Detecting service chains and feature interactions in sensor-driven home network services

Sensors (Basel). 2012;12(7):8447-64. doi: 10.3390/s120708447. Epub 2012 Jun 25.

Abstract

Sensor-driven services often cause chain reactions, since one service may generate an environmental impact that automatically triggers another service. We first propose a framework that can formalize and detect such service chains based on ECA (event, condition, action) rules. Although the service chain can be a major source of feature interactions, not all service chains lead to harmful interactions. Therefore, we then propose a method that identifies feature interactions within the service chains. Specifically, we characterize the degree of deviation of every service chain by evaluating the gap between expected and actual service states. An experimental evaluation demonstrates that the proposed method successfully detects 11 service chains and 6 feature interactions within 7 practical sensor-driven services.

Keywords: detection; feature interactions; home network system; sensor-driven service; smart home; validation.