1st International Workshop on
Testing Distributed Internet of Things Systems

October 4, 8am PDT / 5pm CEST

Co-located with the 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2021)

The 1st International Workshop on Testing Distributed Internet of Things Systems (TDIS) will bring together researchers and practitioners who focus on simulations, models, hybrid testbeds, test frameworks, fault injection, monitoring tools, as well as IoT applications, providing a forum for ongoing work presentations and discussions.

Call for Papers

The Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and machine learning will allow for more adaptive cities, houses, and infrastructures. Yet, this vision of intelligent cyber-physical systems will not be implemented with centralized cloud resources alone. Such resources are simply too far away from sensor-equipped IoT devices, leading to high latencies, network bottlenecks, and unnecessary energy consumption, while there are also often privacy and safety requirements mandating distributed architectures. Therefore, new distributed computing paradigms and system architectures are currently emerging for the IoT that promise to provide computing and storage in proximity of edge devices.

However, the resulting heterogeneous, distributed, and dynamic environments pose significant challenges to the performance, dependability, and efficiency of distributed systems. It is also far less clear how to best create test environments and integrate domain simulations to be able to efficiently assess the behavior IoT systems will exhibit in the field. Yet, continuous testing in realistic test environments is essential for many IoT systems. For instance, if IoT systems are to continuously optimize the operation of critical urban infrastructures such as public transport systems, energy grids, water networks, and medical infrastructures on the basis of collected sensor data, new versions of such IoT systems must be tested thoroughly before they can be deployed and relied on. The behavior of such critical IoT systems has to be tested under the expected distributed computing environment conditions, including variations of such conditions, given the inherently unsteady nature of IoT environments.

The TDIS workshop aims to provide a forum for current work by researchers and practitioners in the different research areas and application domains connected to testing IoT systems. We welcome submissions that describe initial ideas and visions, just as much as reports on novel approaches, practical tools, and completed projects. In case that the workshop will have to take place virtually, we will make sure there will be ample opportunities for constructive feedback, lively discussions, and direct interactions.

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• physical and hybrid IoT testbeds
• simulation and emulation of IoT environments
• co-simulation within IoT domains
• model-based and model-supported approaches
• simulation-based integration testing
• testing on heterogeneous IoT devices
• testing of network technologies and protocols
• testing of real-time behavior
• testing of fault tolerance mechanisms (fault injection, chaos engineering, etc.)
• dependability modeling and assessments (high availability, consistency, etc.)
• testing and modeling of resource usage and energy consumption
• resource management and scheduling in testbeds
• scalability and efficiency of test runs and testbeds
• testing frameworks for edge and fog computing
• distributed monitoring, tracing, error detection
• usability of testbeds and testing frameworks
• representativeness, reproducibility and repeatability of test results

Important Dates

• Submission deadline: June 7 July 7, 2021 (final)
• Notification of acceptance: July 26, 2021
• Camera-ready submission: July 31 August 10, 2021 (firm)
• Workshop: October 4, 8am PDT / 5pm CEST

Workshop Program

The workshop will be held on October 4, starting from 8am PDT / 5pm CEST. The program is planned as follows:

• Opening. Lauritz Thamsen, Jossekin Beilharz, and Andreas Polze. (5’)
• Invited talk (20’ + 10’)
  • Monica Vitali (PoliMi) – Exploiting the Fog for Better Application Management: Potentials and Challenges in (Self) Adaptive Systems.
    Speaker info: Monica Vitali is an Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, since June 2021 and a Visiting Researcher at Umeå University, Sweden, since January 2020. Her main interests in research are related to Information Systems and their Energy Efficiency and Quality of Service. She researches new strategies to improve the efficiency of data centers, clouds, and fog computing by applying techniques derived from the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning fields. She is interested in adaptation and self-adaptation to discover how a complex system can heal itself when some problems occur. More specifically she has been working on energy efficiency and sustainability of cloud and fog applications, QoS-aware deployment in edge and fog computing, Data Quality in big data environments, Ambient Assisted Living, Smart Cities, and Smart Buildings.
• Paper Session on General Approaches and Tools (60’)
  • Observing a Moving Target - Reliable Transmission of Debug Logs from Embedded Mobile Devices. Björn Daase, Leon Matthes, Lukas Pirl, and Lukas Wenzel. (10’ + 10’)
  • Composable Energy Modeling for ML-Driven Drone Applications. Demetris Trihinas, Michalis Agathocleous, and Karlen Avogian. (10’ + 10’)
  • NetSD: Remote Access to Integrated SD Cards of Embedded Devices. Valentin Schröter, Arne Boockmeyer, and Lukas Pirl. (10’ + 10’)
• Virtual Coffee Break (25’)
• Invited talk (20’ + 10’)
  • Birgit Milius (TU Berlin) – Digital Rail: Finding a Common Language.
    Speaker info: After positions at TU Braunschweig and Siemens Mobility GmbH, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Birgit Milius became the Head of the Chair of Track and Railway Operations at TU Berlin in 2019. The focus of her research are railway operations with its rules and regulations and the associated technology combined with issues of risk and safety. She also works on the topics of Rail Human Factors, meaning the integration of people into the rail system, and resilience, the system’s ability to reliably transport people and goods even in the event of disruptions.
• Paper Session on Application-specific Approaches and Tools (60’)
  • Dependable IoT Data Stream Processing for Monitoring and Control of Urban Infrastructures. Morgan Geldenhuys, Jonathan Will, Benjamin Pfister, Martin Haug, Alex Scharmann, and Lauritz Thamsen. (10’ + 10’)
  • GRAL: Localization of Floating Wireless Sensors in Pipe Networks. Martin Haug, Felix Lorenz, and Lauritz Thamsen. (10’ + 10’)
  • From CCS-Planning to Testautomation: The Digital Testfield of Deutsche Bahn in Scheibenberg - A Case Study. Arne Boockmeyer, Dirk Friedenberger, Lukas Pirl, Robert Schmid, Andreas Polze, Heiko Herholz, Gisela Freiin von Arnim, Pedro Lehmann Ibáñez, Torsten Friedrich, Christoph Klaus, and Christian Wilhelmi. (10’ + 10’)

Workshop Organizers

Workshop Chairs

• Lauritz Thamsen, TU Berlin, Germany
• Jossekin Beilharz, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany
• Andreas Polze, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany

Publicity Chairs

• Lukas Pirl, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany
• Philipp Wiesner, TU Berlin, Germany

Program Committee

• Miguel Matos, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
• Demetris Trihinas, University of Nicosia, Cyprus
• Marc Körner, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
• Peter Tröger, Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin, Germany
• Shaukat Ali, Simula, Norway
• Fuyuki Ishikawa, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
• Thomas Rausch, TU Wien, Austria
• Eyhab Al-Masri, University of Washington Tacoma, USA
• Lennart Asbach, German Aerospace Center, Germany
• Ana Juan Ferrer, Atos, Spain
• Carsten Griwodz, University of Oslo, Norway
• Ilja Behnke, TU Berlin, Germany