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Platform Survey
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This report surveys the platforms brought into the CoBIs projects: TecO's Smart-Its Particles, Ambient Systems' µNodes and Infineon's Sindrion system. For the partners within WP3 the results offer a technical base for future implementation considerations. Partners concerned with the collaboration mechanisms and the system management issues learn about the capabilities, performance and constraints of each platform which define the design parameters for their services. 
Smart-Its ParticlesSmart-Its Particles allow to bridge the gap between processes running in a backend system and real-world events by incorporating sensing and in-situ decision making based on the sensor measurements. TecO's Particle platform aims to provide a generic and comprehensive solution for wireless sensor systems application. The platform is especially designed for mobile and ad-hoc communication scenarios where the devices communicate without infrastructure support. Rapid prototyping capabilities for testing assumption in real world setting are the major demands on the platform. The platform follows a two-board approach where a Particle node comprises a communication board combined with an additional board. Latter can contain sensors (-> sensor boards), further communication interfaces, e.g. Ethernet bridge board or USB board, or the microcontroller's pinout for customized prototype developments, which is referred to as breakout board. The platform is freely programmable, supports wireless software updates and incorporates with backend system through its own infrastructure. Integrated in the CoBIs architecture this allows the execution of collaborative tasks defined by the collaboration framework.
Ambient µNodesAmbient µNodes are a wireless sensor platform enabling collaborating business items. The use of wireless sensor nodes like the µNodes for tagging the business items is ideal. They are small, cheap and energy efficient while capable of in-node processing, node-to-node communication, and sensing the environment. The µNode is a dual processor platform. The Ambient Network Processor is dedicated to wireless network communication while all other computing is executed on the application processor. On the application processor runs AmbientRT, a real-time operating system easing the development of robust sensor and collaborative applications. In particular, this system can provide a valuable basis for the development of the device-specific services in the service-oriented view of CoBIs. In CoBIs Ambient Systems brings in its expertise in real-time operating systems. Implementing collaborating services in such an operating system allows a new quality of business logic. The energy-efficient design of the µNodes guarantees a long operation time. This contributes positively not only to the energy costs, but also to the overall operational costs of a CoBIs setting as they are associated with the maintenance cycles for devices. As Ambient Systems provides µNodes commercially, this is of great interest.
SindrionThe Sindrion architecture enables the integration of wireless sensor and actuator devices into Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) environments, by utilizing dedicated smart wireless transceivers. The Sindrion platform is a concrete networked embedded systems technology which supports the CoBIs collaboration framework. A dedicated Sindrion software development environment, which offers a complete design flow from UPnP device specification, code generation to flash programming of the transceivers, is currently implemented. The Sindrion design flow will support the development of application specific software for the Sindrion platform, allowing different concrete implementations of CoBIs framework components. Wireless control networks in large-scale CoBIs systems must be able to organize themselves dynamically and autonomously. A semantic middleware platform provides mechanisms which allow the smart nodes to discover each other, to offer their functionality to other nodes in a formalized way as services and to access remote services offered by other nodes. One of the best promoted middleware standards is UPnP. With Sindrion, our objective is to integrate sensor and actuator devices into UPnP. The basis of the system is to source out complex data processing from the embedded low-cost, low-power transceivers to dedicated terminals, which establish a proxy in the UPnP network. This technology allows to bridge the gap between IT infrastructure and embedded systems by incorporating highly-functional, UPnP compliant devices, while concurrently satisfying rigid cost and power requirements. SummaryThe following table summarizes important technical features of all CoBIs platforms.
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