Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Middleware Framework and Programming Infrastructure for IoT Services*Summary*The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a system of massively interconnected devices, and software applications referred to as ""things"" or ""resources"". These ""things"" can be considered as basic units that interact with their environment and are capable of providing services, data or, control elements to other interconnected ""things"" or to back-end software applications. In this respect, IoT emerges as the major architecture for achieving Machine to Machine (M2M) communication and realizing the so-called Cyber-Physical systems (CPS). However, in order to design, implement, test, deploy, and manage large IoT systems we require complex, yet efficient, infrastructures and platforms so that software engineers can program and connect devices, applications, and data, in a secure, resilient, fault tolerant way, meeting at the same time high performance and scalability targets. Such infrastructures and platforms are referred to as ""middleware"" because architecturally they are placed between the front-end devices and the back-end applications. To date, middleware platforms for IoT systems address individual facets of IoT development such as device connectivity, or security. This project aims to investigate novel middleware architectures that support a wide spectrum of design, deployment, and management activities from new programming models on how to interconnect ""things"" using templates and patterns, to efficient algorithms that allow for the dynamic re-configuration of an IoT system as it operates, so that it constantly meets specific quality and performance requirements. These topics are in the forefront of the current technological challenges, and solutions to these challenges help the Canadian industry, which is involved either on developing or using IoT systems, to obtain a competitive edge on a global stage.*