Improving Alarm Interoperability with External Systems for a Wearable Command Unit Using Service-Oriented Architecture

Abstract: This thesis investigates different aspects of implementing a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for an alarm and crisis management system called Wearable Command Unit (WCU) developed by Saab Security Systems. The WCU system must be able to integrate easily with external systems in order to move into new markets and survive as a product. The focus of this report is a general solution for communicating alarm information from external systems to the WCU. A given requirement was that the solution must be based on SOA. Therefore, the concept of SOA is investigated and its applicability is considered for the WCU architecture. A design proposal based on a combination of open information and communication technologies was made to show how WCU may use SOA to receive alarm information from external systems. The design proposal was evaluated by a load test as well as comparing its conformance to SOA. The load test showed that the proposed solution can process incoming messages at a rate of 2 ms per message when client and server are run on the same machine. The result of the comparison showed that the WCU can, with small modifications, apply a SOA. While this thesis has only investigated the use of SOA in the context of alarm information, there is a clear trend toward integrating information for diverse systems to enable users to have better quality information. Providing first responders with the information that they need, when and where they need it can enable them to save lives, save property, and reduce the risk to the public of incidents. An important result from this thesis is the observation that a system that needs to integrate with many distinct systems can be better prepared if made SOA conformant. This requires the system to have an interface towards other systems based on platform independent protocols. Systems such as the WCU, which are based on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), can easily add such an interface by configuring WCF in an appropriate way.