Research On Visualization Method For Software Module Integration In Internet Of Things

At present,the Internet of Things(IoT)research mainly focuses on the network design,including data collection,processing,and transmission.In large-scale IoT deployments,the network-centric design introduces a heavy burden to users during system testing,deployment,and maintenance.On the other hand,the user-centric design,which integrates multiple software modules in IoT devices and switches to execute different modules to assist users' operations,can effectively reduce users' burden.Because different software modules may have different requirements to software and hardware resources,software modules with similar requirements are grouped into one mode,and an IoT devices can switch between modes to run different modules to meet the user's operational requirements and avoid conflicts between different modules.In our previous research,a configuration-based approach has been developed for supporting rapid multi-mode integration of software modules.However,this method still requires the developer to understand the configuration programming interface.This thesis further proposes a graphical integration approach,in which developers can simply drag and drop graphical elements to edit the configuration file.Specifically,we mainly focus on the algorithm for visualizing the modes,modules,and the relationships between them.Each software module is displayed as a fixed-size rectangle,and the module rectangles belonging to the same mode are surrounded within a mode rectangle.Then the dependencies between the modules is used to arrange the module rectangles and the calculate the size of the mode rectangle.At the same time,the switching commands between modes are displayed as the directed edges(command edge)connecting mode rectangles,and the module execution dependencies are displayed as the directed edges(dependency edge)connecting module rectangle.Then the algorithm detects the crossings between two edges and between an edge and a mode,and then searches for the hierarchical arrangement of mode rectangles which minimizes the number of crossings.At last,the algorithm optimizes the distances between layers and between modes within the same layer based on the size of mode rectangles,without affecting the number of crossings.As such,size-and crossing-optimized arrangement can be realized.Based on the proposed algorithm,we devised a graphical environment for developing multi-mode IoT device firmware.Users can drag and drop mode rectangles and command edges to edit mode and switching command configuration.Within a mode,users can drag and drop module rectangles and dependency edges to edit module and execution dependency configuration.Experimental results show that the proposed visualization method of modes,modules,and their relationships effectively limits the arrangement area and reduces the number of crossings,and thus achieves a good visualization result.Users can quickly compose module integration configurations with the developed graphical development environment.