XCD: An XML-based configuration description for embedded systems

We are surrounded by different smart networked embedded devices that are running software dedicated to specific tasks. Many of these devices have no displays or user interfaces. To control and configure these devices remotely over network, instead of running factory-set static settings, devices need to be able to publish their parameters to a remote user interface of the system. In modular systems, the components of the system also need to communicate with each other to ensure interoperability. In this paper we introduce eXtensible Configuration Description (XCD) that defines the characteristics of a device or system component as variables and their interrelationships in a unified format. XCD allows devices to exchange information about their configuration with other devices (machine-to-machine, M2M), or to publish the configuration to a generic remote user interface (UI) of the system. The paper describes the structure of XCD and shows two use cases where the description is used to configure an embedded system. We also show how the generic nature of XCD enables us to render the same XCD description of a device in two different user interfaces.