RECENT ADVANCEMENT IN PERVASIVE COMPUTING
Shivani Sharma, Shalu Gupta
Department of computer science,
Arya institute of engineering and technology, Jaipur,INDIA
Rajasthan technical university, Kota
Abstract___The confluence of pervasive computing, anywhere/anytime access to information resources and scalable computing enables the construction of smart environments or Active Spaces. Pervasive computing weaves computing into our everyday environments and devices, necessitating an understanding of people's needs and reactions to new technology.This talk will review recent technology developments in the area of integrated pervasive sensing and computing, and address research challenges ahead. The talk will cover introduction about pervasive computing, concept of pervasive computing, vision and challenges will also be explained. Recent advancement and innovative applications will also be presented. Pervasive computing environments gracefully integrate networked computing devices- from tiny sensors to extremely dynamic and powerful devices- with people and their ambient environment. The power of such a computer infrastructure has three contributing factors; the translation of information to and from physical properties, the computers and their ability to transform data, and the cooperative computational environment that results from embedding these devices in a network. The organization, management, and programmability of physical devices and information activities in a pervasive computing environment is key to enabling diverse, autonomic, digital habitats such as university campuses, office buildings, scientific labs, and museums. However, the promise of pervasive computing cannot be realized without cost-effective and efficient mechanisms.
I. Introduction
Pervasive computing paradigm is leading us to the next generation of computing environment in which hundreds and thousands of smart devices exist and are expected to provide a variety of services. In order to utilize these services efficiently
and effectively, it is imperative for users and applications to be aware of the types of services and how many services are provided to us. In this approach we need a service discovery mechanism.Pervasive computing provides a means of broadening and deepening the reach of information technology (IT) in society. It can be used to simplify interactions with Web sites, provide advanced location-specific services for people on the move, and support all aspects of citizens’ life in the community. Integrating IT services into everyday life requires that we can sense the environment where services are offered, and tailor them as the environment changes. Implementing individual pervasive applications, such as tour guides or healthcare has been straightforward. But it has proved more difficult to build pervasive systems in which dynamic populations of services share infrastructure, sensing, and capabilities.Pervasive computers can solve some very big problems. Attached to power transmission structures, they ensure that our critical infrastructure is always available and remains safe and secure. Pervasive computers are useful in a wide range of markets, such as agriculture, health care, logistics and asset management, energy conservation, and manufacturing.
Fig.1 visual representation of the capabilities of various real-world technologies. Pervasive computers solve a wide range of large real-world problems not addressed by previous approaches
1.1 Defining pervasive computing:
Pervasive Computing is a technology that pervades the users’ environment by making use of multiple independent information devices (both fixed and mobile, homogeneous or heterogeneous) interconnected seamlessly through wireless or wired computer communication network which are aimed to provide a class of computing / sensory / communication services to a class of users, preferably transparently and can provide personalized services while ensuring a fair degree of privacy / non-intrusiveness.
If we say that pervasive computing means
Anytime/Anywhere-->Any Device --> Any Network --> Any Data1.2 Another perspective on Pervasive Computing-
●It may also be seen as the technology that is a combination of-:
•Personal computing technology
•Internetworking technology
•Invisible computing technology
•Wearable computing technology
•Mobile computing technology
II. Overview of Pervasive Computing
A new approach to wireless sensor networking adds local intelligence to the nodes, creating pervasive computers and enabling sensor networks that can both acquire data and initiate action without human intervention.Recent advances in hardware, wireless and sensor network, software agents, and middleware technology have been responsible for the emergence of pervasive computing as an exciting area with applications in many areas. Pervasive computing encompasses networks, mobile and distributed computing, and more- agent technology, middleware, situation-aware computing etc.
Pervasive computing is about providing ‘where you want, when you want, what you want and how you want’ services to users, application and devices. Pervasive computing incorporates research finding from many areas of computer science to meet the challenges posed by a myriad application. Currently, we do have the necessary hardware and software infrastructure to faster the growth of pervasive computing. What is necessary is the ‘glue’ to put together existing entities in order to provide meaningful and unobtrusive services to applications.
2.1 Infrastructure of Pervasive Computing:
•Pervasive Computing Infrastructure has to comprise of computing elements, communicating elements, sensors, actuators, and interface devices.
• Computation to be available widely and freely (not free of cost).
• Intermittent connectivity has to be a supported feature due to physical limitations pertaining to power, cost and bandwidth and network congestion.
• PAN issues and allow intermittent connection.
• The infrastructure has to offer seamless connectivity to the devices / entities / services.
• It has to support placement and location of uniquely identifiable “information tags / traceable tags” to all devices / entities in the Pervasive Computing environment.
• User’s environment must be able to be aware of the user’s context.
2.2 framework of computing
The concept of pervasive computing, which describes the extension of the Internet beyond PCs and servers to form a truly universal network, has been around for several years, but only recently has it begun to find its way to the mainstream. Pervasive computing will not only replicate the standard functionality of the Web in embedded devices, but it will also offer the services provided by such devices to other entities on the Internet.
The idea that technology is moving beyond the personal computer to everyday devices withembedded technology and connectivity as computing devices become progressively smaller and more powerful. Also calledubiquitous computing, pervasive computing is the result of computer technology advancing at exponential speeds -- a trend toward all man-made and some natural products havinghardwareandsoftware. The goal of pervasive computing, which combines current network technologies with wireless computing,voice recognition, Internetcapability andartificial intelligence, is to create an environment where the connectivity of devices is embedded in such a way that the connectivity is unobtrusive and always available.
III. Vision and challenges
Practical realization of pervasive computing will require us to solve many difficult design and implementation problems. Some of them are discussed below-:
A. User Intent
For propensity to be effective, it is crucial that a pervasive computing system track user intent. Else it will become difficult to determine which system actions will help rather than bothering the user. The correct choice will depend on what the user is trying to accomplish.
A. Cyber Foraging:
The need to make mobile devices smaller, lighter and have longer battery life means that their computing capabilities have to be compromised. But meeting the ever-growing expectations of mobile users is difficult and may require computing and data manipulation capabilities...
B. Adaptation Strategy
Adaptation is necessary when there is a significant mismatch between the supply and demand of a resource. The resource in question may be wireless network bandwidth, energy, computing cycles, memory, and so on. Three strategies which can be followed are as follows-:
First, guidance from client side is needed for applications in changing their behavior so that they use less of a scarce resource.
Second, on demand a client can ask for certain level of resources according to the environment. This effectively increases the supply of a scarce resource to meet the client’s demand.
Third, a client may suggest some restorative action to the user. It may result in adequate resources to meet demand.
C. High-level Energy Management
Sophisticated capabilities such as proactivity increase the energy demand of software on one’s personal computing space. At the same time, persistent pressure to make such computers lighter and more compact places kind of restriction on battery capacity. There is growing unanimity that advances in battery technology and low-power circuit design cannot, by themselves, reconcile these opposing constraints.
D. Client Thickness
We need powerful for a pervasive computing environment? In other words CPU power, memory, disk capacity and so on. The key constraints imposed on the hardware design of the client. In trade press jargon, a thick client is a powerful client, while a thin client is a minimal one.
E. Context Awareness
A pervasive computing system that reaches to be minimally intrusive need to be context-aware. A user’s context must be quite rich, consisting of attributes such as physical location, physiological state, emotional state, daily behavioral patterns, and so on. If a human assistant were given such context, he or she would make decisions in a proactive fashion, anticipating user needs. In making these decisions, the assistant would typically not disturb the user except in an emergency.
F. Balancing Proactivity and Transparency
Proactivity is a double-edged sword. Unless carefully designed, a proactive system can annoy a user and thus ruin its crop. So we need a computer whose performance is consistent all the time. Self-tuning can be an important tool in this effort.A mobile user’s need and tolerance for proactivity arelikely to be closely related to his level of endeavor on a task andhis friendlily with his environment. A system that can deduce thesefactors by observing user behavior and context is better positioned to strike the right balance.
G. Privacy and Trust
Privacy, already a bristly problem in distributed systems and mobile computing, is also no less complicated in pervasive computing.Mechanisms such as location tracking, smart spaces, and use of surrogates monitor may discourse with privacy. Asa user becomes more dependent on a pervasive computing system, these computers become more knowledgeable about that user’s movements,behavior patterns and habits. Unless use of this information is strictly controlled; it can be put to a variety of zesty uses ranging from targeted spam to blackmail. Indeed, the potential for serious loss of privacy may disallow knowledgeable users from using a pervasive computing system
H. Impact on Layering
A recurring theme of this paper until now has been the merging of information from diverse layers of a system toproduce an effective response.
IV. ADVANTAGES / DISADVANTGES OF PERVASIVE COMPUTING
Pervasive computing gives us the tools to manage information quickly, efficiently, and effortlessly.
Pervasive computing simplifies life by combining open standards-based applications with everyday activities.
Some of the other advantages are-:
1)INVISIBLE:
"Smart" environments will be embedded with computing technologies that will be mostly out-of-sight. Architecture will gain many more capabilities – with less visual clutter.
2)SOCIALIZATION:
Interactions with architecture will be more social in nature. "Smart" buildings will arouse a more social response from occupants as computers user interfaces will be embedded within architecture.
3)DECISION-MAKING:
"Smart" environments will help occupants to make better choices as they go about their everyday lives. At key moments within architectural experiences, a good architectural design will make "smart" environments helpful. Such architecture will be more proactive than passive.
4)EMERGENTBEHAVIOR:
Buildings are now becoming more and more kinetic in form and function. Their movements and constructed designs come together dynamically to yield behaviors that make them more adaptive. Buildings will learn how to learn - in order to run efficiently and aesthetically.
5)INFORMATIONPROCESSING:
Since architecture will be gaining a type of "nervous system", information processing will be gaining a whole new meaning. Architecture will go from crunching data to making sense of data; therefore, eliminating our need to constantly input adjustments.
6)ENHANCINGEXPERIENCE:
As computers ubiquitously embed themselves in our environments, sensors and actuators will create "smart" environments where architectural space will be goal-oriented. Therefore, more occupant needs will be better met.
7)CONVERGENCE:
Much of our environment will be supplemented with interconnected digital technologies. Such interconnectivity will allow for a new type of "sharing" that will serve to eliminate many mundane tasks. Also, fewer errors will occur as systems pull data from shared digital locations (instead of having numerous copies to keep up-to-date).
DISADVANTGES
No doubt pervasive computing is far advantageous than simple computing but there are some disadvantages also which walk hands in hands with advantages.
Some of them are-:
a) Equipment may be heavy which intern make it difficult to carry it everywhere.
b) Such components may be expensive which make it less economical.
c) Some computers may consist of lot of wiring outside which make it less compatible.
d) They may cause side effects such as headache.
e) They may invade privacy if are not much secure.
f) There is always a risk of being tracked when you are wearing those computers.
g) Privacy issues-: this is one of the biggest disadvantages of pervasive computers as such computers environment does pose serious privacy risks.
h) Load balancing-: such computer may consist of small CPU, NET, MEMORY, and DISK thus making it difficult to be portable.
i) Distributed environment-: system must be user friendly.
j) Programmability-: it is not necessary that all the users are good at programming. So Updation and manageability must be simple.
k) Applicability -: developers must be aware of cluster and grid computing got carry out such computing.
V. RECENT TECHNOLOGIES
Within five years vendors will offer portable and embedded devices containing low-cost systems-on-a-chip (SOC) that include enough CPU, memory, and input/output logic to support execution of complex software applications interconnected via Pico-cellular wireless communications.
Emerging Pervasive (ubiquitous) Technologies
1. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking:
Napster popularized the application of P2P (peer-to-peer networking) products and now the same technology has spread as a virus. The basic idea behind it is the sharing of files and programs and communicating directly with people over the Internet, without having to rely on a centralized server. Peers on desktop PCs can share files directly over a network. Renting computing power can solve resource problems in smaller companies, thus improving the power of web applications.