Leading-Edge Cluster it’s OWL – Intelligent Technical Systems OstWestfalenLippe - Cross Sectional Project Intelligent Networking (itsowl-IV)

In the future Intelligent Technical Systems will play a major role for various applications and processes. Such systems range from automation and power train solutions over vehicles to networked production plants and further. In the envisaged settings they will be able to connect and communicate autonomously based on reliable status information. The entire integration will ideally work in a plug-and-play manner without user intervention. Thus, time-consuming and error prone manual system configuration can be avoided. In such self-configuring networked systems the significance of status and quality monitoring by according intelligent sensor systems steadily increases. This allows for a timely acquisition of status information and an according system adaptation, resulting in more flexible and dependable systems.

The cross sectional project Intelligent Networking (itsowl-IV) will develop the necessary methods and a reference architecture for realizing self-configuration and self-diagnosis in Intelligent Technical Systems. Major requirements are interoperability, dependability, self-configuration and the ability to integrate solutions in devices with restricted resources. In order to reach these goals, the project partners develop design methods for communication protocols and mechanisms for self-configuration on three levels: application, middleware and connectivity. For self-diagnosis, methods for sensor- and information fusion as well as an intelligent self-adaptive sensor system are developed.

C-LAB’s work in itsowl-IV concentrates on network abstraction at the middleware layer, which serves as a broker between the application and the connectivity layer in the itsowl-IV reference architecture. The network abstraction allows applications to communicate without knowledge about the underlying communication channels and their specific realization.

Project funded by: BMBF (PTKA)
Project duration: 07/2012 - 12/2014
Project partners: Hochschule Ostwestfalen-Lippe - inIT, Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, Fraunhofer IPT-EM, Universität Bielefeld - CITEC, Universität Paderborn - C-LAB, Universität Paderborn - Fachgruppe Sensorik, Fraunhofer ENAS-ASE
Contact: Dr. Bernd Kleinjohann, C-LAB, Projektleiter