Saaas: A Framework For Volunteer-based Sensing Clouds

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular solution to provide cheap, elastic and easy access to computing and storage resources. However, a key drawback of current Cloud solutions is that they do not include mechanisms for interaction with the physical world. This paper intends to contribute to the design of a pervasive infrastructure where new generation services interact with the surrounding environment. By adding sensors and actuators into the mix, new opportunities arise for contextualization and geo-awareness. This scenario may turn out to be highly dynamic, also involving mobile devices that randomly join and leave, an issue that can be adequately addressed resorting to volunteer contribution paradigms. In this way innovative and value-added services can be implemented by bridging Clouds with sensor networks and ubiquitous nodes such as mobiles. Sensing and actuation resources have to be abstracted and virtualized to be provided under the guise of services, thus enabling a Sensing and Actuation as a Service (SAaaS) paradigm. Furthermore, adopting tailored thing-like semantics for further abstraction the (SAaaS) Cloud world could wind up to an expanded reach of current IoT scenarios. This paper mainly focuses on the implementation of the underlying infrastructure at the basis of the SAaaS. An ad-hoc architecture and some preliminary background of this challenging vision are provided and discussed, identifying development guidelines and future directions.