Linux Troubleshooting for System Administrators and Power Users

4 A classification of smart- device-based services

4.1 Specific functionalities

It is envisioned that services of interest to end-users can be made up from various combinations of some of the specialised functionalities listed below. These functionalities are considered to be as elementary as possible with regard to the network, the devices acting as terminals and any intervening support hardware/software.

• Teledetection, telewarning;

• Remote diagnosis;

• Telemetry, remote information capture;

• Teleobservation, surveillance, remote sensing;

• Remote control;

• Remote management;

• Remote maintenance;

• Remote robot control;

• Location-based services;

• Tracking (electronic tags);

• Device to environment absolute location awareness;

• Device-to-device relative location awareness;

• Authentication.

4.2 Generic functionalities

Another category of more general functionalities can be combined with the previous ones and implemented in a distributed, cooperative fashion, by joint operation of several devices through the network, or joint use of other processing "nodes" in the network itself. This could correspond to network-based processing of downstream information (devices to user ), as either joint event detection, distributed array processing (based on joint processing of sensor readings ), distributed pattern detection/recognition, distributed location-based processing.

4.3 Domains of potential use

These purely technical functionalities can correspond to very different services, as seen from the end-user, depending on the economic sector in which they are applied. These different economic sectors of potential use are listed below.

• Home automation;

• White products (appliances);

• Brown products (Consumer electronics);

• E-commerce;

• Telecom network operation (including satellite networks);

• Transportation;

• Fleet management;

• Industrial;

• Manufacturing equipment;

• Inventory;

• Civil engineering;

• Health care.