Real-Time Data Services for Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber physical systems (CPSs) have grand visions with great socio-economic impacts such as blackout-free electricity supply and real-time disaster recovery. A key challenge is providing real-time data services for CPSs. Existing real-time data management techniques and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) fall far short to support timely, secure real-time data services for CPSs. In this paper, we present a novel information-centric approach to supporting these requirements in CPSs. In our approach, network-enabled real-time embedded databases (nRTEDBs) communicate with each other and control and communicate with wireless sensors in a secure, timely manner. Unlike sensor databases such as TinyDB, nRTEDBs collaboratively derive global knowledge of real world phenomena. Based on the collective information, they actively control a WSN to extract important data directly relevant to an event of interest. In this way, nRTEDBs considerably enhance the overall timeliness, security, and efficiency.