An Architecture For Runtime Customization Of Smart Devices

Smart environments represent a relatively uncharted ICT territory where plenty of sensor and actuator devices can be enrolled on-demand in order to realize high value-added services. A few application scenarios, such as Smart Cities, have already been explored. However, in order to finally enable such a paradigm, several issues have to be dealt with. In particular, from a developer perspective the high degree of heterogeneity for devices (ranging from cheap sensors to smartphones) could represent a hurdle for software design. In this paper, we present an innovative architecture that aims at providing a common reference platform for repurposing of devices i.e, reshaping their operational behavior for emergent and unforeseen requirements. Thanks to its modular and plug-in based design, the proposed architecture is poised to ease implementation of both low-level (e.g., device discovery, code compilation, binary deployment) and high-level (e.g., service composition, data management) duties. We present the general architecture, then focusing on device-side aspects, while also providing two simple use cases that demonstrate the suitability of the proposed approach.