AHL: Model-driven engineering of android applications with BLE peripherals

Abstract

Today, an increasing number of “smart devices” are becoming available to consumers, enabling them to quantify their physical activity and health status and to receive updates from their environment and applications. The preferred method of tethering these devices to the Internet is through the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) communication protocol connecting them to special-purpose mobile applications. The efficient development of high-quality applications of this type can present challenges to developers who have to familiarize themselves with a number of new technologies and platform-specific architectural patterns. A combination of domain-specific languages and code-generation techniques is a potential solution to this problem. In this paper, we present (a) a generic reference architecture for Android BLE-enables applications, and (b) our AHL (Android Health Language), a domain-specific language and a corresponding codegeneration framework that enables the easy and rapid development of the core elements of a typical BLE-enabled data-collection application in this architecture. The generated code is functional and does not need any modifications. This model-driven application-construction process relieves developers from the burden of dealing with complex Android concepts and components. Thus, AHL can save time and reduce the cost of Android application development for developers. In this paper, we explain the AHL framework, its models, its underlying DSL, and the methodology we used to design and implement it. We evaluate our work with two functional applications and compare them to the existing ones developed from scratch.