Sensing Middleware for Easy Development of Energy-efficient Applications

Information services can be more useful if mobile devices are adapted to gather information in our surroundings using built-in sensing functions. Mobile devices, however, run on batteries, and various approaches are taken to tackle the major challenge the sensing and telecommunications mechanism poses in terms of their power consumption. Generally, mobile products tend to benefit from power-saving effects more if their purposes or devices to use are more specific. However, saving energy by specifying the usage is likely to lower the products' versatility when it comes to reapplying them to other uses or devices, making it necessary to develop applications and firmware every time the usage or applied devices change. Against this background, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed sensing middleware technology that makes it possible to choose and continually execute the least power-consuming sensing method simply by using the application to specify what kind of information is required, while the middleware collects and manages the power composition of available sensors. This paper presents this middleware that significantly reduces development cost while increasing the application's portability for mobile sensing.