Multi-agent Based Software Licensing Model for Embedded Systems

Recent growth of the embedded system industry, both in size and complexity, resulted in numerous advantages for the consumer equipment and a few problems for the system designers. One of the problems is the software licensing problem in complex embedded systems. The fact that today’s embedded systems are evolved into fairly large and complex systems presents the need to effectively manage the embedded software functionality, without the need to recompile and rewrite the firmware components. This problem can be avoided by using fully functional software accompanied by a licensing agent to enforce the license permissions granted to an end user. The licensing agent enforces the permissions stored in encrypted license file located on a Secure Digital memory data card. Another advantage is the fact that the permissions can be updated remotely using a license distribution agent located at the manufacturer’s server and uploaded through Ethernet or Internet. Licensing agents applied to various embedded systems have the ability to communicate with other licensing agents and license distribution agent in order to exchange and verify supplied licenses. This paper proposes the software licensing agent model and implements the licensing agent in the existing laboratory based embedded system.