Abstract
Over the past few years, agent concepts have been introduced as an option to increase the network lifetime reducing the data dissemination over the network and to provide application reprogramming functionalities in wireless sensor networks (WSN). However, one important problem is the presented results of energy consumption do not reveal the practical energy consumption, because usually the setting parameters does not correspond the sensor nodes characteristics, or they ignore at least one of the three main domains: radio communication, sensing and data processing. In this paper we propose a BDI-Agent model with coordination without communication for a WSN using target tracking as the motivational application. The goal is to exercise this model to assess potential benefits of using BDI-agent concepts in wireless sensor networks applications.

Abstract
This paper presents an overview of the challenges in developing Health Smart Homes targeting, in particular, elderly and impaired people. As such, it identifies the current endeavors as well as the main areas of research.

Abstract

Abstract
Building reliable real-time applications on top of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components is not a straightforward task. Thus, it is essential to provide a simple and transparent programming model, in order to abstract programmers from the low-level implementation details of distribution and replication. However, the recent trend for incorporating pre-emptive multitasking applications in reliable real-time systems inherently increases its complexity. It is therefore important to provide a transparent programming model, enabling preemptive multitasking applications to be implemented without resorting to simultaneously dealing with both system requirements and distribution and replication issues. The distributed embedded architecture using COTS components (DEAR-COTS) architecture has been previously proposed as an architecture to support real-time and reliable distributed computer-controlled systems (DCCS) using COTS components. Within the DEARCOTS architecture, the hard real-time subsystem provides a framework for the development of reliable real-time applications, which are the core of DCCS applications. This paper presents the proposed framework, and demonstrates how it can be used to support the transparent replication of software components.

Abstract
This paper proposes a virtual token-passing mechanism, which allows the coexistence of legacy industrial Ethernet devices with enhanced (real-time) devices in the same bus network. The VTPE mechanism allows the implementation of real-time (RT) applications upon legacy bus-based industrial networks, enforcing the adequate timing behavior of the supported applications. It enables the traffic separation between legacy Ethernet stations and enhanced (RT) stations. A set of experiments has been performed, which allowed to measure the message access delay and the token rotation time. The achieved results clearly demonstrate that the VTPE architecture enables the support of RT communication upon legacy bus-based industrial Ethernet networks, even when the communication medium is shared with uncontrolled traffic sources.

Abstract
FlexRay is a communication protocol heavily promoted as the future de facto standard for automotive systems. A major challenge associated with the design of FlexRay systems is the response time analysis of sporadic messages transmitted in the dynamic segment, a problem that has been shown to be a combinatorial problem. Although there are several methods available to make this analysis, they mainly rely on optimization techniques such as Integer Linear Programming (ILP), or use the Real-Time Calculus (RTC) framework. In this work we propose a method with pseudo-polynomial complexity to derive an upper bound for sporadic messages transmitted in the dynamic segment. We assess the performance of the proposed method comparing it with state-of-the-art methods available in the literature.