Bluetooth Low Energy PANs to Smart City Scenarios}, journal = {2017 IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing, SMARTCOMP 2017}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 2017 IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing, SMARTCOMP 2017 ; Conference Date: 29 May 2017 Through 31 May 2017; Conference Code:128356}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Hong Kong; China; 29-31 May 2017}, abstract = {

Smart Cities are the perfect ecosystem where IoT technology could be applied. In particular, to allow a direct interaction with objets scattered over a city (e.g, parking slots, light posts, gates) a powerful and scalable architecture has to be envisioned. In this paper, using Bluetooth Low Energy as underlying technology, we extend the concept of Personal Area Networks to include smart city objects so that a user can easily interact with them in a geolocalized and real time manner. A prototype implementing a smart gate has been developed in our University Campus in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach. {\textcopyright} 2017 IEEE.

}, isbn = {9781509065172}, doi = {10.1109/SMARTCOMP.2017.7947007}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85022325311\&doi=10.1109\%2fSMARTCOMP.2017.7947007\&partnerID=40\&md5=f7dec9a77a6e51625d129bc22d29369a}, author = {Kiran Bhattacharjee, A. and Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Bruneo2017, title = {Head in a Cloud: An approach for Arduino YUN virtualization}, journal = {GIoTS 2017 - Global Internet of Things Summit, Proceedings}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 2017 Global Internet of Things Summit, GIoTS 2017 ; Conference Date: 6 June 2017 Through 9 June 2017; Conference Code:130055}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Geneva; Switzerland; 6-9 June 2017}, abstract = {

Smart boards are triggering the IoT revolution, allowing to make common objects and things smart through their network, storage and processing capabilities. Arduino boards have a prominent role in this revolution, due to their customizability and programming freedom. From a different perspective, another strategic development for the IoT is towards Cloud, allowing to properly manage things and data ubiquitously, on demand, as services. Pushing in this direction, we can pave the way to the Cloud of Things, where real things, rather than the data they produce, can be provided to third parties, by adopting a {\textquoteright}device-centric{\textquoteright} approach. To this purpose, virtualization of physical resources becomes an essential step and core mechanism. In this paper we focus on smart board virtualization, implementing a flexible solution for Arduino boards based on Stack4Things, allowing to create, multiplex, migrate and deploy virtual boards in IoT-Cloud contexts. The results obtained by a preliminary implementation and experiments on the $\#$SmartME testbed are shown in the paper to demonstrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed solution. {\textcopyright} 2017 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Arduino YUN, Clouds, Computer operating systems, Core mechanisms, Customizability, Digital storage, GPIO pins, Internet of Things, Physical resources, Processing capability, Stack4Things, Strategic development, Virtual reality, Virtualization}, isbn = {9781509058730}, doi = {10.1109/GIOTS.2017.8016263}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85029291785\&doi=10.1109\%2fGIOTS.2017.8016263\&partnerID=40\&md5=4a8eed3e1348ab91166e648151d625c0}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito and Angelo Zaia} } @article {Distefano2017382, title = {Hospitalized Patient Monitoring and Early Treatment Using IoT and Cloud}, journal = {BioNanoScience}, volume = {7}, number = {2}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {382-385}, publisher = {Springer New York LLC}, abstract = {

The adoption of Internet of Things devices and, more in general, embedded systems, endowed with sensors and actuators, keeps rising globally, and the scope of their involvement broadens, for instance in e-Health applications. This work describes our integration of IoT paradigms and resource ecosystems with a tailored Cloud-oriented device-centric environment, by focusing on an e-Health scenario, featuring monitoring and early treatment of hospitalized patients, by focusing on Cloud-enabled event detection coupled with coordinated reaction. {\textcopyright} 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

}, keywords = {Clouds, Coordinated reactions, Coordination reactions, E health, e-Health applications, Early treatment, embedded systems, Event detection, Health, Internet of Things, OpenStack, Patient monitoring, Patient treatment, sensors and actuators}, issn = {21911630}, doi = {10.1007/s12668-016-0335-5}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85019076002\&doi=10.1007\%2fs12668-016-0335-5\&partnerID=40\&md5=cd98d3d0b82a5392d0f5191656dee389}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Distefano201722, title = {Marking dependency in non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets}, journal = {Performance Evaluation}, volume = {110}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {22-47}, publisher = {Elsevier B.V.}, abstract = {

Marking dependency is a powerful tool that allows different firing time distributions to be associated with a stochastic Petri net transition, depending on the marking. Through this feature, the modeler can easily and compactly represent advanced properties and behaviors of the system. While a semantics and specific solution techniques have been provided for generalized stochastic Petri nets thus covering homogeneous Markovian aspects, in the non-homogeneous/non-Markovian case marking dependency still needs to be investigated. To fill this gap, this paper provides a formalization of marking dependent semantics in non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets (NMSPNs) and a solution technique, based on phase type distributions and Kronecker algebra, able to deal with such a feature allowing both transient and steady-state analyses. To motivate the actual need of marking dependency in NMSPN modeling and to demonstrate the potential of such a feature as well as the validity of the proposed solution technique a case study on a multi-core CPU system with power management facilities is explored. {\textcopyright} 2017 Elsevier B.V.

}, keywords = {Algebra, energy management, Kronecker algebra, Marking dependency, Multi-core cpus, non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets, Petri nets, phase type distributions, Power management, Program processors, Random access storage, Semantics, Stochastic systems}, issn = {01665316}, doi = {10.1016/j.peva.2017.03.001}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85016027299\&doi=10.1016\%2fj.peva.2017.03.001\&partnerID=40\&md5=a00a4d3147bd499b5f8879d3573b4670}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} } @article {Distefano2017439, title = {Personalized Health Tracking with Edge Computing Technologies}, journal = {BioNanoScience}, volume = {7}, number = {2}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {439-441}, publisher = {Springer New York LLC}, abstract = {

The health monitoring component is the essential block, a pillar of several e-health systems. Plenty of health tracking applications and specific technologies such as smart devices, wearables, and data management systems are available. To be effective, promptly reacting to issues, a health monitoring service must ensure short delays in data sensing, collection, and processing activities. This is an open problem that distributed computing paradigms, such as Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, and Edge computing, could address. The solution proposed in this paper is based on Stack4Things, an IoT-Cloud framework to manage edge nodes such as mobiles, smart objects, network devices, workstations, as a whole, a computing infrastructure allowing to provide resources on-demand, as services, to end users. Through Stack4Things facilities, the health tracking system can locate the closer computing resource to offload processing and thus reducing latency per the Edge computing paradigm. {\textcopyright} 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

}, keywords = {Clouds, Computing infrastructures, Data management system, Distributed computer systems, Edge computing, Health, Health monitoring, Health tracking systems, human, human computer interaction, Information management, Internet, Internet of Things, Internet of Things (IOT), monitoring, Stack4Things, Tracking application, Wearable technology}, issn = {21911630}, doi = {10.1007/s12668-016-0388-5}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85019121810\&doi=10.1007\%2fs12668-016-0388-5\&partnerID=40\&md5=e5aa843f2f869945fe04d5f62c97a6c5}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Dautov2018792, title = {Pushing intelligence to the edge with a stream processing architecture}, journal = {Proceedings - 2017 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things, IEEE Green Computing and Communications, IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing, IEEE Smart Data, iThings-GreenCom-CPSCom-SmartData 2017}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 3; Conference of Joint 10th IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things, iThings 2017, 13th IEEE International Conference on Green Computing and Communications, GreenCom 2017, 10th IEEE International Conference on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing, CPSCom 2017 and the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Smart Data, Smart Data 2017 ; Conference Date: 21 June 2017 Through 23 June 2017; Conference Code:134517}, pages = {792-799}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Exeter, UK - 21-23 June 2017}, abstract = {

The cloud computing paradigm underpins the Internet of Things (IoT) by offering a seemingly infinite pool of resources for processing/storing extreme amounts of data generated by complex IoT systems. The cloud has established a convenient and widely adopted approach, where raw data are vertically offloaded to cloud servers from resource-constrained edge devices, which are only seen as simple data generators, not capable of performing more sophisticated processing activities. However, there are more and more emerging scenarios, where the amount of data to be transferred over the network to the cloud is associated with increased network latency, making the results of the computation obsolete. As various categories of edge devices are becoming more and more powerful in terms of hardware resources - specifically, CPU and memory - the established way of off-loading computation to the cloud is not always seen as the most convenient approach. Accordingly, this paper presents a Stream Processing architecture for spreading workload among a local cluster of edge devices to process data in parallel, thus achieving faster execution and response times. The experimental results suggest that such a distributed in-memory approach to data processing at the very edge of a computational network has a potential to address a wide range of IoT-related scenarios. {\textcopyright} 2017 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Apache NiFi, cloud computing, Cluster computing, Computational networks, Data handling, Edge computing, Green Computing, Hardware resources, Horizontal offloading, Internet of thing (IOT), Internet of Things, Memory architecture, Network architecture, Network latencies, Processing activity, Stream processing}, isbn = {9781538630655}, doi = {10.1109/iThings-GreenCom-CPSCom-SmartData.2017.121}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85047094836\&doi=10.1109\%2fiThings-GreenCom-CPSCom-SmartData.2017.121\&partnerID=40\&md5=4e5a4b0eaffa179565af183066520cdf}, author = {Rustem Dautov and Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Longo201753, title = {Stack4Things: a sensing-and-actuation-as-a-service framework for IoT and cloud integration}, journal = {Annales des Telecommunications/Annals of Telecommunications - Institut Mines-T{\'e}l{\'e}com and Springer-Verlag France}, volume = {72}, number = {1-2}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {53-70}, publisher = {Springer-Verlag France}, abstract = {

With the increasing adoption of embedded smart devices and their involvement in different application fields, complexity may quickly grow, thus making vertical ad hoc solutions ineffective. Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud integration seems to be one of the winning solutions in order to opportunely manage the proliferation of both data and devices. In this paper, following the idea to reuse as much tooling as possible, we propose, with regards to infrastructure management, to adopt a widely used and competitive framework for Infrastructure-as-a-Service such as OpenStack. Therefore, we describe approaches and architectures so far preliminary implemented for enabling Cloud-mediated interactions with droves of sensor- and actuator-hosting nodes by presenting Stack4Things, a framework for Sensing-and-Actuation-as-a-Service (SAaaS). In particular, starting from a detailed requirement analysis, in this work, we focus on the subsystems of Stack4Things devoted to resource control and management as well as on those related to the management and collection of sensing data. Several use cases are presented justifying how our proposed framework can be viewed as a concrete step toward the complete fulfillment of the SAaaS vision. {\textcopyright} 2016, Institut Mines-T{\'e}l{\'e}com and Springer-Verlag France.

}, keywords = {Clouds, Information management, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Infrastructure managements, Internet of thing (IOT), Internet of Things, Mediated interaction, OpenStack, Requirement analysis, SAaaS, WAMP, WebSocket}, issn = {00034347}, doi = {10.1007/s12243-016-0528-5}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84976292948\&doi=10.1007\%2fs12243-016-0528-5\&partnerID=40\&md5=f334f652432ae0993795644204689e9c}, author = {Francesco Longo and Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Dautov2017, title = {Towards a global intelligent surveillance system}, journal = {11th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, ICDSC 2017}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 2; Conference of 11th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, ICDSC 2017 ; Conference Date: 5 September 2017 Through 7 September 2017; Conference Code:132201}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {Stanford, USA - 05-07 September 2017}, abstract = {

Recent technological advances have led to the rapid development of Intelligent Surveillance Systems (ISSs), ubiquitously present in modern urban spaces are constantly generating streams of raw data. As most of the actual Internet traffic is nowadays constituted by visual data streams, often originated by ISSs, it is important to properly manage these avalanches of data so as to support sustainability of this technological trend, which will very likely saturate the current network bandwidth in few years. This paper aims to combine existing technologies and paradigms from the Internet of Things, Cloud, Edge Computing and Big Data into a common framework to enable a shared approach for ISSs at a wide geographical scale, thus envisioning a Global ISS. The proposed solution is based on the idea of pushing data processing tasks as close to data sources as possible, thus increasing security and performance levels, usually critical to surveillance systems. To demonstrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed approach, the paper presents a case study based on a distributed ISS scenario in a crowded area, implemented on clustered edge devices able to offload tasks in a {\textquoteright}horizontal{\textquoteright} manner. {\textcopyright} 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.

}, keywords = {Big Data, Clouds, Edge, Geographical scale, Information management, Intelligent surveillance systems, Internet of Things, monitoring, Network security, Security and performance, Security systems, Stream processing, Surveillance systems, Technological advances, Technological trends}, doi = {10.1145/3131885.3131918}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85047726635\&doi=10.1145\%2f3131885.3131918\&partnerID=40\&md5=a84eba85cc0facc8c5bb0cd664d7d5f0}, author = {Rustem Dautov and Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Bruneo2017135, title = {User-space network tunneling under a mobile platform: A case study for android environments}, journal = {ADHOC-NOW 2017: Ad-hoc, Mobile, and Wireless Networks}, year = {2017}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 16th International Conference on Ad-Hoc Networks and Wireless, ADHOC-NOW 2017 ; Conference Date: 20 September 2017 Through 22 September 2017; Conference Code:198729}, pages = {135-143}, publisher = {Springer Verlag}, address = {Messina; Italy; 20-22 September 2017}, abstract = {

The IoT ecosystem is taking the whole ICT world by storm and, in particular for currently hot topics such as Smart Cities, it is becoming one of the key enablers for innovative applications and services. When talking about end users, or even citizens, mobiles enter the picture as the ultimate personal gadget, as well as relevant outlets for most of the duties (sensing, networking, edge computing) IoT devices are typically envisioned in the first place. Smartphones, tablets and similar accessories are even more powerful in terms of hardware capabilities (and function diversity) than typical embedded systems for IoT, but it is typically the software platform (e.g., the OS and SDK) which limits choices for the sake of security and control on the user experience. Even a relatively open environment, such as Android, exhibits these limits, in stark contrast to the otherwise very powerful and feature-complete functionalities the underlying system (i.e., Linux) natively supports. In this work the authors describe a fully user-friendly and platform-compliant approach to let users break free from some of these limitations, in particular with regard to network virtualisation, for the purpose of extending an IoT-ready Smart City use case to mobiles. {\textcopyright} Springer International Publishing AG 2017.

}, keywords = {Ad hoc networks, Android (operating system), Clouds, Computer operating systems, Distributed computer systems, embedded systems, Internet of Things, Mobile ad hoc networks, Network virtualisation, network virtualization, Open environment, OpenStack, Reverse tunneling, Smart city, Software platforms, Stack4Things, Underlying systems, Virtual reality, Virtualization, Wireless ad hoc networks}, isbn = {9783319679099}, issn = {03029743}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-67910-5_11}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85030154981\&doi=10.1007\%2f978-3-319-67910-5_11\&partnerID=40\&md5=e898f7c0ffad87eadbefa74a8a7a8940}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Kostya Esmukov and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {merlino2015tits, title = {A Crowd-Cooperative Approach for Intelligent Transportation Systems}, journal = {Intelligent Transportation Systems, IEEE Transactions on}, year = {2016}, pages = {-}, keywords = {Markovian agents, Mobile Crowdsensing, Route Planning, Stigmergy, Traffic Engineer- ing, Traffic Monitoring}, issn = {1524-9050}, author = {Davide Cerotti and Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Bruneo2016, title = {Deploying advanced services in the $\#$SmartME infrastructure}, journal = {2016 IEEE 2nd International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry Leveraging a Better Tomorrow, RTSI 2016}, year = {2016}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 2nd IEEE International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry Leveraging a Better Tomorrow, RTSI 2016 ; Conference Date: 7 September 2016 Through 9 September 2016; Conference Code:124837}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Bologna; Italy; 7-9 September 2016}, abstract = {

Smart Cities can be viewed as a complex ecosystem where thousands of {\textquoteright}things{\textquoteright} (e.g., smart objects, vehicles, mobiles) interact with people in order to provide innovative services. Following this view, the $\#$SmartME project aims at creating an horizontal Cloud-based framework enabling developers and users to manage such a complex ecosystem, remotely controlling things as well as virtualizing their functions implementing a provisioning model to scatter the application logic on top of the involved smart objects and to choose with fine granularity which specific tasks to delegate to centralized Cloud infrastructure. After one year from the project kickoff, we present the main architecture by highlighting how advance services can be deployed. {\textcopyright} 2016 IEEE.

}, keywords = {$\#$SmartME, Arduino, Clouds, Ecology, Ecosystems, IaaS, OpenStack, smart cities, Stack4Things}, isbn = {9781509011315}, doi = {10.1109/RTSI.2016.7740633}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85006001490\&doi=10.1109\%2fRTSI.2016.7740633\&partnerID=40\&md5=76b3333938151fc341a6f3994a693da8}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito and Salvatore Distefano} } @proceedings {Bruneo2016, title = {An IoT Testbed for the Software Defined City Vision: The $\#$SmartMe Project}, journal = {2016 IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing, SMARTCOMP 2016}, year = {2016}, note = {cited By 2; Conference of 2nd IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing, SMARTCOMP 2016 ; Conference Date: 18 May 2016 Through 20 May 2016; Conference Code:122466}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {St. Louis; United States; 18-20 May 2016}, abstract = {

To kickstart the process of morphing Messina into a {\guillemotleft}smart{\guillemotright} city, an explicit mission for the crowdfunded $\#$SmartME project, it is essential to set up an infrastructure of smart devices embedding sensors and actuators, to be scattered all over the urban area. An horizontal framework coupled with the Fog computing approach, by moving logic toward the {\guillemotleft}extreme{\guillemotright} edge of the Internet where data needs to be quickly elaborated, decisions made, and actions performed, is a suitable solution for data- intensive services with time-bound constraints as those usually required by citizens. This is especially true in the context of IoT and Smart City where thousands of smart objects, vehicles, mobiles, people interact to provide innovative services. We thus designed Stack4Things as an OpenStack-based framework spanning the Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service layers. We present some of the core Stack4Things functionalities implementing a Fog computing approach towards a run- time {\guillemotleft}rewireable{\guillemotright} Smart City paradigm, by outlining node management and contextualization mechanisms, also describing its usage in terms of already supported and developed verticals, as well as a specific example related to environmental data collection through $\#$SmartME. {\textcopyright} 2016 IEEE.

}, keywords = {$\#$SmartME, Arduino, Clouds, Computation theory, IaaS, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Internet of Things, OpenStack, Platform as a Service (PaaS), smart cities, Stack4Things}, isbn = {9781509008988}, doi = {10.1109/SMARTCOMP.2016.7501678}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84979570937\&doi=10.1109\%2fSMARTCOMP.2016.7501678\&partnerID=40\&md5=c7d8b8c0b0cd880d9c781770a5721acc}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino} } @proceedings {Bruneo2017222, title = {IoT-cloud authorization and delegation mechanisms for ubiquitous sensing and actuation}, journal = {2016 IEEE 3rd World Forum on Internet of Things, WF-IoT 2016}, year = {2016}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 3rd IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things, WF-IoT 2016 ; Conference Date: 12 December 2016 Through 14 December 2016; Conference Code:126414}, pages = {222-227}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Reston; United States; 12-14 December 2016}, abstract = {

In the roadmap for the implementation of ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous sensing and actuation is a milestone still to be reached. It refers to providing sensing and actuation facilities anytime and everywhere. This does not just imply to interconnect sensors and actuators through the Internet, but also and mainly to provide this facilities. IoT-Cloud computing paradigms such as the sensing and actuation as a service one could be a proper way to address this problem. In past work we developed an SAaaS framework extending OpenStack with specific functionalities for resource constrained nodes, Stack4Things. In this paper we focus on access control, authorization and delegation mechanisms which are basic mechanisms for the implementation of the UbSA vision. Thus starting from Stack4Things, we describe how we adapted and extended mechanisms provided by OpenStack, with specific regard to Keystone, with new functionalities for delegation and access control. A use case in the smart city scenario of $\#$SmartME describes the proposed solution in practice. {\textcopyright} 2016 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Access control, Arches, Basic mechanism, cloud computing, Delegation, Delegation mechanisms, Interconnect sensors, Internet of Things, Keystone, OpenStack, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Resource constrained nodes, Sensing and Actuation as a Service, Smart city, Ubiquitous computing}, isbn = {9781509041305}, doi = {10.1109/WF-IoT.2016.7845494}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85015210244\&doi=10.1109\%2fWF-IoT.2016.7845494\&partnerID=40\&md5=055a280adfbce85756d94736e2b82c55}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Merlino2017213, title = {Quantitative evaluation of Cloud-based network virtualization mechanisms for IoT}, journal = {ValueTools 2016 - 10th EAI International Conference on Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools}, year = {2016}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 10th EAI International Conference on Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools, ValueTools 2016 ; Conference Date: 25 October 2016 Through 28 October 2016; Conference Code:127816}, pages = {213-216}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {Taormina; Italy; 25-28 October 2016}, abstract = {

Integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) with the Cloud may lead to a range of different architectures and solutions. Our efforts in this domain are mainly geared towards making IoT systems available as service-oriented infrastructure. Under Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) scenarios, network virtualization is a core building block of any solution, even more so for IoT-focused Cloud providers. Enabling mechanisms are required to support virtualization of the networking facilities for IoT resources that are managed by the Cloud. This work describes an approach to network virtualization based on popular off-the-shelf tools and protocols in place of application-specific logic, acting as a blueprint in the design of the Stack4Things architecture, an OpenStack-derived framework to provide IaaS-like services from a pool of IoT devices. We quantitatively evaluate the underlying mechanisms demonstrating that the proposed approach exhibits mostly comparable performance with respect to standard technologies for virtual private networks, or at least good enough for the kind of underlying hardware, e.g., smart boards, whilst still representing a more flexible solution. Copyright {\textcopyright} 2016 EAI.

}, keywords = {Application specific, Clouds, Distributed computer systems, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Internet of thing (IOT), Internet of Things, Network architecture, network virtualization, OpenStack, Performance evaluation, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Quantitative evaluation, Reverse tunneling, Service-oriented infrastructures, Virtual private networks, Virtual reality, Virtualization}, isbn = {9781631901416}, doi = {10.4108/eai.25-10-2016.2266600}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85021354856\&doi=10.4108\%2feai.25-10-2016.2266600\&partnerID=40\&md5=61d1e54a06f72746e6e5bd90c920b1c0}, author = {Giovanni Merlino and Francesco Longo and Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Bruneo2016848, title = {Stack4Things as a fog computing platform for Smart City applications}, journal = {Proceedings - IEEE INFOCOM}, volume = {2016-September}, year = {2016}, note = {cited By 1; Conference of 35th IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops, INFOCOM WKSHPS 2016 ; Conference Date: 10 April 2016 Through 14 April 2016; Conference Code:123666}, pages = {848-853}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {San Francisco; United States; 10-14 April 2016}, abstract = {

Fog computing envisions computation logic to be moved at the edge of the Internet where data needs to be quickly elaborated, decisions made, and actions performed. Delegating to the Cloud the whole burden of applications could not be efficient indeed, for example in case of workload bursts. This is especially true in the context of IoT and Smart City where thousands of smart objects, vehicles, mobiles, people interact to provide innovative services. We thus designed Stack4Things as an OpenStack-based framework spanning the Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service layers. It enables developers and users to manage an IoT infrastructure, remotely controlling nodes as well as virtualizing their functions and creating network overlays among them, implementing a provisioning model for Cyber-Physical Systems. Moreover, it provides mechanisms to scatter the application logic on top of the involved smart objects and to choose with fine granularity which specific tasks to delegate to centralized Cloud infrastructure. In this paper, we show the core Stack4Things mechanisms implementing a Fog computing approach towards a run-time {\textquoteright}rewireable{\textquoteright} Smart City paradigm. We demonstrate its effectiveness in a smart mobility scenario where vehicles interact with City-level smart objects to provide end users with highly responsive geolocalised services. {\textcopyright} 2016 IEEE.

}, isbn = {9781467399555}, issn = {0743166X}, doi = {10.1109/INFCOMW.2016.7562195}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84988813645\&doi=10.1109\%2fINFCOMW.2016.7562195\&partnerID=40\&md5=029527b7cfabd94a2e46f0a1af643b6e}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito and Valeria D{\textquoteright}Amico and Marco Sapienza and Giuseppe Torrisi} } @proceedings {Distefano2017, title = {A Stack4Things-based platform for mobile crowdsensing services}, journal = {Proceedings of the 2016 ITU Kaleidoscope Academic Conference: ICTs for a Sustainable World, ITU WT 2016}, year = {2016}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 2016 ITU Kaleidoscope Academic Conference, ITU WT 2016 ; Conference Date: 14 November 2016 Through 16 November 2016; Conference Code:125881}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Bangkok; Thailand; 14-16 November 2016}, abstract = {

As mobiles grow pervasive in people{\textquoteright}s lives and expand their reach, Mobile CrowdSensing (MCS) and similar paradigms are going to play an ever more prominent role. There is a pressing need then to ease developers and service providers in embracing the opportunity, and that means offering a platform for such efforts. This in turn means providing a solid foundational architecture with abstractions and sound layering for MCS application designs to be mapped over it. This should base on a flexible infrastructure able to provide resources to MCS applications according to their requirements, hopefully on-demand. A service-oriented/Cloud model can perfectly fill this gap. This paper is a first step in this direction, proposing to adopt Stack4Things (S4T), an OpenStack-based platform for managing sensing and IoT nodes, for runtime customization of resources and their functions to support MCS services and applications. This implies developing and extending the S4T platform further to the specific requirements coming from off-the-shelf, e.g., Android-based, mobiles, as well as describing an example S4T-powered MCS application, Pothole Detection Mapping, to highlight the role of the platform. {\textcopyright} 2016 International Telecommunication Union.

}, keywords = {Android, Android (operating system), Application design, Clouds, Internet of Things, Mobile Crowdsensing, On demands, OpenStack, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Service Oriented, Service provider, Services and applications}, isbn = {9789261204310}, doi = {10.1109/ITU-WT.2016.7805722}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85014231645\&doi=10.1109\%2fITU-WT.2016.7805722\&partnerID=40\&md5=ea474a8f0a90e12de36e3ae371c16d9b}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Antonio Puliafito and Giovanni Merlino and Francesco Longo and Dario Bruneo} } @proceedings {Merlino2015199, title = {Cloud-based network virtualization: An IoT use case}, journal = {Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST}, volume = {155}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 2; Conference of 7th International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks, AdHocHets 2015 ; Conference Date: 1 September 2015 Through 2 September 2015; Conference Code:139059}, pages = {199-210}, publisher = {Springer Verlag}, address = {San Remo (Italy)}, abstract = {

In light of an overarching scheme about extending the capabilities of Internet of things (IoT) with Cloud-enabled mechanisms, network virtualization is a key enabler of infrastructure-oriented IoT solutions. In particular, without network virtualization infrastructure cannot really be considered flexible enough to meet emerging requirements, and even administrative duties, such as management, maintenance and large-scale automation, would turn out to be brittle and addressed by special casing, leading to loss of generality and a variety of corner cases. We propose a Cloud-based network virtualization approach for IoT, based on the Open- Stack IaaS framework, where its networking subsystem, Neutron, gets extended to accomodate virtual networks and arbitrary topologies among virtualmachines and globally dispersed smart objects, whichever the setup and constraints of the underlying physical networks. This work outlines a motivating use case for our approach, and the ensuing discussion is provided to frame the benefits of the underlying design. {\textcopyright} Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2015.

}, keywords = {Ad hoc networks, Arbitrary topology, Clouds, Internet of Things, Internet of Things (IOT), IoT, network virtualization, OpenStack, Telecommunication networks, Underlying physical networks, Virtual networks, Virtual reality, WebSocket}, isbn = {9783319250663}, issn = {18678211}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-25067-0_16}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84947982973\&doi=10.1007\%2f978-3-319-25067-0_16\&partnerID=40\&md5=f749a4988e888d00cbdabf0649881264}, author = {Giovanni Merlino and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Salvatore Distefano and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Longo2015280, title = {Dependability modeling of Software Defined Networking}, journal = {Computer Networks}, volume = {83}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 6}, pages = {280-296}, publisher = {Elsevier}, abstract = {

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new network design paradigm that aims at simplifying the implementation of complex networking infrastructures by separating the forwarding functionalities (data plane) from the network logical control (control plane). Network devices are used only for forwarding, while decisions about where data is sent are taken by a logically centralized yet physically distributed component, i.e., the SDN controller. From a quality of service (QoS) point of view, an SDN controller is a complex system whose operation can be highly dependent on a variety of parameters, e.g., its degree of distribution, the corresponding topology, the number of network devices to control, and so on. Dependability aspects are particularly critical in this context. In this work, we present a new analytical modeling technique that allows us to represent an SDN controller whose components are organized in a hierarchical topology, focusing on reliability and availability aspects and overcoming issues and limitations of Markovian models. In particular, our approach allows to capture changes in the operating conditions (e.g., in the number of managed devices) still allowing to represent the underlying phenomena through generally distributed events. The dependability of a use case on a two-layer hierarchical SDN control plane is investigated through the proposed technique providing numerical results to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. {\textcopyright} 2015 Elsevier B.V.

}, keywords = {Availability, Complex networks, Controllers, Degree of distributions, Distributed components, Electric network topology, Information dissemination, Markov processes, Networking infrastructure, Non-Markovian, Quality control, Quality of service, Random processes, Reliability, Reliability and availability, Software defined networking (SDN), Software reliability, Software-defined networkings, Stochastic models, Stochastic systems, Topology, Type expansions}, issn = {13891286}, doi = {10.1016/j.comnet.2015.03.018}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84946489290\&doi=10.1016\%2fj.comnet.2015.03.018\&partnerID=40\&md5=b4f32c89d2b7b79fefcaf97082764960}, author = {Francesco Longo and Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Marco Scarpa} } @article {ieeesys_:2015, title = {Device-centric Sensing: an Alternative to Data-centric Approaches}, journal = {Systems Journal, IEEE}, volume = {9}, number = {4}, year = {2015}, month = {Oct}, pages = {-}, abstract = {When pieces of information originate from the physical world through sensing infrastructure, there is a pressing need to cope with the overhead and inherent limitations lying in merely shifting huge amounts of aggregated data across the net. In this scenario, a key point is the minimization of wasted bandwidth to accommodate for ever-growing demands of sensing data. For effective treatment of sensing data, BigData principles and approaches should be adopted, in particular the one by which computing has to be brought as near as possible to data. In this paper we propose a new approach to deal with sensing data inspired by this principle, injecting intelligence on the device instead of just using it as source of data, thus reversing the trend from the current data-centric paradigm towards a device-centric one. This way, we shift the focus from the application level onto the infrastructure one, adopting a Cloud-oriented approach to abstract and virtualize sensor-hosting boards ready to be reconfigured with custom logic, such as MapReduce, by providing resources on demand, as a service. Theoretical, design and technical aspects have been addressed in this paper through the evaluation of a device-centric Sensing IaaS stack implementation. In particular, a prototype for mobiles is described, getting into platform-dependent details where needed. The facilities so far implemented under the Android platform have been put under preliminary testing through a mobile application.}, keywords = {BigData, Cloud, IaaS, Mobiles, sensing abstraction and virtualization, sensors and actuators}, issn = {1932-8184}, doi = {10.1109/JSYST.2015.xxxxxxx}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Merlino2015268, title = {Enabling mechanisms for Cloud-based network virtualization in IoT}, journal = {IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things, WF-IoT 2015 - Proceedings}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 3; Conference of 2nd IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things, WF-IoT 2015 ; Conference Date: 14 December 2015 Through 16 December 2015; Conference Code:119271}, pages = {268-273}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Milan (Italy)}, abstract = {

As part of a wider effort in integrating Internet of things (IoT) with the Cloud under the guise of infrastructure to be provided as-a-Service, network virtualization plays an essential role, both as an enabler of Infrastructure-as-a-Service scenarios and as a basic building block of the solution for the IoT-focused Cloud provider. Virtualization of the networking facilities for Cloud-managed IoT resources needs mechanisms to deal with the inherent complexity. This work outlines an implementation-agnostic approach to such a problem, reflected in our evolving Stack4Things architecture, derived from OpenStack, and implemented starting from such codebase, by leveraging also a choice of modern tooling and protocols. A specific use case and the discussion that follows are provided to frame the benefits of this strategy. {\textcopyright} 2015 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Basic building block, Cloud providers, Clouds, Complex networks, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Inherent complexity, Internet, Internet of Things, Internet of Things (IOT), Network architecture, network virtualization, OpenStack, Virtual reality, Virtualizations, WebSocket}, isbn = {9781509003655}, doi = {10.1109/WF-IoT.2015.7389064}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84964453184\&doi=10.1109\%2fWF-IoT.2015.7389064\&partnerID=40\&md5=555a2a5aad4f3af24fac04fc0e4a8280}, author = {Giovanni Merlino and Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {124, title = {A Framework For Device-centric Sensing Cloud}, journal = {INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLOUD COMPUTING}, year = {2015}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Merlino2015, title = {Mobile CrowdSensing as a Service: a platform for applications on top of Sensing Clouds}, journal = {Future Generation Computer Systems}, year = {2015}, pages = {-}, keywords = {runtime customization}, issn = {0167-739X}, author = {Giovanni Merlino and Stamatis Arkoulis and Salvatore Distefano and Chrysa Papagianni and Antonio Puliafito and Symeon Papavassiliou} } @proceedings {376, title = {An OpenStack-based Implementation of a Volunteer Cloud}, journal = {Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing}, year = {2015}, pages = {-}, publisher = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg}, isbn = {978-3-642-33426-9}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Distefano2015629, title = {QoS Assessment of Mobile Crowdsensing Services}, journal = {Journal of Grid Computing}, volume = {13}, number = {4}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 2}, pages = {629-650}, publisher = {Springer Netherlands}, abstract = {

The wide spreading of smart devices drives to develop distributed applications of increasing complexity, attracting efforts from both research and business communities. Recently, a new volunteer contribution paradigm based on participatory and opportunistic sensing is affirming in the Internet of Things scenario: Mobile Crowdsensing (MCS). A typical MCS application considers smart devices as contributing sensors able to produce geolocalized data about the physical environment, then collected by a remote application server for processing. The growing interest on MCS allows to think about its possible exploitation in commercial context. This calls for adequate methods able to support MCS service providers in design choices, implementing mechanisms for the quality of service (QoS) assessment while dealing with complex time-dependent phenomena and churning issues due to contributors that unpredictably join and leave the MCS system. In this paper, we propose an analytical modeling framework based on stochastic Petri nets to evaluate QoS metrics of a class of MCS services. This method requires to extend the Petri net formalism by specifying a marking dependency semantics for non-exponentially distributed transitions. The approach is then applied to an MCS application example deriving some QoS measures that can drive quantitative evaluation and characterization of the {\textquotedblleft}crowd{\textquotedblright} behavior. {\textcopyright} 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

}, keywords = {crowdsensing, Digital storage, Distributed applications, Marking dependency, Non-Markovian, Performability, Petri nets, Quality of service, Quality of service (QoS) assessments, Quantitative evaluation, Semantics, Stochastic systems, Time dependent phenomena}, issn = {15707873}, doi = {10.1007/s10723-015-9338-7}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84958155341\&doi=10.1007\%2fs10723-015-9338-7\&partnerID=40\&md5=3bd7e36a37ab06a3acabb37a21b90ab1}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} } @article {Merlino201516314, title = {A smart city lighting case study on an OpenStack-powered infrastructure}, journal = {Sensors}, volume = {15}, number = {7}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 0}, pages = {16314-16335}, publisher = {MDPI AG}, abstract = {

The adoption of embedded systems, mobile devices and other smart devices keeps rising globally, and the scope of their involvement broadens, for instance, in smart city-like scenarios. In light of this, a pressing need emerges to tame such complexity and reuse as much tooling as possible without resorting to vertical ad hoc solutions, while at the same time taking into account valid options with regard to infrastructure management and other more advanced functionalities. Existing solutions mainly focus on core mechanisms and do not allow one to scale by leveraging infrastructure or adapt to a variety of scenarios, especially if actuators are involved in the loop. A new, more flexible, cloud-based approach, able to provide device-focused workflows, is required. In this sense, a widely-used and competitive framework for infrastructure as a service, such as OpenStack, with its breadth in terms of feature coverage and expanded scope, looks to fit the bill, replacing current application-specific approaches with an innovative application-agnostic one. This work thus describes the rationale, efforts and results so far achieved for an integration of IoT paradigms and resource ecosystems with such a kind of cloud-oriented device-centric environment, by focusing on a smart city scenario, namely a park smart lighting example, and featuring data collection, data visualization, event detection and coordinated reaction, as example use cases of such integration. {\textcopyright} 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

}, keywords = {AMQP, Ceilometer, CEP, Clouds, CoAP, Coordination reactions, data visualization, embedded systems, IaaS, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), IoT, Lighting, Meteorological instruments, Mobile devices, MOM, OpenStack, REST, smart cities}, issn = {14248220}, doi = {10.3390/s150716314}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84940184863\&partnerID=40\&md5=6b5fc8b27ed3943f0529cb3323f22e88}, author = {Giovanni Merlino and Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito and Adnan H. Al-Anbuky} } @proceedings {Merlino2015909, title = {Software defined cities: A novel paradigm for smart cities through IoT clouds}, journal = {Proceedings - 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Advanced and Trusted Computing, 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications, 20}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 1; Conference of Proceedings - 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Advanced and Trusted Computing, 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Internet of People and Associated Symposia/Workshops, UIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP 2015 ; Conference Date: 10 August 2015 Through 14 August 2015; Conference Code:122811}, pages = {909-916}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Beijing (China)}, abstract = {

A Smart City represents an improvement of today cities that strategically exploits many smart factors to increase the city sustainable growth and strengthen city functions, while ensuring citizen quality of life and health. Cities can be perceived as an ecosystem of "things" which citizens daily interact with: street furniture, public buildings, transportation, monuments, public lighting as well as personal smartphones. Thanks to recent advances in ICT such things can be considered always interconnected also providing sensing and actuating facilities according to the Internet of Things and Cyber Physical Systems models. Creating smart services that exploit such a complex infrastructure is a fundamental and current challenge. To this end, aim of this paper is the design and implementation of the Software Defined Cities approach: a Cloud-based infrastructure that, starting from the well known concept of Software Defined paradigms, is able to transform this complex ecosystem in a simple and "programmable" environment where municipalities, companies, scientists, and citizens can easily collaborate in developing innovative smart services. The overall architecture is presented focusing on both the function virtualization and infrastructure aspects also giving details about the software stacks used (e.g., Open Stack) while a use case is laid out to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach. {\textcopyright} 2015 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Big Data, Clouds, Complex ecosystems, Complex infrastructures, Cyber physical systems (CPSs), Design and implementations, Ecology, Ecosystems, embedded systems, Internet, Internet of Things, Sensing and actuating, smart cities, Sustainable development, Sustainable growth, Trusted Computing, Ubiquitous computing, Virtual reality, Virtualizations}, isbn = {9781467372114}, doi = {10.1109/UIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP.2015.174}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84983438378\&doi=10.1109\%2fUIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP.2015.174\&partnerID=40\&md5=790a6042e6e80594e42b64695d6b014e}, author = {Giovanni Merlino and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito and Salvatore Distefano} } @proceedings {Longo2015204, title = {Stack4Things: An OpenStack-Based Framework for IoT}, journal = {Proceedings - 2015 International Conference on Future Internet of Things and Cloud, FiCloud 2015 and 2015 International Conference on Open and Big Data, OBD 2015}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 2; Conference of 3rd International Conference on Future Internet of Things and Cloud, FiCloud 2015 ; Conference Date: 24 August 2015 Through 26 August 2015; Conference Code:117067}, pages = {204-211}, publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}, address = {Rome (Italy)}, abstract = {

In the wake of the massive adoption of embedded systems, mobiles, and other smart devices, as the scope of their involvement keeps broadening, complexity may quickly become overwhelming and vertical ad-hoc solutions will not cut it anymore. We propose to reuse as much tooling as possible, taking into account suitable options with regard to infrastructure management, then piggybacking as much advanced functionalities as possible in such kind of environment. In this sense, a widely used and competitive framework for Infrastructure-as-a-Service such as OpenStack, with its breadth in terms of feature coverage and expanded scope, looks like fitting the bill. This work therefore describes the approach and the solutions so far preliminary implemented for enabling Cloud-mediated interactions with droves of sensor-and actuator-hosting nodes by proposing Stack4Things, a framework for Sensing-and-Actuation-as-a-Service. In particular, we focused on describing the subsystem of Stack4Things devoted to resource control and management, highlighting relevant requirements and justifying how our proposed framework addresses them, while also opening up possibilities for a range of future extensions towards complete fulfillment of the Sensing-and-Actuation-as-a-Service vision. {\textcopyright} 2015 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Big Data, Clouds, embedded systems, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Infrastructure managements, Internet, Internet of Things, Mediated interaction, OpenStack, Resource control, SAaaS, Sensor and actuators, WAMP, Web Socket}, isbn = {9781467381031}, doi = {10.1109/FiCloud.2015.97}, url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84959059371\&doi=10.1109\%2fFiCloud.2015.97\&partnerID=40\&md5=e702319ada1b2cdde5d5d2061ec278f7}, author = {Francesco Longo and Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article { 11570_2963770, title = {A Utility Paradigm For Iot: The Sensing Cloud}, journal = {PERVASIVE AND MOBILE COMPUTING}, volume = {20}, year = {2015}, pages = {127{\textendash}144}, abstract = {

IoT is such a key trend in ICT that it is quickly becoming one of the most influential research and development topics. This popularity is spawning also lots of laudable initiatives, one of the most prominent being carried on by the IoT-A consortium, including influential blueprints such as its Reference Architecture (RA). Their main goal is to interconnect network-enabled devices and {\textquotedblleft}things{\textquotedblright} through the Internet. This bottom-up view of IoT is lacking mechanisms for aggregating, managing and administrating groups of things. Such a perspective could be reverted to provide control and management facilities through specific framework and software, in line with new trends such as software defined networking. In this paper we propose a top-down utility paradigm for IoT starting from the IoT-A reference architecture and the Sensing and Actuation as a Service (SAaaS) approach. It aims at implementing a sensing Cloud by enrolling and aggregating sensing resources from sensor networks and personal, mobile devices. We follow a device-driven approach, as adopted in IaaS Clouds: once collected, the physical (sensing) resources are abstracted and virtualized and then provided as a service to end users. A key point of the SAaaS is the abstraction of resources, i.e. providing a uniform way to access to and interact with the underlying physical nodes in compliance with IoT goals. The main contribution of the paper is the design and development of the sensing resource abstractions for SAaaS to demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach, providing details on theoretical and design aspects as well as technical ones. In particular, a preliminary implementation for mobiles is described, delving in platform-dependent details where needed. The facilities thus developed under the Android platform have been tested through a typical IoT application, in order to gauge the validity of the approach.

}, keywords = {Abstraction and ​virtualization, Cloud, IoT, Mobiles, Reference architecture, sensors and actuators}, doi = {10.1016/j.pmcj.2014.09.006}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157411921400159X}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Longo20152506, title = {Variable operating conditions in distributed systems: Modeling and evaluation}, journal = {Concurrency Computation Practice and Experience}, volume = {27}, number = {10}, year = {2015}, note = {cited By 1}, pages = {2506-2530}, publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Ltd}, abstract = {

SummaryPerformance and dependability evaluation plays a key role in the design of a broad range of systems, especially when strict requirements need to be met. This is particularly challenging in distributed contexts, where several components may interact among themselves by influencing each other. In this paper, we present an analytical method that allows the study of a class of systems where different operating conditions alternate by changing the stochastic behavior of the system components but still preserving the continuity of the performance and dependability quantities to investigate. The proposed solution technique, based on phase type distributions, Kronecker algebra, and ad-hoc fitting algorithms, can be applied for the analytical evaluation of a wide class of distributed systems. Examples are provided to show the usefulness and the applicability of the methodology, characterizing and investigating different performance and dependability aspects of three distributed computing systems, that is, a connection-oriented network, an Internet of Things application, and an Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud. Copyright {\textcopyright} 2014 John Wiley \& Sons, Ltd.

}, keywords = {Algebra, cloud computing, Conservative systems, Dependability, Distributed computer systems, Internet, Internet of Things, Kronecker algebra, Markov processes, Non-Markovian, Performance, phase type distributions, Stochastic systems}, issn = {15320626}, doi = {10.1002/cpe.3419}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84932604392\&partnerID=40\&md5=b8f197a50fa177e85f0c1ac2a93fe392}, author = {Francesco Longo and Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Marco Scarpa} } @inbook {136, title = {M2M Interactions Paradigm Via Volunteer Computing And Mobile Crowdsensing}, booktitle = {Machine-To-Machine Communications - Architectures, Technology, Standards, and Applications}, year = {2014}, pages = {123{\textendash}133}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, organization = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {Londra}, author = {Symeon Papavassiliou and Chrysa Papagianni and Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {126, title = {Mobiles for Sensing Clouds: the SAaaS4Mobile Experience}, journal = {SCALABLE COMPUTING. PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE}, volume = {14}, year = {2014}, pages = {215{\textendash}233}, abstract = {

Smart devices, and mobiles in particular, are at the forefront of several hot new trends in ICT, such as the Internet of Things and service computing. Cloud computing is another paradigm generating a great deal of offshoots, some of which are aimed at enabling novel services and applications by exploiting its ubiquity and flexibility in combination with sensors and the (meta)data they produce about phenomena, events and other interesting items about the physical world. In this context, the authors, propose a new way to orchestrate devices, in particular SNs and mobiles, as resources to build up Clouds of sensors, reverting the current wisdom about mobile Clouds, i.e. the integration of feature-rich devices into the Cloud fabric as mere clients to one where personal / wearable devices are actively involved into a {\textquotedblleft}sensing{\textquotedblright} Cloud, forming a fully feedback-enabled ecosystem. The main aim of the Sensing and Actuation as a Service (SAaaS) approach is therefore to implement such a Cloud by enrolling and aggregating sensing resources from sensor networks and personal, mobile devices. A device-centric approach is embraced as in IaaS Clouds: once collected, the physical (sensing) resources are abstracted and virtualised and then provided elastically, on-demand, as a service to end users, including facilities for customization of the (hosting) embedded platform. A key point of the SAaaS approach is the abstraction of resources, i.e. providing a uniform way to access to and interact with the underlying physical nodes. In this paper we focus on the low-level interaction with sensing resources in SAaaS, restricting the scope to mobiles, thus providing details on theoretical and design aspects as well as technical and implementation ones. In particular, we report on an implementation of the SAaaS low-level modules on Android devices, the SAaaS4Mobile one, providing architectural descriptions of the main modules, implementation guidelines and discussing through a preliminary implementation evaluation the effectiveness of the approach.

}, keywords = {Android, Cloud, OGC Sensor Web Enablement, sensing abstraction and virtualisation, sensors and actuators}, doi = {10.12694/scpe.v14i4.929}, url = {http://www.scpe.org/index.php/scpe/article/view/929/391}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Distefano2014255, title = {Non-Markovian modeling of a BladeCenter chassis midplane}, journal = {Proceedings of the 11th European Workshop on Computer Performance Engineering (EPEW)}, volume = {8721 Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, year = {2014}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 11th European Workshop on Computer Performance Engineering, EPEW 2014 ; Conference Date: 11 September 2014 Through 12 September 2014; Conference Code:107431}, pages = {255-269}, publisher = {Springer Verlag}, address = {Florence, Italy, 11-12 September 2014}, abstract = {

In distributed contexts such as Cloud computing, the reliability and availability of the provided resources and services have to be assured in order to meet user requirements. At the infrastructure level, this specification is translated into tighter ones on the datacenter hosting physical resources. In this paper, starting from a real case study of the IBM BladeCenter, we provide a technique for the quantitative evaluation of datacenter infrastructure availability. The proposed technique allows one to take into account both aging phenomena and multiple operating conditions. In particular, one subsystem of the BladeCenter, the chassis midplane, is studied. Indeed, based on the stochastic characterization of the midplane reliability through statistic measurements, a model dealing with the non-exponential failure time distribution thus obtained is evaluated to demonstrate the suitability and the effectiveness of the proposed technique. {\textcopyright} 2014 Springer International Publishing.

}, keywords = {Aging phenomena, Chassis, Failure-time distribution, Non-Markovian modeling, Operating condition, Physical resources, Quantitative evaluation, Reliability and availability, Stochastic models, Stochastic systems, User requirements}, isbn = {9783319108841}, issn = {03029743}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-10885-8_18}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84906969232\&partnerID=40\&md5=6840d4a28b6ed80a602f4db06c10343b}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa and Kishor S. Trivedi} } @proceedings {Merlino201521, title = {Stack4Things: Integrating IoT with OpenStack in a Smart City context}, journal = {Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Smart Computing Workshops (SMARTCOMP Workshops)}, year = {2014}, note = {cited By 1; Conference of 2014 International Conference on Smart Computing Workshops, SMARTCOMP Workshops 2014 ; Conference Date: 5 November 2014; Conference Code:111083}, pages = {21-28}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {Hong Kong, China, 5 November 2014}, abstract = {

As the adoption of embedded systems, mobiles and other smart devices keeps rising, and the scope of their involvement broadens, for instance in the enablement of Smart City-like scenarios, a pressing need emerges to tame such complexity and reuse as much tooling as possible without resorting to vertical ad-hoc solutions, while at the same time taking into account valid options with regards to infrastructure management, and other more advanced functionalities. In this sense, a widely used and competitive framework for Infrastructure as a Service such as OpenStack, with its breadth in terms of feature coverage and expanded scope, looks like fitting the bill. This work thus describes rationale, efforts, and results so far achieved, for an integration of IoT paradigms and resource ecosystems with such a kind of Cloud-oriented environment, by focusing on a Smart City scenario, and featuring data collection and visualization as example use cases of such integration. {\textcopyright} 2014 IEEE.

}, keywords = {AMQP, Ceilometer, CEP, Clouds, CoAP, data visualization, embedded systems, IaaS, Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Internet of Things, IoT, Meteorological instruments, MOM, OpenStack, REST, smart cities}, isbn = {9781479964475}, doi = {10.1109/SMARTCOMP-W.2014.7046678}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84925651440\&partnerID=40\&md5=d36947c633a2c7b011bffa40aa32db9f}, author = {Giovanni Merlino and Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {128, title = {Abstraction Of On-board Resources In Mobiles: Saaas4mobile, A First Step Towards A Sensing Cloud.}, journal = {Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC)}, year = {2013}, month = {15 Novembre 2013}, pages = {674{\textendash}681}, publisher = {IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated:445 Hoes Lane:Piscataway, NJ 08854:(800)701-4333, (732)981-0060, EMAIL: subscription-service@ieee.org, INTERNET: http://www.ieee.org, Fax: (732)981-9667}, address = {Piscataway, NJ}, author = {Lionel Cremer and Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {127, title = {Application Deployment For Iot: An Infrastructure Approach}, journal = {Proceeding of the IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) - Symposium On Selected Areas In Communications}, year = {2013}, month = {13 Dicembre 2013}, pages = {2798{\textendash}2803}, publisher = {IEEE / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Incorporated:445 Hoes Lane:Piscataway, NJ 08854:(800)701-4333, (732)981-0060, EMAIL: subscription-service@ieee.org, INTERNET: http://www.ieee.org, Fax: (732)981-9667}, address = {Piscataway, NJ}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {129, title = {The Core Approach Of Saaas In Action: The Planning Agent}, journal = {Advances in Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing}, year = {2013}, pages = {37{\textendash}46}, publisher = {SPRINGER-VERLAG}, address = {Berlin}, abstract = {

The main goal of the sensing and actuation as a service (SAaaS) approach is to enrol and aggregate sensing resources from heterogeneous sensor networks and smart devices, providing them as a service in a Cloud-wise fashion. SAaaS aims at providing handles on sensing and actuation resources, abstracted and virtualized on top of physical ones, shared by contributors to the SAaaS. This requires adequate mechanisms for letting SAaaS end users interact with the contributing nodes hosting the provided resources. In this paper we focus on such problem, introducing the module of our SAaaS architecture specifically conceived to deal with all the issues related to user-resource interfaces: the Planning Agent (PA). The modular architecture of the PA and its main interactions with SAaaS stakeholders and framework components are described. The development of the PA on the Android platform is detailed, thus implementing a preliminary version of the SAaaS framework, targeted at mobiles: SAaaS4mobile.

}, keywords = {Cloud, OGC Sensor Web Enablement, sensing abstraction and virtualisation, sensors and actuators}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-45364-9_4}, author = {Lionel Cremer and Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {135, title = {Exploiting Saaas In Smart City Scenarios}, journal = {Intelligent Computing Theories}, volume = {7995}, year = {2013}, month = {31/07/2013}, pages = {638{\textendash}647}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-39479-9_74}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {130, title = {A Hypervisor For Infrastructure-enabled Sensing Clouds}, journal = {Communications Workshops (ICC), 2013 IEEE International Conference on}, year = {2013}, month = {13/06/2013}, pages = {1362{\textendash}1366}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Piscataway, NJ}, abstract = {

The lack of support and the shortcomings of Cloud computing in relation to pervasive applications can be addressed through the Sensing and Actuation as a Service (SAaaS) paradigm. In SAaaS, sensors and actuators, from both mobile devices and sensor networks, can be discovered, aggregated and elastically provided as a service according to the Cloud provisioning model. Nevertheless, managing a large set of sensing and actuation resources, characterized by volatility and heterogeneity, rises the need for specific mechanisms and strategies. In this paper we focus on management, abstraction and virtualization of sensing resources. More specifically, we describe the lowest level module of the SAaaS architecture, the hypervisor, that takes care of communication with devices and orchestrates their resources. The hypervisor operates according to policies and strategies coming from higher layers, and includes customization facilities that ease the integration of heterogeneous devices.

}, doi = {10.1109/ICCW.2013.6649449}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {131, title = {Infrastructure Setup And Deployment In Sensing Cloud Environments}, journal = {Innovative Mobile and Internet Services in Ubiquitous Computing (IMIS), 2013 Seventh International Conference on}, year = {2013}, month = {05/07/2013}, pages = {462{\textendash}467}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Piscataway, NJ}, abstract = {

Sensing and actuation as a service (SAaaS) is a novel paradigm, modeled after Cloud and service computing, envisioning an Infrastructure-oriented (IaaS-like) provisioning model for sensors and actuators. In past works we defined a framework architecture for dealing with the requirements arising from the SAaaS criteria, considering the involvement of both mobiles and sensor networks. This provided a static view of the solution proposed, lacking details on how to effectively apply the paradigm exploiting its benefits. This paper addresses the topic from a different perspective, providing a dynamic view of the scenarios and therefore tackling SAaaS infrastructure setup and application service deployment. We identified a few outstanding use cases, which are described in operative terms to show the applicability and usefulness of the proposed solution.

}, keywords = {Cloud, sensors and actuators, service deployment, volunteer contribution}, doi = {10.1109/IMIS.2013.83}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Distefano201377, title = {Investigating mobile crowdsensing application performance}, journal = {Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Symposium on Design and Analysis of Intelligent Vehicular Networks and Applications (DIVANet), Co-located with the 16th ACM Int. Conf. on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM)}, year = {2013}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 3rd ACM Int. Symp. on Design and Analysis of Intelligent Vehicular Networks and Applications, DIVANet 2013, Held in Conjunction with the 16th ACM Int. Conf. on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems, MSWiM 2013 ; Conference Date: 3 November 2013 Through 8 November 2013; Conference Code:101342}, pages = {77-83}, publisher = {ACM}, address = {Barcelona, Spain, 3-8 November 2013}, abstract = {

Mobile Crowdsensing (MCS) is an emerging distributed paradigm lying at the intersection between the Internet of Things and the volunteer/crowd-based approach. MCS applications are usually deployed on contributing nodes such as smart devices and mobiles, equipped by sensing resources that sample the physical environment and provide the sensed data, once filtered, aggregated and preprocessed, to the MCS application server. The MCS opportunistic approach unlocks new form of pervasive, participatory sensing applications, acquiring interests also in business contexts that call for adequate techniques and tools to drive architects and developers in MCS application design. Aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of an MCS application though a stochastic model able to stochastically represent the overall MCS environment, thus providing a valid support to MCS application development. The Petri nets formalism is used due to its expressiveness and the capabilities to represent complex, dependent, non-Markovian, phenomena usually characterizing MCS environments. A specific MCS application is then evaluated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique on a real case study. {\textcopyright} 2013 ACM.

}, keywords = {Application development, Application performance, Complex networks, crowdsensing, Design, Digital storage, Internet of Things (IOT), Participatory sensing applications, Performance, Petri nets, Physical environments, Stochastic models, Techniques and tools}, isbn = {9781450323581}, doi = {10.1145/2512921.2512931}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84889685098\&partnerID=40\&md5=15df22b992482173437dcd8080bbbc94}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} } @proceedings {Distefano2013385, title = {Quantitative dependability assessment of distributed systems subject to variable conditions}, journal = {6th International Conference on Internet and Distributed Computing Systems (IDCS)}, volume = {8223 Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, year = {2013}, note = {cited By 1; Conference of 6th International Conference on Internet and Distributed Computing Systems, IDCS 2013 ; Conference Date: 28 October 2013 Through 30 October 2013; Conference Code:102547}, pages = {385-398}, publisher = {Springer-Verlag}, address = {Hangzhou, China, 28-30 October 2013}, abstract = {

Dependability evaluation plays a key role in the design of a broad range of systems, where related properties have to be carefully analyzed in order to meet the requirements. This is particularly challenging in distributed contexts, where several entities may interact influencing each other. In this paper, we present an analytical framework that allows the study of a class of phenomena where different working conditions alternate, changing the stochastic behavior of the system. The proposed solution technique, based on phase type distributions and on ad-hoc fitting algorithms, can be applied in dependability evaluation of a wide class of distributed systems. Examples are provided to show the usefulness and the applicability of the framework, characterizing and investigating different dependability aspects of two distributed computing systems, i.e., connection-oriented networks and Internet of Things. {\textcopyright} Springer-Verlag 2013.

}, keywords = {Artificial intelligence, Computer science, Computers, Dependability assessments, Dependability evaluation, Distributed computing systems, Internet, Internet of Things (IOT), phase type distributions, Solution techniques, Stochastic behavior, Variable conditions}, isbn = {9783642414275}, issn = {03029743}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-41428-2_31}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84893743730\&partnerID=40\&md5=8ebf6bc7152dd9f2734b969030b62365}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} } @article {Bruneo20132090, title = {Stochastic evaluation of QoS in service-based systems}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems - IEEE Computer Society}, volume = {24}, number = {10}, year = {2013}, note = {cited By 7}, pages = {2090-2099}, abstract = {

WS-BPEL language has become the industrial standard to design and orchestrate modular applications, formalizing service compositions and business relationships among providers and consumers. Once service level agreements (SLAs) among the parties are established, effective tools for evaluating appropriate measurements have to be developed to meet the requirements. However, the design of quality of service (QoS)-guaranteed composed Web services (WSes) still requires several efforts. This work aims at proposing a complete method to study the QoS of a composed WS at design time, i.e., when the process is specified by using WS-BPEL. Starting from the nonfunctional properties of the WS to compose, we propose a technique to derive non-Markovian stochastic Petri net (NMSPN) models from WS-BPEL processes, with the final goal of evaluating parameters such as the service time distribution and the service reliability. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and to validate the obtained model, a nontrivial example implementing a travel agency flight reservation process, exposed as a synchronous composed WS, is investigated. {\textcopyright} 1990-2012 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Business Process, Business relationships, Design, Information services, Non functional properties, Performance, Quality of service, Random access storage, Reliability, Service level agreement (SLAs), Service oriented architecture (SOA), Service time distribution, Stochastic Petri Nets, Web services, WS-BPEL}, issn = {10459219}, doi = {10.1109/TPDS.2012.313}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84883410035\&partnerID=40\&md5=cdebb3fe5a36e131fd3a9485d01fe3c6}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} } @proceedings {133, title = {Towards The Cloud Of Things - Sensing And Actuation As A Service, A Key Enabler For A New Cloud Paradigm}, journal = {P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing (3PGCIC), 2013 Eighth International Conference on}, year = {2013}, month = {30/10/2013}, pages = {60{\textendash}67}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Piscataway, NJ}, doi = {10.1109/3PGCIC.2013.16}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Bruneo20131072, title = {Workload-based software rejuvenation in cloud systems}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Computers - IEEE Computer Society}, volume = {62}, number = {6}, year = {2013}, note = {cited By 21}, pages = {1072-1085}, abstract = {

Cloud computing is a promising paradigm able to rationalize the use of hardware resources by means of virtualization. Virtualization allows to instantiate one or more virtual machines (VMs) on top of a single physical machine managed by a virtual machine monitor (VMM). Similarly to any other software, a VMM experiences aging and failures. Software rejuvenation is a proactive fault management technique that involves terminating an application, cleaning up the system internal state, and restarting it to prevent the occurrence of future failures. In this work, we propose a technique to model and evaluate the VMM aging process and to investigate the optimal rejuvenation policy that maximizes the VMM availability under variable workload conditions. Starting from dynamic reliability theory and adopting symbolic algebraic techniques, we investigate and compare existing time-based VMM rejuvenation policies. We also propose a time-based policy that adapts the rejuvenation timer to the VMM workload condition improving the system availability. The effectiveness of the proposed modeling technique is demonstrated through a numerical example based on a case study taken from the literature. {\textcopyright} 1968-2012 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Algebraic techniques, Application programs, cloud computing, Endocrinology, Kronecker algebra, Numerical methods, phase type distributions, Proactive fault managements, Reliability theory, Software rejuvenation, System availability, Time-based Rejuvenation, Virtual machine monitors, Virtual reality}, issn = {00189340}, doi = {10.1109/TC.2013.30}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84877311601\&partnerID=40\&md5=185051c9b74e6577b5b06c39cbaf7cc7}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito and Marco Scarpa} } @proceedings {138, title = {Enabling the Cloud of Things}, journal = {Innovative Mobile and Internet Services in Ubiquitous Computing (IMIS), 2012 Sixth International Conference on}, year = {2012}, month = {06/07/2012}, pages = {858{\textendash}863}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Piscataway, NJ}, doi = {10.1109/IMIS.2012.61}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @article {Bruneo2012521, title = {Evaluating wireless sensor node longevity through Markovian techniques}, journal = {Computer Networks - Elsevier }, volume = {56}, number = {2}, year = {2012}, note = {cited By 13}, pages = {521-532}, abstract = {

Wireless sensor networks are constituted of a large number of tiny sensor nodes randomly distributed over a geographical region. In order to reduce power consumption, nodes undergo active-sleep periods that, on the other hand, limit their ability to send/receive data. The aim of this paper is to analyze the longevity of a battery-powered sensor node. A battery discharge model able to capture both linear and non linear discharge processes is presented. Then, two different models are proposed to investigate the longevity, in terms of reliability, of sensor nodes with active-sleep cycles. The first model, well known in the literature, is based on the Markov reward theory and on the evaluation of the accumulated reward distribution. The second model, based on continuous phase type distributions and Kronecker algebra, represents the main contribution of the present work, since it allows to relax some assumptions of the Markov reward model, thus increasing its applicability to more concrete use cases. In the final part of the paper, the results obtained by applying the two techniques to a case study are compared in order to validate and highlight the benefits of our approach and demonstrate the utility of the proposed model in a quite complex and real scenario. {\textcopyright} 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.

}, keywords = {Algebra, Battery discharge, Continuous phase, Discharge process, Electric network synthesis, Energy utilization, Kronecker algebra, Markov reward, Markov reward model, Markov reward models, Markovian, Randomly distributed, Reliability, Reliability theory, Sensor nodes, Sensors, Wireless sensor node}, issn = {13891286}, doi = {10.1016/j.comnet.2011.10.003}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84856063119\&partnerID=40\&md5=ecbae538bceec8598d787ee3b936a8e1}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito and Marco Scarpa} } @article {Distefano20123701, title = {Investigating dynamic reliability and availability through state-space models}, journal = {Computers and Mathematics with Applications - Elsevier Ltd}, volume = {64}, number = {12}, year = {2012}, note = {cited By 7}, pages = {3701-3716}, abstract = {

Quality standards impose increasingly stringent requirements and constraints on quality of service attributes and measures. As a consequence, aspects, phenomena, and behaviors, hitherto approximated or neglected, have to be taken into account in quantitative assessment in order to provide adequate measures satisfying smaller and smaller confidence intervals and tolerances. With specific regards to reliability and availability, this means that interferences and dependencies involving the components of a system can no longer be neglected. Therefore, in order to support such a trend, specific techniques and tools are required to adequately deal with dynamic aspects in reliability and availability assessment. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate how state-space based techniques can satisfy such a demand. For this purpose some examples of specific dynamic reliability behaviors, such as common cause failure and load sharing, are considered applying state-space based techniques to study the corresponding reliability models. Different repair policies in availability contexts are also explored. Both Markovian and non-Markovian models are studied via phase type expansion and renewal theory in order to adequately represent and evaluate the considered dynamic reliability aspects in case of generally distributed lifetimes and times to repair. {\textcopyright} 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

}, keywords = {Availability, Common cause failure, Confidence interval, Dynamic aspects, Dynamic reliability, Load sharing, Markov processes, Markov regenerative process, Markovian, Non-Markovian, Quality of service, Quality standard, Quantitative assessments, Reliability, Reliability and availability, Reliability model, Renewal theory, Repair policy, Semi Markov model, State-space, State-space models, Stringent requirement}, issn = {08981221}, doi = {10.1016/j.camwa.2012.02.038}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84870249108\&partnerID=40\&md5=9ecb143c24c7493a16292faa4f50d175}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Kishor S. Trivedi} } @article {134, title = {Saaas: A Framework For Volunteer-based Sensing Clouds}, journal = {PARALLEL \& CLOUD COMPUTING}, volume = {1}, year = {2012}, pages = {21{\textendash}33}, abstract = {

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular solution to provide cheap, elastic and easy access to computing and storage resources. However, a key drawback of current Cloud solutions is that they do not include mechanisms for interaction with the physical world. This paper intends to contribute to the design of a pervasive infrastructure where new generation services interact with the surrounding environment. By adding sensors and actuators into the mix, new opportunities arise for contextualization and geo-awareness. This scenario may turn out to be highly dynamic, also involving mobile devices that randomly join and leave, an issue that can be adequately addressed resorting to volunteer contribution paradigms. In this way innovative and value-added services can be implemented by bridging Clouds with sensor networks and ubiquitous nodes such as mobiles. Sensing and actuation resources have to be abstracted and virtualized to be provided under the guise of services, thus enabling a Sensing and Actuation as a Service (SAaaS) paradigm. Furthermore, adopting tailored thing-like semantics for further abstraction the (SAaaS) Cloud world could wind up to an expanded reach of current IoT scenarios. This paper mainly focuses on the implementation of the underlying infrastructure at the basis of the SAaaS. An ad-hoc architecture and some preliminary background of this challenging vision are provided and discussed, identifying development guidelines and future directions.

}, keywords = {Cloud, Infrastructure as a Service, sensors and actuators, volunteer contribution}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {137, title = {Sensing and Actuation as a Service: A New Development for Clouds}, journal = {Network Computing and Applications (NCA), 2012 11th IEEE International Symposium on}, year = {2012}, month = {25/08/2012}, pages = {272{\textendash}275}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Piscataway, NJ}, abstract = {

Cloud computing is among the hottest trends in ICT, aiming at providing on-demand computing and storage resources with guarantees on the quality of service. A limit of current Cloud implementations is the absence of mechanisms to effectively manage inputs from the physical world. Our idea is to move towards a pervasive Cloud, providing facilities and solutions able to interact with the surrounding environment enabling development of new and value added services. In this vision also mobile devices, such as PDAs, usually equipped with several sensors and actuators, have to be included in the overall picture. Mobile devices and their respective owners can decide whether, how and when to contribute to the Cloud, thus introducing further unknowns. In order to deal with all such issues, in this paper we propose a solution that gives way to the Sensing and Actuation as a Service (SAaaS) paradigm, a step towards the creation of a Cloud of sensors and actuators. This paper mainly focuses on the implementation of the underlying infrastructure at the basis of the SAaaS. An ad-hoc architecture and some preliminary background on this challenging vision are provided and discussed.

}, doi = {10.1109/NCA.2012.38}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Giovanni Merlino and Antonio Puliafito} } @proceedings {Bruneo20128, title = {Software rejuvenation in the cloud}, journal = {Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTools)}, year = {2012}, note = {cited By 0; Conference of 5th International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques, SIMUTools 2012 ; Conference Date: 19 March 2012 Through 23 March 2012; Conference Code:110134}, pages = {8-16}, publisher = {ICST}, address = {Desenzano del Garda, Italy, 19-23 March 2012}, abstract = {

In this paper, we investigate how software rejuvenation can be used in a Cloud environment to increase the availability of a virtualized system composed of a single virtual machine monitor (VMM) on top of which a certain number of virtual machines (VMs) can be instantiated. We start from the assumption that the aging of a VMM increases with the number of VMs it is managing, thus characterizing the problem in terms of dynamic reliability. Therefore, by identifying the age of the VMM with its reliability and based on the conservation of reliability principle, we characterize the time to failure of the VMM through continuous phase type distributions. The system availability is thus modeled by an expanded continuous time Markov chain expressed in terms of Kronecker algebra in order to face the state space explosion and to keep memory of the age reached by the VMM in case the number of the hosted VMs change. Time-based rejuvenation is taken into consideration and the optimal timer is evaluated in order to maximize the VMM availability. Copyright {\textcopyright} 2012 ICST.

}, keywords = {Availability, cloud computing, Continuous phase type distributions, Continuous time Markov chain, Continuous time systems, Endocrinology, Java programming language, Markov processes, phase type distributions, Rejuvenation, Reliability, Reliability principles, Software rejuvenation, Virtual machine monitors, Virtual reality, Virtualized environment}, isbn = {9781450315104}, doi = {10.4108/icst.simutools.2012.247772}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84922767370\&partnerID=40\&md5=a03b06eec703c94d55c0f4875f181902}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito and Marco Scarpa and Salvatore Distefano} } @proceedings {Distefano2010265, title = {Availability assessment of HA standby redundant clusters}, journal = {Proceedings of the 29th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS)}, year = {2010}, note = {cited By 14; Conference of 29th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, SRDS 2010 ; Conference Date: 31 October 2010 Through 3 November 2010; Conference Code:82914}, pages = {265-274}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {New Delhi, India, 31 October - 3 November 2010}, abstract = {

Computing systems are becoming the heart of modern technology, implementing critical tasks usually demanded to and implying human interactions. This highlights the problem of dependability in computer science contexts. High availability computing/clusters is a possible solution in such cases, implementing standby redundancy as a tradeoff between dependability and costs. From the engineering perspective, this implies the use of specific techniques and tools for adequately evaluating the reliability/availability of high availability clusters, also taking into account dependencies among nodes (standby, repair, etc.) and the effect of wear and tear into such nodes, especially when failure and repair times are not exponentially distributed. The solution proposed in this paper is based on the use of phase type distributions and Kronecker algebra. In fact, we represent the reliability and maintainability of each component by specific phase type distributions, whose interactions describe the system availability. This latter is thus modeled by an expanded Markov chain expressed in terms of Kronecker algebra in order to face the state space explosion problem of expansion techniques and to represent the memory policies related to the aging process. More specifically, the paper firstly details the technique and then applies it to the evaluation of a standby redundant system representing a high availability cluster taken as example with the aim of demonstrating its effectiveness. Moreover, in order to show the potentiality of the technique, different maintenance strategies are evaluated and therefore compared. {\textcopyright} 2010 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Aging process, Algebra, Availability assessment, Computing system, Critical tasks, Dynamic reliability, Engineering perspective, High availability, High-availability clusters, Human interactions, Kronecker algebra, Maintainability, Maintenance strategies, Markov Chain, Markov processes, Modern technologies, phase type distributions, Possible solutions, Quality assurance, Redundancy, Redundant system, Standby redundancy, State-space explosion, System availability, Wear and tear}, isbn = {9780769542508}, issn = {10609857}, doi = {10.1109/SRDS.2010.37}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-78650560407\&partnerID=40\&md5=9666fbfeaaae60d0a7d7ca8f388600e7}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} } @proceedings {Bruneo2010, title = {QoS assessment of WS-BPEL processes through non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets}, journal = {Proceedings of the 24th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing (IPDPS)}, year = {2010}, note = {cited By 11; Conference of 24th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2010 ; Conference Date: 19 April 2010 Through 23 April 2010; Conference Code:80843}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {Atlanta, GA, United States, 19-23 April 2010}, abstract = {

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the most important and effective software paradigm to design Internet-based services. Using the SOA technology, value-added services can be easily deployed as a combination of existing Web services. In this context, WS-BPEL language has become the SOA industrial standard. To allow services to be composed, business relationships between providers and consumers have to be adequately managed. This implies that a formal definition of Quality of Service (QoS) is agreed and that effective tools for its measurement have to be developed. However, the design ofQoS guaranteed composed Web services still requires several efforts due to the highly distributed nature ofsuch software applications. This work aims at proposing a methodology to evaluate Web service performance at the earliest design phase. We present a novel technique to translate WS-BPEL processes into non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets with the final goal to evaluate parameters such as service time distribution and service reliability. The obtained model can be numerically solved through automatic tools, allowing to investigate the service behavior under different operating conditions and thus helping software engineers to develop QoS-guaranteed software solutions. {\textcopyright} 2010 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Automatic tools, Business relationships, Computer software, Design, Design phase, Distributed parameter networks, Effective tool, Formal definition, Graph theory, Industrial standards, Information services, Internet-based services, Non-Markovian, Novel techniques, Operating condition, Petri nets, Quality of service, Service oriented architecture (SOA), Service reliability, Service time distribution, Software applications, Software engineers, Software paradigm, Software solution, Stochastic Petri Nets, Stochastic systems, Value added service, Web services, WS-BPEL}, isbn = {9781424464432}, doi = {10.1109/IPDPS.2010.5470391}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-77954020712\&partnerID=40\&md5=70790f3d893defcf4e9c792d8b58c5da}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} } @proceedings {Bruneo2010, title = {Reliability assessment of wireless sensor nodes with non-linear battery discharge}, journal = {2010 IFIP Wireless Days, WD 2010}, year = {2010}, note = {cited By 8; Conference of 2010 IFIP Wireless Days, WD 2010 ; Conference Date: 20 October 2010 Through 22 October 2010; Conference Code:83354}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {Venice, Italy, 20-22 October 2010}, abstract = {

Wireless sensor networks are constituted of a large number of tiny sensor nodes randomly distributed over a geographical region. In order to reduce power consumption, nodes undergo cycles of active-sleep periods that reduce their ability to send/receive data. Aim of this paper is to analyze the reliability of a battery-powered sensor node with active-sleep cycles considering both linear and non linear discharge processes. The approach used in the evaluation is based on continuous phase type distributions and Kronecker algebra. The technique is thus applied to the evaluation of an example in order to demonstrate its effectiveness. The obtained results strongly encourage future work, figuring out possible application in wider network context with complex topology, redundant nodes, and unreliable links, due to the Kronecher algebra capabilities to manage the state space explosion problem. {\textcopyright} 2010 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Algebra, Battery discharge, Continuous phase, Electric network synthesis, Energy consumption, Energy utilization, Kronecker algebra, Markov reward model, Reliability analysis, sensor networks, Sensor nodes, Telecommunication equipment, Wireless sensor, Wireless sensor networks}, isbn = {9781424492299}, doi = {10.1109/WD.2010.5657711}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-78751474054\&partnerID=40\&md5=86f6f2fa864d7e52672ab4e4bd83d78a}, author = {Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Antonio Puliafito and Marco Scarpa} } @proceedings {Distefano201045, title = {Symbolic representation techniques in dynamic reliability evaluation}, journal = {Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering (HASE)}, year = {2010}, note = {cited By 9; Conference of 2010 IEEE 12th International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering, HASE 2010 ; Conference Date: 3 November 2010 Through 4 November 2010; Conference Code:83929}, pages = {45-53}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society}, address = {San Jose, CA, United States, 3-4 November 2010}, abstract = {

The increasing demand of quality presses towards more specific requirements, tighter constraints, and higher standards. It is thus necessary to provide new paradigms, techniques, and tools to adequately model and evaluate complex systems. This paper mainly focuses on reliability aspects, also taking into account dynamic-dependent interactions among components. Starting from the conservation of reliability principle, we characterize the time to failure of the system components through continuous phase type distributions. The system reliability is thus modeled by an expanded Markov chain expressed in terms of Kronecker algebra in order to face the state space explosion and to represent the memory policies related to the aging process. A two-component system is taken as example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique and to validate it. {\textcopyright} 2010 IEEE.

}, keywords = {Aging process, Algebra, Complex systems, Continuous phase, Dynamic reliability, Kronecker algebra, Markov Chain, Markov processes, phase type distributions, Quality assurance, Reliability, State-space explosion, symbolic representation, System components, System reliability, Systems engineering, Time to failure, Two component systems}, isbn = {9780769542928}, issn = {15302059}, doi = {10.1109/HASE.2010.28}, url = {http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-79951924261\&partnerID=40\&md5=8ed2be2a9f6a7e9d891ed3fb58789d6f}, author = {Salvatore Distefano and Francesco Longo and Marco Scarpa} }