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MARCO PICONE

Ricercatore t.d. art. 24 c. 3 lett. B
Dipartimento di Scienze e Metodi dell'Ingegneria
Docente a contratto
Dipartimento di Ingegneria "Enzo Ferrari"

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Pubblicazioni

2024 - Digital Twin for Continual Learning in Location Based Services [Articolo su rivista]
Lombardo, Gianfranco; Picone, Marco; Mamei, Marco; Mordonini, Monica; Poggi, Agostino
abstract

Decoupling the physical world and providing standardized service interfaces is still challenging when devel-oping Location Based Services (LBS). This lack also hinders the possibility of developing Intelligent services on top of LBS architectures. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer Digital Twin-based architecture that aims to enable the development of machine learning-based Intelligent LBS (I-LBS) that are able to adapt, evolve, and perform Continual Learning (CL). The platform uses Digital Twins to ensure physical abstraction and provide cyber-physical knowledge to the I-LBSs, which is defined as an execution graph of operation modules. Finally, we simulated a use-case for this platform in the complex scenario of Healthcare organization and management where the I-LBS classifies allowed/not allowed trajectories of users inside a real-existing hospital scenario depending on their role in the organization. The use case is implemented as a Deep Learning-based reconstruction task of high-resolution trajectories processed by the DT architecture that also deploys the I-LBS. The platform is evaluated in terms of physical complexity and computational time on the DT side and on both a traditional machine learning setting and a replay-based CL one for the intelligence side to demonstrate the flexibility and adaptability features introduced by the components for dynamic or unseen scenarios.

2024 - The Degree of Entanglement: Cyber-Physical Awareness in Digital Twin Applications [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, Marco; Mariani, Stefano; Cavicchioli, Roberto; Burgio, Paolo; Cherif, Arslane Hamza
abstract

A defining feature of a Digital Twin (DT) is its level of "entanglement": the degree of strength to which the twin is interconnected with its physical counterpart. Despite its importance, this characteristic has not been yet fully investigated, and its impact on applications' design is underestimated. In this paper, we define the concept of "Degree of Entanglement" (DoE), which provides an operational model for assessing the strength of the entanglement between a DT and its physical counterpart. We also propose an interoperable representation of DoE within the Web of Things (WoT) framework, which enables DT-driven applications to dynamically adapt to changes in the physical environment. We evaluate our proposal using two realistic use cases, demonstrating the practical utility of DoE in supporting, for instance, context-awareness decisions and adaptiveness.

2023 - 5G MEC Architecture for Vulnerable Road Users Management Through Smart City Data Fusion [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Rossini, Enrico; Pietri, Marcello; Cavicchioli, Roberto; Picone, Marco; Mamei, Marco; Querio, Roberto; Colazzo, Laura; Procopio, Roberto
abstract

2023 - A Flexible and Modular Architecture for Edge Digital Twin: Implementation and Evaluation [Articolo su rivista]
Picone, Marco; Mamei, Marco; Zambonelli, Franco
abstract

IoT systems based on Digital Twins (DTs) - virtual copies of physical objects and systems - can be very effective to enable data-driven services and promote better control and decisions, in particular by exploiting distributed approaches where cloud and edge computing cooperate effectively. In this context, digital twins deployed on the edge represents a new strategic element to design a new wave of distributed cyber-physical applications. Existing approaches are generally focused on fragmented and domain-specific monolithic solutions and are mainly associated to model-driven, simulative or descriptive visions. The idea of extending the DTs role to support last-mile digitalization and interoperability through a set of general purpose and well-defined properties and capabilities is still underinvestigated. In this paper, we present the novel Edge Digital Twins (EDT) architectural model and its implementation, enabling the lightweight replication of physical devices providing an efficient digital abstraction layer to support the autonomous and standard collaboration of things and services. We model the core capabilities with respect to the recent definition of the state of the art, present the software architecture and a prototype implementation. Extensive experimental analysis shows the obtained performance in multiple IoT application contexts and compares them with that of state-of-the-art approaches.

2023 - Agents and Digital Twins for the engineering of Cyber-Physical Systems: opportunities, and challenges [Articolo su rivista]
Mariani, S; Picone, M; Ricci, A
abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) are emerging as a fundamental brick of engineering Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), but their notion is still mostly bound to specific business domains (e.g. manufacturing), goals (e.g. product design), or applications (e.g. the Internet of Things). As such, their value as general purpose engineering abstractions is yet to be fully revealed. In this paper, we relate DTs with agents and multiagent systems, as the latter are arguably the most rich abstractions available for the engineering of complex socio-technical and CPSs, and the former could both fill in some gaps in agent-oriented software engineering and benefit from an agent-oriented interpretation-in a cross-fertilisation journey.

2023 - Digital Twin & Blockchain: Technology Enablers for Metaverse Computing [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, Marco; Mariani, Stefano; Virdis, Antonio; Castagnetti, Paolo
abstract

2023 - Enabling causality learning in smart factories with hierarchical digital twins [Articolo su rivista]
Lippi, M.; Martinelli, M.; Picone, M.; Zambonelli, F.
abstract

Smart factories are complex systems where many different components need to interact and cooperate in order to achieve common goals. In particular, devices must be endowed with the skill of learning how to react in front of evolving situations and unexpected scenarios. In order to develop these capabilities, we argue that systems will need to build an internal, and possibly shared, representation of their operational world that represents causal relations between actions and observed variables. Within this context, digital twins will play a crucial role, by providing the ideal infrastructure for the standardisation and digitisation of the whole industrial process, laying the groundwork for the high-level learning and inference processes. In this paper, we introduce a novel hierarchical architecture enabled by digital twins, that can be exploited to build logical abstractions of the overall system, and to learn causal models of the environment directly from data. We implement our vision through a case study of a simulated production process. Our results in that scenario show that Bayesian networks and intervention via do-calculus can be effectively exploited within the proposed architecture to learn interpretable models of the environment. Moreover, we evaluate how the use of digital twins has a strong impact on the reduction of the physical complexity perceived by external applications.

2023 - How to Change a Light Bulb in Your Smart Home: A Digital-Twin Based Approach [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Zdankin, Peter; Picone, Marco; Schaffeld, Matthias; Mamei, Marco; Weis, Torben
abstract

2023 - Measuring Digital Twin Entanglement in Industrial Internet of Things [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Bellavista, Paolo; Bicocchi, Nicola; Fogli, Mattia; Giannelli, Carlo; Mamei, Marco; Picone, Marco
abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) have recently emerged as a valuable approach for modeling, monitoring, and controlling physical objects in Industrial Internet of Things applications. Measuring the quality of entanglement between the digital and physical counterparts plays a crucial role in the adoption of DTs. In this paper, we propose a concise yet expressive metric for representing the quality of entanglement, namely Overall Digital Twin Entanglement (ODTE), based on two key factors: timeliness and completeness. Furthermore, the paper presents the development of our industrial testbed implemented on top of Kubernetes, where we show practical applications of the proposed ODTE metric by highlighting and discussing its benefits in realistic use cases.

2023 - Requirements and design patterns for adaptive, autonomous, and context-aware digital twins in industry 4.0 digital factories [Articolo su rivista]
Bellavista, Paolo; Bicocchi, Nicola; Fogli, Mattia; Giannelli, Carlo; Mamei, Marco; Picone, Marco
abstract

2023 - The Road to Industry 5.0: The Challenges of Human Fatigue Modeling [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Zanoli, Christopher; Villani, Valeria; Picone, Marco
abstract

2023 - Towards Developing Digital Twin Enabled Multi-Agent Systems [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Mariani, Stefano; Picone, Marco; Ricci, Alessandro
abstract

2022 - A Digital-Twin Based Architecture for Software Longevity in Smart Homes [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Zdankin, P.; Picone, M.; Mamei, M.; Weis, T.
abstract

2022 - About Digital Twins, Agents, and Multiagent Systems: A Cross-Fertilisation Journey [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Mariani, Stefano; Picone, Marco; Ricci, Alessandro
abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) are rapidly emerging as a fundamental brick of engineering cyber-physical systems, but their notion is still mostly bound to specific business domains (e.g. manufacturing), goals (e.g. product design), or application domains (e.g. the Internet of Things). As such, their value as general purpose engineering abstractions is yet to be fully revealed. In this paper, we relate DTs with agents and multiagent systems, as the latter are arguably the most rich abstractions available for the engineering of complex socio-technical and cyber-physical systems, and the former could both fill in some gaps in agent-oriented engineering and benefit from an agent-oriented interpretation -- in a cross-fertilisation journey.

2022 - Digital twin oriented architecture for secure and QoS aware intelligent communications in industrial environments [Articolo su rivista]
Bellavista, P.; Giannelli, C.; Mamei, M.; Mendula, M.; Picone, M.
abstract

In modern networking industrial environments, characterized by the integration of Operation Technology and Information Technology, there is a strong need to ensure both safety and security of operations and communications. In this regard, IEC 62443 zones and conduits represent powerful high-level abstractions stressing the importance of clearly separating machines in relation to safety requirements and of clearly defining inter-machine communication security requirements. However, their actual implementation is still demanded to human-centric error-prone procedures performed by technicians directly on network elements, without any integrated plant-wide point of view. To overcome these issues, first of all we originally state the need of applying the Digital Twin approach to zones and conduits, making easier the definition and management of inter-machine security requirements. For instance, industrial technicians can specify that communication among two zones should always flows through a ciphered conduit with a given algorithm and key length, at the cost of increased latency. Secondly, we state the need of exploiting an intelligent reasoner to monitor the current state of the environment (represented by asset and network Digital Twins), actively reconfiguring them in case desired requirements are not satisfied. Then, the reasoner allows to enforce requirements while also considering the fulfillment of a proper trade-off between security and performance, e.g., by reducing the ciphering complexity to ensure prompt packet dispatching whenever required. Performance results based on our working prototype demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed solution under stringent requirements typical of industrial environments. In particular, in terms of better flexibility we proved that our orchestrator is able to create a new Digital Twin in less than 2.5 s in a typical edge node with a medium load. In addition, proposed routing policies based on our machine learning reasoner led to the satisfaction of well-defined low latency requirements (250 ms) while avoiding packet dropping.

2022 - IoT-PROD 2022: First International Workshop on Internet of Things Pervasive Real-World Deployments - Welcome and Committees: Welcome Message [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Artemenko, A.; Bicocchi, N.; Picone, M.; Weis, T.; Zdankin, P.
abstract

2022 - Towards Smart Cities for Tourism: the POLIS-EYE Project [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Seravalli, Alessandro; Busani, Mariaelena; Venturi, Simone; Brutti, Arianna; Petrovich, Carlo; Frascella, Angelo; Paolucci, Fabrizio; Di Felice, Marco; Lombardi, Michele; Bellodi, Elena; Zese, Riccardo; Bertasi, Francesco; Balugani, Elia; Cecaj, Alket; Gamberini, Rita; Mamei, Marco; Picone, Marco
abstract

Novel and widespread ICT and Internet of Things (IoT) technology can provide fine-grained real-time information to the tourist sector, both to support the demand side (tourists) and the supply side (managers and organizers). We present the POLIS-EYE project that aims to build decision-support systems helping tourist-managers to organize and optimize policies and resources. In particular, we focus on a service to monitor and forecast people presence in tourist areas by combining heterogeneous datasets with a special focus on data collected from the mobile phone network.

2022 - Web of Digital Twins [Articolo su rivista]
Ricci, Alessandro; Croatti, Angelo; Mariani, Stefano; Montagna, Sara; Picone, Marco
abstract

2021 - Application-driven Network-aware Digital Twin Management in Industrial Edge Environments [Articolo su rivista]
Bellavista, P.; Giannelli, C.; Mamei, M.; Mendula, M.; Picone, M.
abstract

The application of Internet of Things (IoT) within industrial environments is fostering the adoption of the Digital Twin (DT) approach, applied at the edge of the network to handle heterogeneity stemming from siloed application management solutions and from protocols originated by different manufacturing tools and enterprise services. In this challenging context, network heterogeneity also represents a critical element that can significantly limit the design and deployment of DT-oriented applications. The paper proposes the Application-driven Digital Twin Networking (ADTN) middleware with the twofold objective of: (1) Simplifying the interaction among heterogeneous devices by allowing DTs to exploit IP-based protocols instead of specialized industrial ones and to enhance packet content expressiveness, by enriching data via well-defined standards. (2) Dynamically managing network resources in edge industrial environments, applying Software Defined Networking (SDN) to exploit the communication mechanisms most suitable to application requirements, ranging from native IP to more articulated based on packet content.

2021 - Blockchain security and privacy for the internet of things [Abstract in Rivista]
Picone, M.; Cirani, S.; Veltri, L.
abstract

: The Internet of Things (IoT) is of continuously growing interest for research and industry [...].

2021 - Editorial for this SI on “Location Based Services and Applications in the era of Internet of Things” [Abstract in Rivista]
Bellavista, P.; Giannelli, C.; Musolesi, M.; Picone, M.
abstract

2021 - Keynote: Intelligent IoT Architectures to Support Distributed Cognitive Applications [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M
abstract

Keynote speech for the First IEEE International Workshop on Deep Learning in Pervasive Computing (PerDL). The workshop is colocated with the 19th International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2021) March 22-26, 2021 in Kassel, Germany.

2021 - WIP: Preliminary evaluation of digital twins on MEC software architecture [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Mariani, S.; Mamei, M.; Zambonelli, F.; Berlier, M.
abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) are becoming a reference design abstraction for many Internet of Things (IoT) application scenarios. Also, data processing is shifting to a decentralised setting leveraging the edge computing paradigm to move computation closer to the physical devices. In this context, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) technologies on 5G cellular networks are redefining the IoT networking infrastructure by enabling ultra low latency, and reliable and responsive connectivity. However, evaluation of the MEC architecture from the application developer standpoint is currently missing from literature, as well as an assessment of performance while adopting DT on top of MEC. Therefore, this paper reports on a MEC implementation based on OpenNESS toolkit, in the context of DT-based mobility, and an evaluation of its service-level performance.

2021 - WLDT: A general purpose library to build IoT digital twins [Articolo su rivista]
Picone, M.; Mamei, M.; Zambonelli, F.
abstract

2020 - Applying Security to a Big Stream Cloud Architecture for the Internet of Things [Capitolo/Saggio]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Davoli, Luca; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Melegari, Lorenzo; Picone, Marco
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to interconnect billions (around 50 by 2020) of heterogeneous sensor/actuator-equipped devices denoted as “Smart Objects” (SOs), characterized by constrained resources in terms of memory, processing, and communication reliability. Several IoT applications have real-time and low-latency requirements and must rely on architectures specifically designed to manage gigantic streams of information (in terms of number of data sources and transmission data rate). We refer to “Big Stream” as the paradigm which best fits the selected IoT scenario, in contrast to the traditional “Big Data” concept, which does not consider real-time constraints. Moreover, there are many security concerns related to IoT devices and to the Cloud. In this paper, we analyze security aspects in a novel Cloud architecture for Big Stream applications, which efficiently handles Big Stream data through a Graph-based platform and delivers processed data to consumers, with low latency. The authors detail each module defined in the system architecture, describing all refinements required to make the platform able to secure large data streams. An experimentation is also conducted in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed architecture when integrating security mechanisms.

2020 - ZWT: A new cross-platform graphical interface framework for Java applications [Articolo su rivista]
Cirani, S.; Picone, M.; Veltri, L.; Zaccomer, L.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

The Java Programming Language revolutionized the world of software development in the last decades. Thanks to its portability, Java makes it possible to develop software that can run everywhere, in a truly cross-platform computing environment. Although running the same Java code anywhere works smoothly on major desktop and server platforms, this becomes much more complicated when different devices and platforms, such as smartphones or embedded systems, are taken into account. Furthermore, even if we consider devices that natively support the Java programming language, the same application may not run without re-writing part or the entire source code. This is mainly due to the existence of platform specific libraries for accessing input/output peripherals or system-specific features. In particular, the main limitation is usually associated to the different APIs that must be used for programming the Graphical User Interface (GUIs). In this paper, we present a novel framework that can be used by developers to write Java applications with portable GUIs that are truly platform-independent and thus can run on different systems such as PCs, Workstations, Android devices or mobile phones and embedded systems with Java MicroEdition (Java ME).

2019 - A sidecar object for the optimized communication between edge and cloud in internet of things applications [Articolo su rivista]
Busanelli, S.; Cirani, S.; Melegari, L.; Picone, M.; Rosa, M.; Veltri, L.
abstract

The internet of things (IoT) is one of the most disrupting revolutions that is characterizing the technology ecosystem. In the near future, the IoT will have a significant impact on people's lives and on the design and developments of new paradigms and architectures coping with a completely new set of challenges and service categories. The IoT can be described as an ecosystem where a massive number of constrained devices (denoted as smart objects) will be deployed and connected to cooperate for multiple purposes, such a data collection, actuation, and interaction with people. In order to meet the specific requirements, IoT services may be deployed leveraging a hybrid architecture that will involve services deployed on the edge and the cloud. In this context, one of the challenges is to create an infrastructure of objects and microservices operating between both the edge and in the cloud that can be easily updated and extended with new features and functionalities without the need of updating or re-deploying smart objects. This work introduces a new concept for extending smart objects' support for cloud services, denoted as a sidecar object. A sidecar object serves the purpose of being deployed as additional component of a preexisting object without interfering with the mechanisms and behaviors that have already been implemented. In particular, the sidecar object implementation developed in this work focuses on the communication with existing IoT cloud services (namely, AWS IoT and Google Cloud IoT) to provide a transparent and seamless synchronization of data, states, and commands between the object on the edge and the cloud. The proposed sidecar object implementation has been extensively evaluated through a detailed set of tests, in order to analyze the performances and behaviors in real- world scenarios.

2018 - A Scalable Big Stream Cloud Architecture for the Internet of Things [Capitolo/Saggio]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Davoli, Luca; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Melegari, Lorenzo; Montón, Màrius; Picone, Marco
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) will consist of billions (50 billions by 2020) of interconnected heterogeneous devices denoted as “Smart Objects:” tiny, constrained devices which are going to be pervasively deployed in several contexts. To meet low-latency requirements, IoT applications must rely on specific architectures designed to handle the gigantic stream of data coming from Smart Objects. This paper propose a novel Cloud architecture for Big Stream applications that can efficiently handle data coming from Smart Objects through a Graph-based processing platform and deliver processed data to consumer applications with low latency. The authors reverse the traditional “Big Data” paradigm, where real-time constraints are not considered, and introduce the new “Big Stream” paradigm, which better fits IoT scenarios. The paper provides a performance evaluation of a practical open-source implementation of the proposed architecture. Other practical aspects, such as security considerations, and possible business oriented exploitation plans are presented.

2018 - Internet of Things: Architectures, Protocols and Standards [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Cirani, S; Ferrari, G; Picone, M; Veltri, L
abstract

This book addresses researchers and graduate students at the forefront of study/research on the Internet of Things (IoT) by presenting state-of-the-art research together with the current and future challenges in building new smart applications (e.g., Smart Cities, Smart Buildings, and Industrial IoT) in an efficient, scalable, and sustainable way. It covers the main pillars of the IoT world (Connectivity, Interoperability, Discoverability, and Security/Privacy), providing a comprehensive look at the current technologies, procedures, and architectures.

2018 - Virtual replication of IoT hubs in the cloud: A flexible approach to smart object management [Articolo su rivista]
Cirani, Simone; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Mancin, Mirko; Picone, Marco
abstract

In future years, the Internet of Things is expected to interconnect billions of highly heterogeneous devices, denoted as "smart objects", enabling the development of innovative distributed applications. Smart objects are constrained sensor/actuator-equipped devices, in terms of computational power and available memory. In order to cope with the diverse physical connectivity technologies of smart objects, the Internet Protocol is foreseen as the common "language" for full interoperability and as a unifying factor for integration with the Internet. Large-scale platforms for interconnected devices are required to effectively manage resources provided by smart objects. In this work, we present a novel architecture for the management of large numbers of resources in a scalable, seamless, and secure way. The proposed architecture is based on a network element, denoted as IoT Hub, placed at the border of the constrained network, which implements the following functions: service discovery; border router; HTTP/Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) and CoAP/CoAP proxy; cache; and resource directory. In order to protect smart objects (which cannot, because of their constrained nature, serve a large number of concurrent requests) and the IoT Hub (which serves as a gateway to the constrained network), we introduce the concept of virtual IoT Hub replica: a Cloud-based "entity" replicating all the functions of a physical IoT Hub, which external clients will query to access resources. IoT Hub replicas are constantly synchronized with the physical IoT Hub through a low-overhead protocol based on Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT). An experimental evaluation, proving the feasibility and advantages of the proposed architecture, is presented.

2017 - Improving Quality of Experience in Future Wireless Access Networks through Fog Computing [Articolo su rivista]
Iotti, Nicola; Picone, Marco; Cirani, Simone; Ferrari, Gianluigi
abstract

A novel model of Internet access networks is proposed, based on fog computing. The model hosts applications close to users by relying on virtual machines to dynamically move cloud or Web content to nodes located at the edge of access networks. Then it can perform proactive caching and enforce traffic policies based on the interaction between access infrastructure and external applications. By analyzing experimental data collected from public Wi-Fi hotspots, the authors quantify the benefits of this approach for bandwidth usage optimization, latency reduction, and quality of experience enhancement. Experimental results show that a significant portion (from 28 to 50 percent) of download data could be managed by the fog node. On the basis of these findings, useful insights for future-generation access networks are provided.

2016 - Applying security to a big stream cloud architecture for the internet of things [Articolo su rivista]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Davoli, Luca; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Melegari, Lorenzo; Picone, Marco
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to interconnect billions (around 50 by 2020) of heterogeneous sensor/actuator-equipped devices denoted as "Smart Objects" (SOs), characterized by constrained resources in terms of memory, processing, and communication reliability. Several IoT applications have real-time and low-latency requirements and must rely on architectures specifically designed to manage gigantic streams of information (in terms of number of data sources and transmission data rate). We refer to "Big Stream" as the paradigm which best fits the selected IoT scenario, in contrast to the traditional "Big Data" concept, which does not consider real-time constraints. Moreover, there are many security concerns related to IoT devices and to the Cloud. In this paper, we analyze security aspects in a novel Cloud architecture for Big Stream applications, which efficiently handles Big Stream data through a Graph-based platform and delivers processed data to consumers, with low latency. The authors detail each module defined in the system architecture, describing all refinements required to make the platform able to secure large data streams. An experimentation is also conducted in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed architecture when integrating security mechanisms.

2015 - A Data-driven IoT-oriented dual-Network Management Protocol [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Ferrari, Gabriele; Medagliani, Paolo; Cirani, Simone; Picone, Marco; Ferrari, Gianluigi
abstract

The trade-off between high-performance data transmission and low-energy consumption is a long-existing issue in the field of wireless communications. Efficient data exchange is critical for battery-equipped mobile devices typically used in distributed surveillance scenarios, where it may be required to transmit video or audio streams between in-network nodes. In such cases, the devices carried by operators require to be as lightweight as possible. However, low-power and lossy networks do not provide sufficient bandwidth to meet the requirements of streaming transmissions, while high-performance communications result in high energy consumptions, shortening the lifetimes of the devices. In this paper, we propose a Data-driven IoT-oriented dual-Network Management Protocol (DNMP), oriented to Internet of Things (IoT), which leverages on the presence of two IP-addressable radio interfaces on the same node: one with low energy consumption (and through-put) and one with high throughput (and energy consumption). The low-power network acts both as an independent data plane and as a control plane for the high-throughput network, which is turned on whenever necessary to support multimedia streaming. In order to validate our protocol, we consider the integration of low-power IEEE 802.15.4 radio transceiver and high-throughput IEEE 802.11s radio transceivers. An extensive experimental investigation is then carried out, with the following goals: (i) investigating the performance of the two overlaid networks (IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11s); and ii) determining the critical threshold, in terms of amount of data to be transmitted, beyond which the use of DNMP becomes advantageous.

2015 - A Graph-based cloud architecture for big stream real-time applications in the Internet of Things [Capitolo/Saggio]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Melegari, Lorenzo; Picone, Marco
abstract

2015 - A Scalable Big Stream Cloud Architecture for the Internet of Things [Articolo su rivista]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Davoli, Luca; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Melegari, Lorenzo; Montón, Màrius; Picone, Marco
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) will consist of billions (50 billions by 2020) of interconnected heterogeneous devices denoted as “Smart Objects:” tiny, constrained devices which are going to be pervasively deployed in several contexts. To meet low-latency requirements, IoT applications must rely on specific architectures designed to handle the gigantic stream of data coming from Smart Objects. This paper propose a novel Cloud architecture for Big Stream applications that can efficiently handle data coming from Smart Objects through a Graph-based processing platform and deliver processed data to consumer applications with low latency. The authors reverse the traditional “Big Data” paradigm, where real-time constraints are not considered, and introduce the new “Big Stream” paradigm, which better fits IoT scenarios. The paper provides a performance evaluation of a practical open-source implementation of the proposed architecture. Other practical aspects, such as security considerations, and possible business oriented exploitation plans are presented.

2015 - A novel smart object-driven UI generation approach for mobile devices in the internet of things [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Gorrieri, Andrea; Picone, Marco
abstract

The broad adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) is linked to the possibility to discover and interact easily with objects in the surroundings of users. Because of their characteristics and large diffusion, mobile devices are perfect to connect the IoT and common people. In order to accomplish the challenging task of enabling seamless interaction between users and smart objects, in this paper, we propose a lightweight, standard and REST compliant mechanism for the generation of user interfaces (UIs) on mobile devices driven by smart objects. This approach is expedient for a number of reasons: i) end-users are no longer required to download and use custom mobile vendor-provided apps to interact with smart objects; ii) smart objects can actually drive the interaction by letting mobile devices generate the correct UI for the intended interplay; iii) UIs can be dynamically changed over time without requiring any software update by the user. A suitable lightweight UI description format is presented, together with an implementation for Android devices. An evaluation of the proposed approach has also been conducted in order to prove its feasibility and ease of use.

2015 - Advanced Technologies for Intelligent Transportation Systems [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

This book focuses on emerging technologies in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) namely efficient information dissemination between vehicles, infrastructures, pedestrians and public transportation systems. It covers the state-of-the-art of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), with centralized and decentralized (Peer-to-Peer) communication architectures, considering several application scenarios. With a detailed treatment of emerging communication paradigms, including cross networking and distributed algorithms. Unlike most of the existing books, this book presents a multi-layer overview of information dissemination systems, from lower layers (MAC) to high layers (applications). All those aspects are investigated considering the use of mobile devices, such as smartphones/tablets and embedded systems, i.e. technologies that during last years completely changed the current market, the user expectations, and communication networks. The presented networking paradigms are supported and validated by means of extensive simulative analysis and real field deployments in different application scenarios. This book represents a reference for professional technologist, postgraduates and researchers in the area of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs), wireless communication and distributed systems.

2015 - An Open-Source Cloud Architecture for Big Stream IoT Applications [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Davoli, Luca; Melegari, Lorenzo; Mónton, Màrius; Picone, Marco
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is shaping to a worldwide network of networks consisting of billions of interconnected heterogeneous sensor/actuator-equipped devices (denoted as “things” or “smart objects”), which are expected to exceed 50 billions by 2020. Smart objects, which will be pervasively deployed, are constrained devices with (i) limited processing power and available memory and (ii) limited communication capabilities, in terms of transmission rate and reliability. Future Smart-X applications, such as Smart Cities and Home Automation, will be fostered by the use of standard and interoperable IP-based communication protocols that smart objects are going to implement, by simplifying their development, integration, and deployment. Smart-X applications will significantly differ from traditional Internet services, in terms of: (i) the number of data sources; (ii) rate of information exchange; and, (iii) need for real-time processing. Because of these requirements, such services are denoted as “Big Stream” applications, in order to distinguish them from traditional Big Data applications. In this paper, we present an implementation of a novel Cloud architecture for Big Stream applications based on standard protocols and open-source components, which provides a scalable and efficient processing platform for IoT applications, designed to be open and extensible and to guarantee minimal latency between data generation and consumption. We also provide a performance evaluation based on experimentation in a real-world Smart Parking scenario, to assess the feasibility and scalability of the proposed architecture.

2015 - Biomarkers in neomark European project for oral cancers [Capitolo/Saggio]
Poli, Tito; Copelli, Chiara; Lanfranco, Davide; Salvi, Dario; Exarchos, Konstantinos; Picone, Marco; Ardigò, Diego; Steger, Sebastian; Da Fonseca, Manuel José Rolo; De Fazio, Marco; Martinelli, Elena; Sesenna, Enrico
abstract

Oral cavity cancers are the seventh tumor by diffusion worldwide with more than 90% being diagnosed as oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCCs). According to the latestWHO statistics, OSCC accounts for 5% of the cancer deaths worldwide, being the eighth more lethal cancer entity. Early identification of cancer relapses would have the potentiality to improve the disease control and the patient survival. NeoMark is a European co-funded research project (Seventh Framework Program, Information and Communication Technologies: EU-FP7-ICT-2007-2-22483-NeoMark) that has the objective to identify relevant biomarkers of OSCC recurrence. It integrates high-throughput gene expression analysis in tumor cells and IT-assisted imaging with traditional staging and follow-up protocols to improve the recurrence risk stratification and to obtain the earlier identification of locoregional relapses. The architecture of the project is based on the following key points: – Creation of a web application tool: A unified interface that helps the storage and management of all information – NeoMark database: The heterogeneous NeoMark data (demographics and risk factors; clinical, pathological, and immunohistochemical parameters; filtered and cleaned genomic and imaging data) are stored in a single database – the Integrated Health Record Repository (IHRR) – on a central NeoMark server. The server contains the marker definition functional environment (MDFE), a data analysis module. Based on the heterogeneous input data, it estimates the likelihood of a relapse and identifies OSCC risk factors. – Imaging biomarker extraction: Several biomarkers are obtained from medical images such as CT and MRI scans (size, amount of necrosis from tumor and lymph nodes, etc.). To extract those features, a custom software tool – called the NeoMark Image Processing Tool – has specifically been developed. – Genomic data cleaning and filtering: Extraction of genomic data and filtering of genes with low data quality and of those with high number of missing values. The NeoMark system was trained and initially validated in a multicenter pilot study (three European clinical centers involved: Two in Italy and one in Spain) basing on 86 patients affected by OSCC with a minimum follow-up of 12 months. The clinicians recognized the usefulness of the disease bioprofile (or diseasespecific profile) identified by NeoMark to evaluate the risk of disease reoccurrence of a patient at diagnosis, to stratify patients affected by OSCC at baseline according to the risk of recurrence, and to reserve a “tailored therapy” to each case.

2015 - Combining geo-referencing and network coding for distributed large-scale information management [Articolo su rivista]
Picone, M.; Michele, Amoretti; Martalò, M.; Francesco, Zanichelli; Gianluigi, Ferrari
abstract

The widespread and ubiquitous availability of Internet access enables the collective sharing of huge amount of data generated by heterogeneous sources. For example, the information, which will be exchanged among entities (sensors, people, and services) of future smart cities to enhance the security and lifestyle of their citizens, poses the challenging question of how this information can be efficiently and effectively maintained across the city. In this article, we propose a decentralized approach, based on the distributed geographic table (DGT) overlay scheme, which exploits geo-referenced information about nodes to achieve efficient data management. After recalling DGT main concepts, we illustrate the possible node types and how information can be published and retrieved within the network. To cope with the unavoidable node failures and disconnections, our approach leverages upon randomized network coding to increase the robustness of publish/retrieval operations. Evaluation is carried out through an extensive simulation analysis for a realistic urban scenario using the metrics of efficiency in data publication/search, resource availability, and storage occupancy requirements. Results show the approach effectiveness for large-scale sharing of geo-referenced information and tradeoffs between redundancy overhead and resource availability. A few results obtained with a preliminary DGT implementation are also presented in the paper.

2015 - Communication Paradigms and Literature Analysis [Capitolo/Saggio]
Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

While, in the previous chapter we have presented the general architecture of an ITS system, where communication plays a pivotal role, in this chapter, we focus on the communication aspects only, discussing all the aspects related to vehicular communications Vehicular communications are an unicum in the panorama of wireless communications, since they combine complexity of the requirements that they have to face had led to the development of new communication technologies and communication paradigms, that rely on new communication paradigm and network topology and on a mix of existing and new communication technologies.

2015 - D4V: a peer-to-peer architecture for data dissemination in smartphone-based vehicular applications [Articolo su rivista]
Picone, Marco; Amoretti, Michele; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Zanichelli, Francesco
abstract

Vehicular data collection applications are emerging as an appealing technology to monitor urban areas, where a high concentration of connected vehicles with onboard sensors is a near future scenario. In this context, smartphones are, on one side, effective enablers of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) applications and, on the other side, highly sophisticated sensing platforms. In this paper, we introduce an effective and efficient system, denoted as D4V, to disseminate vehicle-related information and sensed data using smartphones as V2I devices. D4V relies on a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlay scheme, denoted as Distributed Geographic Table (DGT), which unifies the concepts of physical and virtual neighborhoods in a scalable and robust infrastructure for application-level services. First, we investigate the discovery procedure of the DGT overlay network, through analytical and simulation results. Then, we present and discuss an extensive simulation-based performance evaluation (considering relevant performance indicators) of the D4V system, in a 4G wireless communication scenario. The simulation methodology combines DEUS (an application-level simulation tool for the study of large-scale systems) with ns-3 (a well-known network simulator, which takes into account lower layers), in order to provide a D4V proof-of-concept. The observed results show that D4V-based information sharing among vehicles allows to significantly reduce risks and nuisances (e.g., due to road defects and congestions).

2015 - Design and Deployment of an IoT Application-Oriented Testbed [Articolo su rivista]
Belli, Laura; Cirani, Simone; Davoli, Luca; Gorrieri, Andrea; Mancin, Mirko; Picone, Marco; Ferrari, Gianluigi
abstract

The global reach and extreme heterogeneity of the Internet of Things present major application development challenges. Using the same Web-based approach underlying the Internet's evolution into the IoT, the Web of Things Testbed provides a stable, open, dynamic, and secure infrastructure to simplify application design and testing.

2015 - Effective authorization for the Web of Things [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Cirani, Simone; Picone, Marco
abstract

The momentum gained by the Internet of Things (IoT) has lead technology to be sufficiently mature to finally reach the market. The expectations and concerns of users around new products are primarily related to the possibility to interact with things in a seamless and effective way and, above all, to do so securely. Within this context, the main pillars required to support a sustainable and practical IoT are: interoperability, discoverability, and authorization. Based on the concepts and experience gained with the traditional Internet, the Web of Things (WoT) paradigm is chartered to address the former two issues. However, fast-developed and simplistic vertical approaches, due to the rush to launch IoT products, have not considered authorization adequately. Access to smart objects typically occurs through product-bound Cloud platforms, which mediate between vendor-specific smartphone apps and objects. Notwithstanding, effective mechanisms to manage authorized access to resources are required to really make simple and safe to use and share things. In this paper, we propose a standard-based authorization framework for WoT applications, which allows to effectively enforce fine-grained access policies to authorized parties. An implementation is presented to highlight the simplicity of the proposed approach and the benefits that it can introduce.

2015 - Hierarchical Architecture for Cross Layer ITS Communications [Capitolo/Saggio]
Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

In this chapter, we present an innovative approach for effective cross-network information dissemination, with applications to vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The proposed approach, denoted as "Cross-Network Effective Traffic Alert Dissemination" (X-NETAD), leverages on the spontaneous formation of local WiFi (IEEE 802.11b) VANETs, with direct connections between neighboring vehicles, in order to disseminate, very quickly and inexpensively, traffic alerts received from the cellular network. The proposed communication architecture has been implemented on Android smartphones. The obtained experimental results show that an effective cross-network information dissemination service can entirely rely on smartphone-based communications. This paves the way to future Internet architectures, where vehicles will play a key role as information destinations and sources.

2015 - Introduction [Capitolo/Saggio]
Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

The aim of this chapter is to illustrate the principles and challenges of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs), with particular emphasis on traffic information technologies. We also present a standardization history, considering the issues that are still open. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.

2015 - IoT-OAS: An oauth-based authorization service architecture for secure services in IoT scenarios [Articolo su rivista]
Cirani, Simone; Picone, Marco; Gonizzi, Pietro; Veltri, Luca; Ferrari, Gianluigi
abstract

Open authorization (OAuth) is an open protocol, which allows secure authorization in a simple and standardized way from third-party applications accessing online services, based on the representational state transfer (REST) web architecture. OAuth has been designed to provide an authorization layer, typically on top of a secure transport layer such as HTTPS. The Internet of Things (IoTs) refers to the interconnection of billions of resource-constrained devices, denoted as smart objects, in an Internet-like structure. Smart objects have limited processing/memory capabilities and operate in challenging environments, such as low-power and lossy networks. IP has been foreseen as the standard communication protocol for smart object interoperability. The Internet engineering task force constrained RESTful environments working group has defined the constrained application protocol (CoAP) as a generic web protocol for RESTful-constrained environments, targeting machine-to-machine applications, which maps to HTTP for integration with the existing web. In this paper, we propose an architecture targeting HTTP/CoAP services to provide an authorization framework, which can be integrated by invoking an external oauth-based authorization service (OAS). The overall architecture is denoted as IoT-OAS. We also present an overview of significant IoT application scenarios. The IoT-OAS architecture is meant to be flexible, highly configurable, and easy to integrate with existing services. Among the advantages achieved by delegating the authorization functionality, IoT scenarios benefit by: 1) lower processing load with respect to solutions, where access control is implemented on the smart object; 2) fine-grained (remote) customization of access policies; and 3) scalability, without the need to operate directly on the device.

2015 - Novel Distributed Algorithms for Intelligent Transportation Systems [Capitolo/Saggio]
Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

In this chapter we focus on decentralized solutions for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). In particular, we describe the Distributed Geographic Table (DGT), a structured overlay scheme for sharing geo-referenced information among mobile nodes. Then, we illustrate the D4V architecture, which applies the DGT to vehicular networks, to provide services like TIS.

2015 - Preface [Capitolo/Saggio]
Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

2015 - Simulating wireless and mobile systems: The Integration of DEUS and Ns-3 [Capitolo/Saggio]
Amoretti, Michele; Picone, Marco; Zanichelli, Francesco; Ferrari, Gianluigi
abstract

Wireless and mobile experiments in the real world are not easily or accurately repeatable, reducing the usefulness of such experiments for validation. Most challenges are due to the complications and subtleties of physical movement and wireless propagation, making the system highly variable. Moreover, mobile and distributed applications are characterized by decentralized goals and control, with high levels of concurrency and asynchronous interaction. For the qualitative and quantitative analysis of such systems, discrete event modeling and simulation—in which time jumps from event to event—are usually adopted. Widely known discrete event simulation tools, such as ns-2, ns-3, and OMNeT++, are highly specialized in communication networks. As they are not general-purpose, they can hardly support the analysis of large-scale distributed applications. Conversely, general-purpose tools like DEUS and CD++ are not provided with sound, highly recognized packages for the simulation of networking aspects. To fill the gaps between the two families of discrete event simulators, a co-simulation (co-operative simulation) approach may be very efficient. In this chapter, we review the existing approaches for co-simulation of wireless and mobile systems. We then focus on a recently adopted co-simulation approach, allowing individual components to be simulated by different simulation tools, exchanging information in a collaborative manner. In particular, DEUS (which is application-level oriented, Java-based, and characterized by ease of use and flexibility) is integrated with ns-3 (which is generally known as a highly reliable and complete open-source C++ tool for the discrete event simulation of Internet systems). We then propose a specific application, where ns-3’s LTE-EPC package supports the DEUS-based simulation of a peer-to-peer overlay scheme called Distributed Geographic Table (DGT), which allows mobile nodes to efficiently share information without centralized control.

2015 - The IoT hub: a fog node for seamless management of heterogeneous connected smart objects [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Cirani, Simone; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Iotti, Nicola; Picone, Marco
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) will interconnect billions of devices, denoted as “smart objects,” deployed pervasively, which will be extremely heterogeneous, in terms of hardware (i.e., computational power and available memory), software (i.e., operating systems, applications), and communication interfaces. Traditional Internet actors, such as personal computers, mobile devices, and cloud servers, will also communicate with smart objects, thus creating even more complexity. The IoT has so far grown as several vertical silos, with the purpose of demonstrating the concept of the IoT, rather than focusing on the actual construction of a highly interoperable infrastructure for the development of applications. The Internet Protocol (IP) stack (in particular, HTTP and CoAP) has been foreseen as the driver for integration and interoperability among devices and basis for the evolution of the Web of Things. However, in order to manage the physical diversity of devices and to create an IP-based infrastructure, the presence of network elements able to bridge different networks to enable direct end-to-end communication is required. Moreover, effective interaction with applications might require the presence of intermediaries, such as proxies, which may optionally implement protocol and data format translation functionalities. Given the above considerations, we propose a Fog node, denoted as “IoT Hub,” placed at the edge of multiple networks, which enhances the networks capabilities by implementing the following functions: border router; cross-proxy; cache; and resource directory. An implementation of the IoT Hub is presented together with a performance evaluation in a real-world IoT testbed.

2015 - Wearable Computing for the Internet of Things [Articolo su rivista]
Cirani, Simone; Picone, Marco
abstract

In the next few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) will become a reality, merging the social, physical, and cyber worlds to enable new applications and forms of interaction between humans and connected, smart sensing and actuating devices. As billions of smart objects become deployed pervasively in the environment, users should be able to discover and interact with objects in their proximity in a seamless and transparent way. Although smartphones have become an extremely popular computing device, smart wearable devices, such as Google Glass and the Apple watch, are now providing even more effective means to bridge the gap between humans and smart objects. The authors analyze the characteristics of wearable applications for IoT scenarios and describe the interaction patterns that should occur between wearable or mobile devices and smart objects. The authors also present an implementation of a wearable-based Web of Things application used to evaluate the described interaction patterns in a smart environment, deployed within their department's IoT testbed.

2015 - Wireless Communications for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks [Capitolo/Saggio]
Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

In this chapter, we present a novel theoretical framework suitable for analytical performance evaluation of a family of multihop broadcast protocols. The framework allows to derive several average performance metrics, including reliability, latency, and efficiency, and it is targeted to Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) applications based on an underlying IEEE 802.11 protocol. It builds on the assumption that the positions of the nodes of a VANET can be statistically modeled as Poisson points. However, the proposed approach holds for any spatial vehicle distribution with constant average distance between consecutive vehicles. In this chapter, the proposed analytical framework is applied to the class of probabilistic broadcast multihop protocols with silencing, but can be generalized to non-probabilistic protocols as well. More specifically, this chapter considers a few broadcast protocols with silencing, differing for the probability assignment function. The effectiveness of the proposed analytical approach is assessed by means of numerical simulations in a highway-like scenario.

2015 - mjCoAP: An open-source lightweight java CoAP library for internet of things applications [Capitolo/Saggio]
Cirani, Simone; Picone, Marco; Veltri, Luca
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to pervasively interconnect more than 50 billion devices, denoted as "smart objects", by 2020 in an Internet-like structure, which will extend the current Internet, enabling new forms of interaction between physical objects and people. The IoT will be made up of heterogeneous devices, featuring extremely diverse capabilities, in terms of computational power, connectivity, availability, and mobility. In such a scenario, characterized by the heterogeneity and large number of involved devices, in order to effectively allow and foster the growth of new applications and services, it is necessary to provide appropriate standards that can guarantee full interoperability among existing hosts and IoT nodes. Standardization organizations, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and research projects are chartered to bring IP to smart objects and to define suitable application-layer and security protocols for IoT scenarios. In order to cope with the limitations of smart objects, the IETF CoRE Working Group has defined the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), a standard application-layer protocol for use with constrained nodes and constrained networks. In this work, we present mjCoAP, an open source lightweight Java-based implementation of CoAP, which aims at simplifying the development of CoAP-based IoT applications. The mjCoAP library is fully RFC-compliant and integrates several IETF CoRE WG specifications, such as blockwise transfers, resource observing, and HTTP/CoAP mapping. We also present some application scenarios and we describe how they can be easily implemented based on mjCoAP.

2014 - A Simulation Platform for Large-Scale Internet of Things Scenarios in Urban Environments [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Brambilla, G.; Picone, M.; Cirani, S.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of billions of IP-enabled devices, denoted as smart objects", with limited capabilities, in terms of computational power and memory capacity, which typically operate in constrained environments, in an Internet-like structure. Large-scale systems and applications that rely on such a high number of devices, due to their complexity, need careful analysis and test, before being deployed to target environments. Traditional IoT simulators do not focus on the simulation of large scale deployments, as they are intended to evaluate and analyze low-level networking aspects, with groups of smart objects arranged in speci c topologies. In this paper, we illustrate an e cient simulation methodology, which is particularly suitable to test IoT systems with a large number of interconnected devices in Urban environments from an application-layer perspective. The main advantages of such an approach are: i) the capability to simulate large-scale systems with thousands of geographically distributed devices; ii) the maximization of code reuse; and iii) the high generality of simulated nodes, which can be characterized by multiple network interfaces and protocols, as well as different mobility, network, and energy consumption models.

2014 - A cost-effective approach to software-in-the-loop simulation of pervasive systems and applications [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Brambilla, G.; Grazioli, A.; Picone, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Amoretti, M.
abstract

In this paper we illustrate a cost-effective software-in-the-loop simulation methodology, which is particularly suitable for testing large-scale pervasive systems and applications. The main advantage of such an approach is that real code has to be deployed once, and a general-purpose simulation engine replicates it over virtual devices and environments as often as we wish. Our implementation of the proposed methodology is illustrated by means of the software-in-the-loop simulation of a peer-to-peer information sharing system, with real code running on simulated mobile nodes.

2014 - A scalable and self-configuring architecture for service discovery in the internet of things [Articolo su rivista]
Cirani, Simone; DAVOLI, LUCA; FERRARI, Gianluigi; Leone, Remy; Medagliani, Paolo; Picone, Marco; VELTRI, Luca
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) aims at connecting billions of devices in an Internet-like structure. This gigantic information exchange enables new opportunities and new forms of interactions among things and people. A crucial enabler of robust applications and easy smart objects' deployment is the availability of mechanisms that minimize (ideally, cancel) the need for external human intervention for configuration and maintenance of deployed objects. These mechanisms must also be scalable, since the number of deployed objects is expected to constantly grow in the next years. In this work, we propose a scalable and self-configuring peer-to-peer (P2P)-based architecture for large-scale IoT networks, aiming at providing automated service and resource discovery mechanisms, which require no human intervention for their configuration. In particular, we focus on both local and global service discovery (SD), showing how the proposed architecture allows the local and global mechanisms to successfully interact, while keeping their mutual independence (from an operational viewpoint). The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is confirmed by experimental results obtained through a real-world deployment.

2014 - An Adaptive Peer-to-Peer Overlay Scheme for Location-based Services [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Brambilla, G.; Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

One envisioned distinctive feature of smart cities is the interconnection among mobile users and vehicles, to support the fulfillment of location-based services. This can be obtained with centralized architectures, and with all the problems of scalability and robustness that such a solution involves. On the other hand, a more complex but more reliable, completely distributed approach can overcome this kind of problems. In this paper, we present the Adaptive Distributed Geographic Table (ADGT), a peer-to-peer overlay scheme suitable for the development of location-based services. In particular, the ADGT allows to efficiently retrieve peers or resources, to broadcast messages within any geographical region, and to be automatically notified about any type of information around any geographical location, following the publish/subscribe model. What mainly differentiates the ADGT from the other solutions in literature is the adaptivity of the overlay's topology to peers' mobility. Actually, the ADGT has the capability to adapt the neighborhood of each mobile peer depending on speed and direction. We have evaluated the ADGT by simulating different scenarios, and the results show that it acts well, ensuring high quality of messages dissemination and low cost in terms of data usage.

2014 - Honest vs Cheating Bots in PATROL-Based Real-Time Strategy MMOGs [Capitolo/Saggio]
Sebastio, Stefano; Amoretti, Michele; Raul Murga, Jose; Picone, Marco; Cagnoni, Stefano
abstract

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are being increasingly successful, since they allow players to explore huge virtual worlds and to interact in many different ways, either cooperating or competing. To support the implementation of ultra-scalable real-time strategy MMOGs, we are developing a middleware, called PATROL, that is based on a structured peer-to-peer overlay scheme. Among other features, PATROL provides AI-based modules to detect cheating attempts, that the decentralized communication infrastructure may favor. In this work we illustrate how we implemented honest and cheating autonomous players (bots). In particular, we show how honest bots can detect cheating bots in real-time, using strategies based on neural networks.

2014 - Information content and analysis methods for multi-modal high-throughput biomedical data [Articolo su rivista]
Ray, B; Henaff, M; Ma, S; Efstathiadis, E; Peskin, Er; Picone, Marco; Poli, Tito; Aliferis, Cf; Statnikov, A.
abstract

The spectrum of modern molecular high-throughput assaying includes diverse technologies such as microarray gene expression, miRNA expression, proteomics, DNA methylation, among many others. Now that these technologies have matured and become increasingly accessible, the next frontier is to collect "multi-modal" data for the same set of subjects and conduct integrative, multi-level analyses. While multi-modal data does contain distinct biological information that can be useful for answering complex biology questions, its value for predicting clinical phenotypes and contributions of each type of input remain unknown. We obtained 47 datasets/predictive tasks that in total span over 9 data modalities and executed analytic experiments for predicting various clinical phenotypes and outcomes. First, we analyzed each modality separately using uni-modal approaches based on several state-of-the-art supervised classification and feature selection methods. Then, we applied integrative multi-modal classification techniques. We have found that gene expression is the most predictively informative modality. Other modalities such as protein expression, miRNA expression, and DNA methylation also provide highly predictive results, which are often statistically comparable but not superior to gene expression data. Integrative multi-modal analyses generally do not increase predictive signal compared to gene expression data.

2014 - Lightweight multicast forwarding for service discovery in low-power IoT networks [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Antonini, Mattia; Cirani, Simone; FERRARI, Gianluigi; Medagliani, Paolo; Picone, Marco; VELTRI, Luca
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) will interconnect billions of devices (denoted as “Smart Objects,” SOs) in an IP-based Internet-like structure. SOs are typically sensor/actuator-equipped devices with severe constraints on processing capabilities, available RAM/ROM, and energy consumption. In a context where billions of deployed SOs, it is important that the SOs are able to self-configure and adapt to the surrounding environment with minimal, if any, external human intervention. Among the service discovery mechanisms proposed in literature for deploying SOs without any prior knowledge, Zeroconf represents a good candidate to automate service and resource discovery in local constrained environments. In this paper, we propose a lightweight forwarding algorithm for efficient multicast support in Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) targeting service discovery for duty-cycled SOs. Among the advantages achieved by the proposed solution, SOs might benefit from smaller memory footprint with respect to those required by other multicast implementations. The performance of the proposed forwarding algorithm is evaluated through Contiki-based nodes in the Cooja simulator.

2014 - Performance evaluation of a SIP-based constrained peer-to-peer overlay [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Cirani, Simone; Davoli, Luca; Picone, Marco; Veltri, Luca
abstract

2014 - Sporadic Decentralized Resource Maintenance for P2P Distributed Storage Networks [Articolo su rivista]
Martalò, M.; Michele, Amoretti; Picone, M.; Gianluigi, Ferrari
abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel decentralized resource maintenance strategy for peer-to-peer (P2P)distributed storage networks. Our strategy relies on the Wuala overlay network architecture, (The WUALA Project). While the latter is based, for the resource distribution among peers, on the use of erasure codes, e.g., Reed Solomon codes, here we investigate the system behavior when a simple randomized network coding strategy is applied. We propose to replace the Wuala regular and centralized strategy for resource maintenance with a decentralized strategy, where users regenerate new fragments sporadically, namely every time a resource is retrieved. Both strategies are analyzed, analytically and through simulations, in the presence of either erasure and network coding. It will be shown that the novel sporadic maintenance strategy, when used with randomized network coding, leads to a fully decentralized solution with management complexity much lower than common centralized solutions.

2013 - A session initiation protocol for the Internet of Things [Articolo su rivista]
Cirani, Simone; Picone, Marco; Luca, Veltri
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of billions of constrained devices, denoted as “smart objects”, in an Internet-like structure. Smart objects typically feature limited capabilities in terms of computation and memory and operate in constrained environments, such as low-power lossy networks. As the Internet Protocol (IP) has been foreseen as the standard for communications in IoT, an effort to bring IP connectivity to smart objects and define suitable communication protocols (i.e. Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)) is being carried out within standardization organizations, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). In this paper, we propose a constrained version of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), named “CoSIP”, whose intent is to allow constrained devices to instantiate communication sessions in a lightweight and standard fashion. Session instantiation can include a negotiation phase of some parameters which will be used for all subsequent communication. CoSIP can be adopted in several application scenarios, such as service discovery and publish/subscribe applications, which are detailed. An evaluation of the proposed protocol is also presented, based on a Java implementation of CoSIP, to show the benefits that its adoption can bring about, in terms of compression rate with the existing SIP protocol and message overhead compared with the use of CoAP.

2013 - CoSIP: a Constrained Session Initiation Protocol for the Internet of Things [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Cirani, S.; Picone, M.; Luca, Veltri
abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the interconnection of billions of constrained devices, denoted as “smart objects” (SO), in an Internet-like structure. SOs typically feature limited capabilities in terms of computation and memory and operate in constrained environments, such low-power lossy networks. As IP has been foreseen as the standard for smart-object communication, an effort to bring IP connectivity to SOs and define suitable communication protocols (i.e. CoAP) is being carried out within standardization organisms, such as IETF. In this paper, we propose a constrained version of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), named “CoSIP”, whose intent is to allow constrained devices to instantiate communication sessions in a lightweight and standard fashion. Session instantiation can include a negotiation phase of some parameters which will be used for all subsequent communication. CoSIP can be adopted in several application scenarios, such as service discovery and publish/subscribe applications, which are detailed. An evaluation of the proposed protocol is also presented, based on a Java implementation of CoSIP, to show the benefits that its adoption can bring about, in terms of compression rate with the existing SIP protocol and message overhead compared with the use of CoAP.

2013 - Code Migration in Mobile Clouds with the NAM4J Middleware [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Grazioli, A.; Picone, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Amoretti, M.
abstract

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is a model for transparent elastic augmentation of mobile device capabilities via ubiquitous wireless access to cloud storage and computing resources. The main purpose of MCC is to exploit the context-aware dynamic offload of demanding mobile applications to the Cloud, in order to improve their performance while saving energy and extending battery lifetime of devices. In this paper we extend a pre-existing MCC taxonomy, and we illustrate how the autonomic approach enabled by the open source NAM4J middleware with code migration support can effectively address MCC requirements. We recall the architecture of NAM4J and show its capabilities in the context of an Ambient Intelligence (AmI) MCC application for the Android platform.

2013 - Collaborative Mobile Application and Advanced Services for Smart Parking [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Grazioli, A.; Picone, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Amoretti, M.
abstract

The main reason of wasting time in search of free parking spaces is the lack of information, in particular for open/roadside parking availability. Various ICT-based solutions have been proposed to solve this issue, but still suffering from limited integration among each other and with external online services, such as touristic information services. In this paper we illustrate a modular, service-oriented smart parking system, which includes web applications for parking operators and end users, as well as mobile applications for end users and parking controllers. The proposed system allows (1) operators to draw parking areas and define their details, (2) end users to be guided to the most suitable parking area, with also the indication of points of interest, and (3) controllers to monitor all vehicles that have been parked in their area. Another important feature is the possibility for end users to share their knowledge about parking occupancy, which is very useful when a parking area is not provided with precise availability counters. The smart parking system has been successfully evaluated in our Campus.

2013 - Cross-Network Information Dissemination in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs): Experimental Results from a Smartphone-Based Testbed [Articolo su rivista]
Busanelli, S.; Rebecchi, F.; Picone, M.; Iotti, N.; Gianluigi, Ferrari
abstract

In this work, we present an innovative approach for effective cross-network information dissemination, with applications to vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The proposed approach, denoted as "Cross-Network Effective Traffic Alert Dissemination" (X-NETAD), leverages on the spontaneous formation of local WiFi (IEEE 802.11b) VANETs, with direct connections between neighboring vehicles, in order to disseminate, very quickly and inexpensively, traffic alerts received from the cellular network. The proposed communication architecture has been implemented on Android smartphones. The obtained experimental results show that an effective cross-network information dissemination service can entirely rely on smartphone-based communications. This paves the way to future Internet architectures, where vehicles will play a key role as information destinations and sources.

2013 - Experimental analysis of VHO-enabled mobile application for data offloading in heterogeneous wireless networks [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Spigoni, G.; Busanelli, S.; Iotti, N.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

Recent years have seen the relentless market explosion of mobile devices, whose ever increasing capabilities (in terms of computational power, networking, and sensing) make them attractive to an endless number of connected applications and services (especially in business and infotainment domains) which can be fully experienced in mobility. This huge market growth naturally involves a constant increase of mobile internet accesses with a consequent overload for mobile operators and potentially a reduced performance for mobile users. In this scenario and during last years, the research field of data offloading and Vertical HandOver (VHO) has gained a significant attention by service providers to start offloading mobile data traffic from 3G/4G networks to WiFi networks. The reduction of the load on cellular network is instrumental to allow the user to be Always Best Connected (ABC) with limited costs. In this paper, we present and analyze the performance of a real VHO-enabled ABC mobile application for Android Platform. The application has been tested in a national trial involving several users all over Italy, commercial (Guglielmo Srl) and private WiFi networks and cellular networks of the main Italian mobile operators for more than a month and 150.000 distinct logs collected during the evaluation.

2013 - Merging Person-Specific Bio-Markers for Predicting Oral Cancer recurrence through an Ontology [Articolo su rivista]
Dario, Salvi; Picone, Marco; Maria Teresa, Arredondo; Maria Fernanda Cabrera, Umpièrrez; Angel, Esteban; Sebastian, Steger; Poli, Tito
abstract

One of the major problems related to cancer treatment is its recurrence. Without knowing in advance how likely the cancer will relapse, clinical practice usually recommends adjuvant treatments that have strong side-effects. A way to optimize treatments is to predict the recurrence probability by analysing a set of bio-markers. The NeoMark European project has identified a set of preliminary bio-markers for the case of oral cancer by collecting a large series of data from genomic, imaging and clinical evidences. This heterogeneous set of data needs a proper representation in order to be stored, computed and communicated efficiently. Ontologies are often considered the proper mean to integrate biomedical data, for their high level of formality and for the need of interoperable, universally accepted, models. This paper presents the NeoMark system and how an ontology has been designed to integrate all its heterogeneous data. The system has been validated in a pilot which data will populate the ontology and will be made public for further research.

2013 - Metodo per l'interazione tra almeno un terminale ed una pluralità di reti di telecomunicazione [Working paper]
Iotti, N.; Ferrari, G.; Busanelli, S.; Picone, M.; Guerri, G.
abstract

2013 - Simulating Mobile and Distributed Systems with DEUS and ns-3 [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Amoretti, M.; Picone, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Ferrari, G.
abstract

Mobile and distributed systems are characterized by decentralized goals and control, with high levels of concurrency and asynchronous interaction. Their qualitative and quantitative analysis is usually based on discrete event modeling and simulation. As most simulation tools target a specific class of problems, only a few of them may be considered truly general-purpose, yet they can hardly support the analysis of distributed systems with thousands of nodes, characterized by a high level of churn (node joins and departures) and reconfiguration of connections among nodes. To fill this gap, a few years ago we started developing an open-source, general-purpose and discrete event simulation tool, called DEUS, which is application-level oriented, Java-based, and characterized by ease of use and flexibility. However, it does not provide any package for simulating networking layers and their implementation is not foreseen, since a number of specialized tools are already available. In this paper, we present a general methodology for achieving a more realistic DEUS-based simulation of mobile and distributed systems, by leveraging on ns-3, which is generally known as a highly reliable and complete open-source tool for the discrete event simulation of Internet systems. In particular, we describe our positive experience in using ns-3's LTE-EPC package to support the simulation of a peer-to-peer overlay scheme called Distributed Geographic Table (DGT), which allows mobile nodes to efficiently share information without centralized control.

2012 - A Decentralized Smartphone Based Traffic Information System [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

Location-Based Services (LBSs) are information or entertainment services where the request, the response and served contents depend on the physical position of the requesting device. LBS are frequently used to implement Traffic Information Systems (TIS), which are increasingly based on user-contributed information. In this paper we present the first prototype of our solution for a decentralized, smartphone-based TIS, called D4V, that allows each participant vehicle to efficiently discover data or services located near any chosen geographic position. The experimental evaluation has shown that D4V could be effectively used on the road to reduce the number of drivers involved in traffic jams, as well as to disseminate alert messages about potentially dangerous road stretches, thus allowing drivers to reduce risks and nuisances along their paths.

2012 - A Joint Peer-to-Peer and Network Coding Approach for Large Scale Information Management [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Michele, Amoretti; Martalo', M.; Meco, E.; Francesco, Zanichelli; Gianluigi, Ferrari
abstract

The widespread availability of connectivity to the Internet allows to share large amount of information generated by the most heterogeneous, possibly mobile, sources. One scenario where this situation arises is given by smart cities, which are envisioned to generate and consume relevant information about their statuses to enhance the security and lifestyle of their citizens. In this context, a very challenging question is how the information can be maintained and distributed among the city itself. In this paper, we propose a system architecture based on the creation of a distributed geographic overlay network, which allows to achieve the desired goals. Moreover, information is redundantly encoded by means of randomized network coding, in order to dynamically and distributedly preserve the resource availability. By means of simulations, we investigate the behavior of the proposed solution, in terms of efficiency and speed in data publication/search, as well as resource availability and storage occupancy requirements.

2012 - An Enhanced VHO-enabled application for data offloading in heterogeneous wireless networks [Working paper]
Spigoni, G.; Ferrari, G.; Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Iotti, N.; Guerri, G.
abstract

2012 - Don’t kill my ads! Balancing Privacy in an Ad-Supported Mobile Application Market [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Leontiadis, Ilias; Efstratiou, Christos; Picone, Marco; Mascolo, Cecilia
abstract

Application markets have revolutionized the software download model of mobile phones: third-party application developers offer software on the market that users can effortlessly install on their phones. This great step forward, however, also imposes some threats to user privacy: applications often ask for permissions that reveal private information such as the user’s location, contacts and messages. While some mechanisms to prevent leaks of user privacy to applications have been proposed by the research commu- nity, these solutions fail to consider that application markets are primarily driven by advertisements that rely on accurately profiling the user. In this paper we take into account that there are two par- ties with conflicting interests: the user, interested in maintaining their privacy and the developer who would like to maximize their advertisement revenue through user profiling. We have conducted an extensive analysis of more than 250,000 applications in the An- droid market. Our results indicate that the current privacy protection mechanisms are not effective as developers and advert com- panies are not deterred. Therefore, we designed and implemented a market-aware privacy protection framework that aims to achieve an equilibrium between the developer’s revenue and the user’s privacy. The proposed framework is based on the establishment of a feedback control loop that adjusts the level of privacy protection on mobile phones, in response to advertisement generated revenue.

2012 - Global Ambient Intelligence: an Autonomic Approach [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Amoretti, M.; Picone, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2012 - Mobile Architecture for Dynamic Generation and Scalable Distribution of Sensor-based Applications [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Muro, M.; Micelli, V.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2012 - Performance analysis of vertical handover algorithms between Wi-Fi and LTE networks [Working paper]
Spigoni, G.; Ferrari, G.; Picone, M.; Busanelli, S.; Iotti, N.; Guerri, G.
abstract

2012 - Sense and Sensibility in a Pervasive World [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Efstratiou, Christos; Leontiadis, Ilias; Picone, Marco; Rachuri, Kiran K.; Mascolo, Cecilia; Crowcroft, Jon
abstract

The increasing popularity of location based social services such as Facebook Places, Foursquare and Google Latitude, solicits a new trend in fusing social networking with real world sensing. The availability of a wide range of sensing technologies in our everyday environment presents an opportunity to further enrich social networking systems with fine-grained real-world sensing. However, the introduction of passive sensing into a social networking applica- tion disrupts the traditional, user-initiated input to social services, raising both privacy and acceptability concerns. In this work we present an empirical study of the introduction of a sensor-driven social sharing application within the working environment of a research institution. Our study is based on a real deployment of a system that involves location tracking, conversation monitoring, and interaction with physical objects. By utilizing surveys, interviews and experience sampling techniques, we report on our findings regarding privacy and user experience is- sues, and significant factors that can affect acceptability of such services by the users. Our results suggest that such systems deliver significant value in the form of self reflection and comparison with others, while privacy concerns are raised primarily by the limited control over the way individuals are projected to their peers.

2012 - Simulating Smart Cities with DEUS [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2011 - Enabling Heterogeneous Data Integration and Biomedical Event Prediction through ICT: the test case of Cancer Reoccurrence [Capitolo/Saggio]
Picone, M.; Steger, S.; Exarchos, K.; De Fazio, M.; Goletsis, Y.; Fotiadis, D. I.; Martinelli, E.; Ardigò, D.
abstract

2011 - Evaluating the Robustness of the DGT Approach for Smartphone-based Vehicular Networks [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

To cope with millions users becoming increasingly connected to Internet on the move, location-based services may be better supported by decentralized infrastructures enabling improved scalability, access rate and resiliency. In this context, our previous work introduced the Distributed Geographical Table (DGT), an overlay scheme that builds and maintains virtual neighborhood relationships between peers with heterogeneous connections. In this paper we illustrate a smartphone-based vehicular network that uses the DGT, and we show its robustness against disconnections caused by the unavailability of connectivity/ coverage (mostly occurring in rural areas), as well as overlay reconnections due to vertical handovers (mostly occurring in highly serviced urban areas). The simulative analysis of sample scenarios based on experimental measurements of coverage and connection throughput, carried out across/around Parma urban area, gives us valuable insights for defining an integrated model that will combine the DGT, user/vehicle mobility and connectivity/ coverage types.

2011 - Location-Aware Overlay Scheme for Vehicular Networks [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.; Conte, G.
abstract

2011 - Parallel & Distributed Simulation with DEUS [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Amoretti, M.; Picone, M.; Bonelli, S.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2011 - Proactive Neighbor Localization Based on Distributed Geographic Table [Articolo su rivista]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2011 - Randomized network coding in distributed storage systems with layered overlay [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Martalo', M.; Picone, M.; Amoretti, Michele; Ferrari, Gianluigi; Raheli, Riccardo
abstract

2010 - A Practical Network Coding Approach for Peer-to-Peer Distributed Storage [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Marco, Martalo'; Picone, M.; Bussandri, R.; Michele, Amoretti
abstract

2010 - A Pratical Network Coding Approach for Peer-to-Peer Distributed Storage [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
M., Martalò; Picone, M; R., Bussandri; M., Amoretti
abstract

2010 - GeoKad: A P2P Distributed Localization Protocol [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2010 - Modeling and Simulation of Autonomic P2P Systems Based on Altruistic Policies [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Amoretti, M.; Conte, G.; Muro, M.; Picone, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2010 - NeoMark: how to predict oral cancer recurrence through multiscale data analysis [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, Marco; Steger, Sebastian; Exarchos, Konstantinos; De Fazio, Marco; Chiari, Gianfranco; Ardigò, Diego; Martinelli, Elena
abstract

2010 - Peer-to-Peer Architecture for Real-Time Strategy MMOGs with Intelligent Cheater Detection [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Sebastio, S.; Cagnoni, S.; Amoretti, M.
abstract

2010 - Proactive Neighbor Localization Based on Distributed Geographic Table [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

2009 - An Evaluation Criterion for Adaptive Neighbor Selection in Heterogeneous Peer-to-Peer Networks [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Picone, M.; Amoretti, M.; F., Zanichelli
abstract

The peer-to-peer paradigm potentially enables low-cost and highly scalable distributed systems where user nodes have at the same time the roles of consumer and provider of resources. Nowadays, the computational power and storage capacity of mobile devices has notably increased, for which their inclusion in the physical network that supports P2P overlays can be realistically considered. For those applications where the quality of service is a fundamental constraint, such as live streaming, it is important to have overlay network level strategies to dynamically re-configure the active connections among peers. In this paper we propose a simple but effective strategy for the evaluation of neighbors, taking into account their capabilities, to support the dynamic selection of resource providers. We apply the formal framework to P2P Internet Live Streaming, simulating three realistic scenarios and discussing the results.

2009 - E-Inclusive Videoconference Services in Ambient Assisted Living Environments [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Amoretti, M.; Copelli, G.; Muro, M.; Picone, M.; Zanichelli, F.
abstract

The Neighbourhood Virtual Community (NVC) service, developed in the context of the ambient intelligence (AmI) project called PERSONA, copes with the need of seniors and impaired persons to remotely interact with relatives, friends, doctors and assistants in a comfortable way. In this paper we the NVC service in the context of the PERSONA Platform.