TOWARDS A GENERIC MIDDLEWARE FOR DEVELOPING AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS
Markus Eisenhauer, Ferry Pramudianto, Tomáš Sabol, Peter Kostelnik, Ján Hreño · 2011
In this paper we present LinkSmart, a generic middleware solution developed within the FP6 European Project HYDRA. LinkSmart as a middleware framework defines an abstraction layer on top of heterogeneous communication protocols. It provides services and development tools to application developers, hiding thus for them the complexity of underlying device specifics and network protocols. LinkSmart combines the use of ontologies with semantic web services, supporting thus true Ambient Intelligence (AmI) for ubiquitous networked devices. It introduces the Semantic Model Driven Architecture (SeMDA), which aims to facilitate application development and to promote semantic interoperability for services and devices. The SeMDA of LinkSmart includes a set of ontologies, and provides tools, which can be used both at application design time and runtime. The ontologies are used for both static information storage and also complex query answering purposes. Since LinkSmart was implemented as a generic middleware, it provides a technological basis for further projects applying the middleware solution in various application domains such as energy efficiency, Internet of Things in the enterprise and crisis response.