Open challenges in ubiquitous and net-centric computing middleware

In the near future, many hardware devices will be interconnected in large and highly dynamic distributed systems, using standard communication protocols on standard physical links. Such types of systems exist only for computers interconnected by TCP/IP networks, or for hardware devices interconnected in small areas by using specific protocols for the physical link, such as Bluetooth, Ethernet or X-10. The widespread interest in Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing systems will give a new impulse to Net-Centric Computing (NCC) systems. Solutions such as OSGi have the capability to become the foundation of a new middleware for NCC systems and offer the possibility to browse the physical world in the same way as the web content is browsed This paper discusses this aspect and analyzes the limits of some traditional solutions for NCC systems. The aim is to meet the new trends introduced by the technological and social evolution. The paper proposes an abstraction layer for devices, named Devices Virtualization layer, defined on the top of the OSGi framework. It provides a uniform way to access and control different devices.