Device Identification Interoperability in Heterogeneous IoT Platforms

Sensors (Basel). 2019 Mar 23;19(6):1433. doi: 10.3390/s19061433.

Abstract

With the continuous improvement of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, various IoT platforms are under development. However, each IoT platform is developed based on its own device identification system. That is, it is challenging to identify each sensor device between heterogeneous IoT platforms owing to the resource request format (e.g., device identifier) varying between platforms. Moreover, despite the considerable research focusing on resource interoperability between heterogeneous IoT platforms, little attention is given to sensor device identification systems in diverse IoT platforms. In order to overcome this problem, the current work proposes an IoT device name system (DNS) architecture based on the comparative analysis of heterogeneous IoT platforms (i.e., oneM2M, GS1 'Oliot', IBM 'Watson IoT', OCF 'IoTivity', FIWARE). The proposed IoT DNS analyzes and translates the identification system of the device and resource request format. In this process, resource requests between heterogeneous IoT platforms can be reconfigured appropriately for the resources and services requested by the user, and as a result, users can use heterogeneous IoT services. Furthermore, in order to illustrate the aim of the proposed architecture, the proposed IoT DNS is implemented and tested on a microcomputer. The experimental results show that a oneM2M-based device successfully performs a resource request to a Watson IoT and FIWARE sensor devices.

Keywords: Internet of Things; IoT platform; device identification; interoperability.