System Architecture

This paper addresses two main areas: 1) research on computer-based support for cooperative authoring and 2) research on cooperative hypermedia systems. This is done by reporting about the design, development, and implementation of SEPIA and presenting results on dedicated and comprehensive authoring functionality addressing also the new rhetoric of hypermedia, a hypermedia data model with composites, persistent and shared data storage for hypermedia, and support for cooperative work, esp. cooperative writing.We start by identifying the challenge of hypermedia authoring and production which serves as the driving force for our development. Using interacting problem spaces as the vehicle for modelling the dynamic aspects of authoring, we arrive at a set of requirements answered by the concept of "activity spaces". The design of coherent hyperdocuments is facilitated by a "construction kit". Furthermore, we describe the extensions and modifications necessary to support multiple authors with the cooperative version of SEPIA. Based on the requirements, we develop a system architecture and report on the implementation of the system. We describe the basis for access to shared hyperdocuments, the activity space browsers, the integration of multimedia functionality (audio, graphics, pictures), and the integration of an audio and video conferencing system. Finally, we report on more recent developments and future work.

Construction project control aims to effectively obtain real-time information and enhance dynamic control by utilizing information sharing and connecting involved participants of the projects to reduce construction conflicts and project delays. However, extending the construction project control system to job sites is not considered efficient because using notebooks in a harsh environment like a construction site is not particularly a conventional practice. Meanwhile, paper-based documents of the site processes are ineffective and cannot get the quick response from the office and project control center. Integrating promising information technologies such as personal digital assistants (PDA), bar code scanning, and data entry mechanisms, can be extremely useful in improving the effectiveness and convenience of information flow in construction supply chain control systems. Bar code scanning is appropriate for several construction applications, providing cost savings through increased speed and accuracy of data entry. This article demonstrates the effectiveness of a bar-code-enabled PDA application, called the mobile construction supply chain management

This paper describes the restructuring process of a large corpus of historical documents and the system architecture that is used for accessing it. The initial challenge of this process was to get the most out of existing material, normalizing the legacy markup and harvesting the inherent information using widely available standards. This resulted in a conceptual and technical restructuring of the formerly existing corpus. The development of the standardized markup and techniques allowed the inclusion of important new materials, such as original 16th and 17th century prints and manuscripts; and enlarged the potential user groups. On the technological side, we were grounded on the premise that open standards are the best way of making sure that the resources will be accessible even after years in an archive. This is a welcomed result in view of the additional consequence of the remodeled corpus concept: it serves as a repository for important historical documents, some of which had b...

Deadline-sensitive workflows require careful coordination of user constraints with resource availability. Current distributed resource access models provide varying degrees of resource control: from limited or none in grid batch systems to explicit in cloud systems. Additionally applications experience variability due to competing user loads, performance variations, failures, etc. These variations impact the quality of service (QoS) that goes unaccounted for in planning strategies. In this paper we propose Workflow ORchestrator for Distributed Systems (WORDS) architecture based on a least common denominator resource model that abstracts the differences and captures the QoS properties provided by grid and cloud systems. We investigate algorithms for effective orchestration (i.e., resource procurement and task mapping) for deadline-sensitive workflows atop the resource abstraction provided in WORDS. Our evaluation compares orchestration methodologies over TeraGrid and Amazon EC2 systems. Experimental results show that WORDS enables effective orchestration possible at reasonable costs on batch queue grid and cloud systems with or without explicit resource control.

One of the major problems an Computer Visaon zs to build systems with the abilily of detecting shapes in arbitrary "real World" images. The target application of our work is the correct adentzfication of road trafic signs in images taken by a car mounted camera. The baszc technique used in this kind of situation is to compare each portzon of an zmage with a set of known models. The approach taken an our work as to zmplement this comparison with Cellular Neural Networks, making it possable to eficaently use a massively parallel architecture. In order to reduce the response time of the system, our approach also ancludes data reduction techniques. The results of several tests, an dzfferent conditions, are reported in the paper. The system correctly detects a test shape in almost all the experiment performed. The paper also contains a detailed description of the system archatecture and of the processzng steps.

Modern decision support systems (DSS) not only store large amounts of decision-relevant data, but also aim at assisting decision-makers to explore the meaning of that data, and to take decisions based on understanding. In transportation domains, a multiagent approach to the construction of DSS is becoming increasingly popular, because it does not only reduce design complexity, but it also adequately supports a dialogue-based stance on decision support interactions. However, despite recent advances in the field of agent-oriented software engineering, a principled approach to the design of multiagent systems for decision support is still to come. In this paper, we outline a design method for the construction of agent-based DSS. Setting out from an organisational and communicative model of decision support environments, we present an abstract

Online advertisement is one of the major incomes for many companies; it has a role in the overall business flow and affects the consumer behavior directly. Unfortunately most users tend to block their ads or ignore them. MyAds is a social adaptive hypermedia system for online advertising and its main goal is to explore how to make online ads more acceptable. In order to achieve such a goal, various technologies and techniques are used. This paper presents a theoretical framework as well as the system architecture for MyAds that was designed based on a set of hypotheses and an exploratory study. The system then was implemented and a pilot experiment was conducted to validate it. The main outcomes suggest that the system has provided personalized ads for users. The main implications suggest that the system can be used for further testing and validating.

Gypsy is a component-based, dynamically extensible environment for mobile agent systems. The runtime environment consists of lightweight servers that provide a distributed execution environment for agents, and a remote administration tool that supports the setup and shutdown of servers and agents. A server hosts a number of places to which agents may move to execute their functions. Each place is specialized to support a particular service. A supervisor agent may contain several worker agents that may execute concurrently. A supervisor agent travels from place to place according to its itinerary and launches its workers at appropriate places. A mobile agent is the basic abstraction from which all other components, including servers and supervisor agents, are constructed. The primary goal of the Gypsy project is to build a multi-language, extensible environment for experimenting with mobile agents as a programming paradigm. The environment is implemented in Java and currently supports agents written in the Java or Python programming languages. This paper presents an overview of the Gypsy project, the current system architecture and the design of the important components of the Gypsy system.

Effective system development to support higher education institutions is important. There are two steps in developing a good system and they are system architecture analysis and design. The first task of this research is to design the use case diagrams, system overview and the system architecture. The second is to evaluate the system architecture of a proposed Student Relationship Management (SRM) system using Internet of Things (IoT) to collect digital footprint of higher education institutions. The outcome of this research include the system architecture of the proposed student relationship management system (SRMS)-IoT consists of six main parts: 1) service stations, 2) system identification, 3) system integration API, 4) SRM internal system, 5) report analytic and 6) web server and database server. Evaluation of the results shows an overall appropriateness at a very high level: the overall appropriateness of usability result was also at a very high level, which shows that this re...

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is a research hotspot in recent years and has yielded many fruitful results. However, the biomedical applications of WSN haven’t received significant development due to its many unique challenges for the engineers and physicians. In this paper, a system architecture solution of body area network (BAN), our so called project “MediMesh”, is presented. A biomedical dedicated BAN node hardware platform is devised to fit the medical monitoring application. The sensor node is built up especially for healthcare monitoring while the biocompatibility and portability are considered. A light weight network protocol is designed considering the radiation effect and communication overhead. After data acquisition from sink stations, a data publishing system based on web service technology is implemented for typical hospital environment. The publishing of biomedical data is realized through 3 phases: first storing the data automatically in a database, then creating information sharing service by using Web Service technology, and finally allowing data access by the physicians and end users.

We present the Convergence Processor, an innovative component that integrates a high performance 32- bit RISC core, a custom IP core optimised for header-processing and other blocks for specific communication interfaces required for the delivery of broadband residential applications. The component is a System-on-Chip supporting the real time processing of packets and protocol data units from various networking interfaces. Its

Manufacturing control systems are a mission-critical application domain for semantic agents systems. While multi-agent systems have been explored in the manufacturing systems domain, there is very little work on semantically enabled agent systems. This chapter introduces a layered architecture for manufacturing systems based on agent systems and discusses relevant capabilities of the semantic agents based on real-world use cases.

With the advent of multimedia in computing and communication systems, a new set of requirements has been imposed. Because multimedia appliCations demand a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), the sharing of resources, by means of allocating applications and their communications on computing and communication resources, is an important issue. In this paper, we address the issues of communication routing and process allocation in an integrated way, the so-called mutations. It is only in such an integrated way that end-to-end Quality of Service requirements of multimedia end-users can be fulfilled. For the determination of a routation, we propose to use the A* algorithm, an intelligent tree-search algorithm, in combination with a heuristic, H3". The A • algorithm always finds an optimal solution if one exists, whereas the heuristic algorithm comes up with (sub)optimal solutions. The heuristic, however, accomplishes the same task as the A* algorithm with far reduced computational effort. With the combination, denoted as A*/ H3"(x), the A* algorithm will, when time is available, find an optimal solution, and in case of limited time the heuristic will calculate a suboptimal solution. This combination has been found suitable for a real time multimedia environment by a thorough statistical analysis after testing the heuristics on 1750 randomly generated test cases. Finally, we present an experimental multimedia, ANSAware-based, distributed system in which the routations take place using the heuristic we developed. To demonstrate the capabilities of the routation algorithms the xallocator has been implemented. The xallocator guarantees the QoS using heuristic routation algorithms and dynamic reconfiguration whenever a change in the distributed environment occurs.

In this paper we discuss a new architecture to reduce unsolicited e-mail messages. We propose a system architecture that introduces two classes of messages-trusted e-mail and e-mail from untrusted sources. Trusted e-mail messages are signed with an S/MIME signature. To address usability problems that occurred previously with S/MIME signatures, outgoing e-mail messages are automatically signed on the e-mail server without

This paper sketches the author's research in nine areas related to speech translation: interactive disambiguation (two demonstrations of highly-interactive, broad-coverage speech translation are reported); system architecture; datastructures; the interface between speech recognition and analysis; the use of natural pauses for segmenting utterances; example-based machine translation; dialogue acts; the tracking of lexical co-occurrences; and the resolution of translation mismatches.

We designed and constructed a system that includes aircraft, ground vehicles, and throwable sensors to search a semi-forested region that was partially covered by foliage. The system contained 4 radio-controlled (RC) trucks, 2 aircraft, and 30 SensorMotes (throwable sensors). We also investigated communications links, search strategies, and system architecture. Our system is designed to be low-cost, contain a variety of sensors, and distributed so that the system is robust even if individual components are lost.

This paper presents ArchiTRIO (Architectural TRIO), a new temporal logic language which combines a subset of the UML notation with a precise formal semantics inspired from the authors’ experiences. ArchiTRIO allows developers to use standard UML 2.0 notation to describe non-critical aspects of systems, but it also offers a complementary formal notation, fully integrated with the UML one, to represent those system aspects that require precise modeling.

Current FPGA technology has advanced to the point that useful embedded SoPCs can now be designed. The Real Time Processor (RTP) project at Brigham Young University leverages the advances in FPGA technology with a system architecture that is customizable to specific applications. The Small Device C Compiler (SDCC) has been retargeted to the RTP architecture and modified to produce generator directives.

Since the proliferation of fog computing, various distributed architectures have been proposed to extend the cloud to the edge of the network. However, so far there exists no study that compares different fog computing architectures, and produces quantitative results in order to examine the efficiency of each architecture for different use cases. Such a study could provide guidelines for selecting an appropriate distributed architecture for fog computing while taking into account the requirements of the final applications. To bridge this gap in the literature, we create a unified system model which is able to represent the basic architectures commonly used for fog computing, i.e., hierarchical and flat. Furthermore, we design algorithms that can be used for creating fog computing systems that follow these architectures, and we perform various experiments that focus on communication latency and bandwidth utilization. Notably, our results show that for applications that do not have a dependency on the cloud, i.e., no resource-demanding tasks are involved, the hierarchical architecture reduces the communication latency by 13% compared to the flat. However, for applications that also include resourcedemanding tasks, the flat architecture reduces the communication latency by 16% compared to the hierarchical.

In the battlefield of the future, more and more information will be available for making decisions on a tactical level, provided that this information can be dispersed rapidly and accurately. As a consequence, advanced tactical decision support that now is limited to advanced platforms (e.g. combat aircrafts) will become available at a much lower level, ranging from different kind of

Passive radars using illuminators of opportunity have attracted much attention in the international radar community. One existing radio transmission system that may be utilised for this purpose is the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM). The paper presents a study showing the feasibility of using a GSM signal for passive radar. The analysis of the GSM waveform, and any significance or influence it has with respect to the passive radar design considerations are investigated in detail. The paper describes fully the design and implementation of a low-cost GSM-based passive radar prototype in addition to the associated signal processing scheme. Numerous measurements for various ground-moving targets were investigated extensively. The preliminary processing results demonstrate the feasibility of using GSM signals as a radar waveform and have the potential capability to detect and track different types of ground-moving targets.

We provide an in-depth study of applying wireless sensor networks to real-world habitat monitoring. A set of system design requirements are developed that cover the hardware design of the nodes, the design of the sensor network, and the capabilities for remote data access and management. A system architecture is proposed to address these requirements for habitat monitoring in general, and

This paper describes a system design approach for wireless sensor network based wildfire monitoring, including the system architecture, hardware and software framework. Effectiveness of the solution is evaluated in terms of reactivity, reliability, robustness and network lifetime. The main contribution of the paper is the design of a sensor network that can meets the goal of reactivity and reliability, and that demonstrates satisfactory robustness and relatively longer network lifetime.

This paper presents a holistic methodology for the design of medical device software, which encompasses a new way of eliciting requirements, system design process, security design guideline, cloud architecture design, combinatorial testing process and agile project management. The paper uses point of care diagnostics as a case study where the software and hardware must be robust, reliable to provide accurate diagnosis of diseases. As software and software intensive systems are becoming increasingly complex, the impact of failures can lead to significant property damage, or damage to the environment. Within the medical diagnostic device software domain such failures can result in misdiagnosis leading to clinical complications and in some cases death. Software faults can arise due to the interaction among the software, the hardware, third party software and the operating environment. Unanticipated environmental changes and latent coding errors lead to operation faults despite the fact that usually a significant effort has been expended in the design, verification and validation of the software system. It is becoming increasingly more apparent that one needs to adopt different approaches, which will guarantee that a complex software system meets all safety, security, and reliability requirements, in addition to complying with standards such as IEC 62304. There are many initiatives taken to develop safety and security critical systems, at different development phases and in different contexts, ranging from infrastructure design to device design. Different approaches are implemented to design error free software for safety critical systems. By adopting the strategies and processes presented in this paper one can overcome the challenges in developing error free software for medical devices (or safety critical systems).

Capturing the technical knowledge, contextual information, and rationale surrounding the design decisions underpinning system architectures can greatly improve the software development process. If not managed, this critical knowledge is implicitly embedded in the architecture, becoming tacit knowledge which erodes as personnel on the project change. Moreover, the unavailability of architecture knowledge precludes organizations from growing their architectural capabilities. In this tutorial, we highlight the ...

Semi-structured data, including but not limited to structured documents, has speci c characteristics and is used in ways di erent to tabular data. SGML and XML are widely used to represent information of this type. The demands on systems that manage semi-structured data vary from those on traditional relational systems. This paper reviews the nature and characteristics of semi-structured data, and the functional needs of those applications, including query requirements, document description, manipulation, and document management needs. It examines alternative physical models for semi-structured data, and evaluates and compares alternative system architectures.

In this paper we discuss the scenario of Petroleum Engineering projects of Petrobras, a large Brazilian governmental oil & gas company. Based on this scenario, we define a set of requirements and system architecture to guide the construction of a Collaborative Engineering Environment for assisting the control and execution of large and complex in dustrial projects in oil industry, specifically tailored for Petroleum Engineering. The environment is composed by the integration of three different technologies of group work: Workflow Management System, Multimedia Collaborative System and Collaborative Virtual Environments.

Babu and Chowdhury [H.M.H. Babu, A.R. Chowdhury, Design of a compact reversible binary coded decimal adder circuit, Journal of Systems Architecture 52 -282] recently proposed, in this journal, a reversible adder for binary-coded decimals. This paper corrects and optimizes their design. The optimized 1-decimal BCD full-adder, a 13 Â 13 reversible logic circuit, is faster, and has lower circuit cost and less garbage bits. It can be used to build a fast reversible m-decimal BCD full-adder that has a delay of only m + 17 low-power reversible CMOS gates. For a 32-decimal (128-bit) BCD addition, the circuit delay of 49 gates is significantly lower than is the number of bits used for the BCD representation. A complete set of reversible half-and full-adders for n-bit binary numbers and m-decimal BCD numbers is presented. The results show that special-purpose design pays off in reversible logic design by drastically reducing the number of garbage bits. Specialized designs benefit from support by reversible logic synthesis. All circuit components required for optimizing the original design could also be synthesized successfully by an implementation of an existing synthesis algorithm.

This paper covers some design and operation aspects of distributed battery micro-storage systems in a deregulated electricity market system. In this paper, the term "micro" refers to the size of the energy storage (ES) system compared to the grid generation, with a capacity from few kilowatt-hours and up. Generally, ES enhances the performance of renewable distributed generators (DGs) and increases the efficiency of the entire power system. Energy storage allows for leveling the load, shaving peak demands, and furthermore, transacting power with the utility grid. In this paper, different design aspects of distributed micro-storage systems are covered such as system architecture, system sizing, power stage design, battery management system (BMS), economic aspects and operation in a deregulated electricity market with and without renewable DGs.

The transactlon·processlng environment In which companies maintain their operational databases was the original target for computerization and Is now well understood. On the other hand, access to company Information on a large scale by an end user for report-Ing and data analysis Is relatively new. WIthin IBM, the computerization of Informational systems Is progress· lng, driven by business needs and by the availability of Improved tools for accessing the company data. It Is now apparent that an architecture Is needed to draw together the various strands of Informational system activity within the company. IBM Europe, Middle East, and Africa (E/ME/A) has adopted an architecture called the E/ME/A Business Information System (EBIS) architecture as the strategic direction for Informational systems. EBIS proposes an Integrated warehouse ot company data based firmly In the relational database environment. End-user access to this warehouse Is slmplffled by a consistent set ot tools provided by an end-user Interface and supported by a business data directory that describes the Information available In user terms. This paper describes the background and components of the architecture of EBIS.

This paper proposes the concept of digital cities as a social information infrastructure for urban life (including shopping, business, transportation, education, welfare and so on). We propose the three layer architecture for digital cities: a) the information layer integrates both WWW archives and real-time sensory information related to the city, b) the interface layer provides 2D and 3D views of the city, and c) the interaction layer assists social interaction among people who are living/visiting in/at the city. We started a three year project to develop a digital city for Kyoto, the old capital and cultural center of Japan, based on the newest techno logies including GIS, 3D, animation, agents and mobile computing. This paper introduces the system architecture and the current status of Digital City Kyoto.

The majority of transit trip planners currently exist as proprietary systems based on particular vendor 3 products. With more functional components incorporated, the system maintenance and regular transit 4 information updates become burdensome tasks for the transit agencies. Additionally, the proprietary 5 nature of the systems makes it difficult to take advantage of the rapid advancement of geospatial 6 information and Web technologies. This paper proposed an open and interoperable transit trip 7

L'ingénierie système traite de systèmes artificiels conçus par les êtres humains. Ces systèmes sont des combinaisons d'éléments visant un ou plusieurs buts définis. Un système sociotechnique comprend une partie technique, relevant de l'ingénierie système, et une partie humaine et organisationnelle relevant des sciences humaines et sociales. Enfin, la résilience concerne la capacité d'un système sociotechnique à s'ajuster face à des événements perturbateurs, à s'y adapter et à apprendre les règles d'adaptation adéquates, quand les perturbations sont en dehors du périmètre spécifié des mécanismes d'adaptation du système. Après avoir caractérisé la résilience (caractéristiques de la résilience, migrations et mécanismes de compensation…), l'article met en évidence sa pertinence dans le domaine des systèmes sociotechniques. Ensuite, la résilience des systèmes sociotechniques est articulée à l'ingénierie système afin de faire évoluer les processus d'ingénierie système, les modèles d'ingénierie, les architectures du système à élaborer et des systèmes contributeurs. Enfin, l'article souligne le fait que l'ingénierie système est nécessaire et doit être complétée de bonnes pratiques de management qui contribuent à la résilience des systèmes sociotechniques.

Public administrations have been facing problems with geographical information use and management for years. This was the case of the Galicia Department of Environment (CMA), in charge of managing environmental resources in that Spanish NUTS-2 region. On one hand, INSPIRE work in progress toward a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (ESDI), currently focused on environmental issues, suggested a solution based on IN-SPIRE recommended standards. On the other hand, the availability of commercial software licenses in the CMA, Oracle Spatial, ESRI products, SAFE software products, and other software, suggested an approach based as much as possible on commercial off the shelf (COTS) software. The developed system architecture integrates heterogeneous COTS products, but is perceived as a homogeneous and standards-based infrastructure.

We consider a system architecture whereby orthogonal space time block codes (OSTBCs) are applied to a distributed set of wireless nodes. The utility offered is that by employing diversity we are able to greatly reduce the necessary link margin usually required to combat fast fading. A distributed set of wireless nodes are particularly well suited for this task as they are typically separated with significant inter-node distance thus having highly uncorrelated channels to a collector. In a typical application, a wireless sensor network (WSN) will have nodes that may wish to transmit data to a possibly mobile standoff collection point. In this paper, we discuss many practical aspects necessary for a real-world implementation including time and frequency offset estimation as well as channel tracking. As the waveform has been targeted to field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware, we look at the relative implementation complexity of each signal processing element.