Sensing Web for Sharing Open Sensor Nodes

written by: Ramadiani

from: Ryo Kanbayashi, Mitsuhisa Sato

Future Generation Computer Systems 27 (2011) 643–648

Introduction

1. services such as Google Street View enable people to see selected street views on a web map without physically going to that street.
2. A concept called Sensing Web is to enable people to share sensors openly in a wide-area network. The goal of the Sensing Web is to allow people to access actual sensor data in the same way they access the World Wide Web (WWW)
3. Different from existing sensor grids, Sensing Web is an open system. In addition, target data and target application are different
4. The most important requirement of Sensing Web is privacy protection. Previous sensor grids target simple data such as temperature and humidity data, which do not include privacy. In contrast, Sensing Web targets data such as image data or voice data, which includes many privacy information.

objective:

• The goal of the project was to develop information technologies necessary for sharing the data of Ubiquitous Sensor Networks (USNs) spreading across society openly like current WWW. 
• The elimination is done with data processing by a remote execution program shipped to a node near a sensor

 Sensing Web Project:

• Sensing Web is a conceptual framework to shares sensors openly in wide-area network by maintaining privacy.
• The Sensing Web Project is a three-year project launched in the fall of 2007.

Elemental Technologies is Important in Sensing Web :

1. Sharing Sensor Data through Service/Request Matching: The information user requested is offered by matching the request and sensor data.
2. Privacy Information Management in Sensor Data Acquisition: Privacy information in sensor data is handled properly on acquisition of sensor data. When sensor data is acquired, it is handled in symbolized form including no privacy information, which protects privacy information from leaking the information to malicious people.
3. Information Integration for Presenting the Real World Information: Actual sensor data acquired from real world is integrated and offered to users as appropriate applications. 

Design of SW-agent: 

SW-agent is composed of two elements: program shipping facility, privacy protection model

Architecture for Sensing Web

Fig. 1 shows a typical environment of the Sensing Web, which currently is composed of closed sensor networks and standalone sensors such as Web cameras. Because these sensors are managed by several PCs connected to the Internet, these sensors are accessible through the Internet.

  

Program Shipping Facility

The Program Shipping Facility allows a binary program of anapplication to be deployed near a sensor, shown in Fig. 2. Arrowsin Fig. 2 represent flow of processed sensor data.

  Program shipping has the following advantages:

1.       Flexible data processing: Users can process sensor data flexibly through familiar program languages. The flexible data processing extract required information only out of a large amount of sensor data.
2.      Utilization of existing code: A program using a sensor can be used with little change. This advantage is important because most users will have their own application using a sensor in a diffusion process of the Sensing Web.
3.      Usability: Users can use languages familiar to them. That is, users do not need to learn a special language

Privacy protection model 

  The protection is achieved as follows:

1.       Authorization of User: A user who wants to deploy a program must acquire authorization from an access control service of the SW-agent.
2.       Deployment of Program: The user deploys a binary program to a machine near a sensor, which manages the sensor. Then, the deployed binary program is started by the executor of the SW-agent.
3.      Elimination of Privacy Information: The program applies image processing to the image data acquired from the surveillance camera and outputs the number of passages per unit time.
4.       Access to Privacy Eliminated Data: The user uses the processed information, which does not include privacy information. 

Authorization model for Sensing Web should satisfy the following:

• Performance: Processing costs needed for the model should not be large.
• Management Costs: Management costs for the model should not be high.
• Usability for Users and Owners: Both users and sensor owners should be able to apply for authorization without encountering problems. 
• Transparent Use of Sensors Scattered across Different Organizations: Sensors used in the Sensing Web are scattered across different organizations. Users should be able to use these sensors transparently.