Sven van der Meer, Robert O'Connor, Alan Davy

Ubiquitous Smart Space Management

Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG)
Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT)

This paper introduces the M-Zones approach for the integrated management of distributed networks, services and applications within Smart Spaces. The main objective of this approach is the realisation of software, systems and services that address composition, scalability, reliability and robustness as well as autonomous self-adaptation. It focuses on middleware for management, control and use of fully distributed resources. The term integration refers to the task of unifying existing instrumentations for middleware and management, not their replacement.

The rationale of this work stems from the fact, that the current situation of Smart Spaces and management systems can be described with the term interworking. The actually needed integration of management and middleware concepts is still an open issue. However, identified trends in communications and computing demand for integrated concepts rather than the definition of new interworking scenarios.

The approach is discussed in three steps. First, a general framework is defined based on the hypothesis and an evaluation of the target environments. The second step is the derivation of a conception for ubiquitous management from this general framework. The last step is the realisation of this architecture and its exploitation.