Service discovery in ubiquitous feedback control loops

Abstract

Nowadays, context-aware applications can discovery and interact with services in ubiquitous environments in order to customize their behavior. In general, these providers use diverse discovery and interaction protocols. Furthermore, they can join and leave the environment at anytime, making difficult the utilization of services. Therefore, this mobility and variability in terms of protocols impose a low coupling between the interacting entities and the need for spontaneous communications. Unfortunately, the existing works in literature fail to deal with these needs in a simple and flexible way. In this paper we face this problem by defining ubiquitous bindings for SCA (Service Component Architecture) applications. These bindings modularize the discovery concerns promoting sharing of common discovery functionalities and simplifying the integration of discovery protocols. In this way, these bindings enable the transparent advertisement, discovery, filter, and access of services available in the environment. Our ubiquitous bindings are integrated into the FraSCAti platform and their benefits are demonstrated by building ubiquitous feedback control loops. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.