Internet of things reference architecture

Abstract

Internet and web expansion into the physical reality was made possible through various aspects which come under the umbrella of the term widely used nowadays i.e. “Internet-of-Things” explained in simpler terms as situations where objects are provided with the internet connectivity and computing capabilities making them capable of generating, exchanging and consuming data with nominal human interaction. IoT building blocks are not formally defined but their operation can be defined in terms of sensors, computation, communication and actuators, which act as the primary building blocks. IoT aids ubiquitous computing by deploying IoT nodes which bridge the gap between IoT and physical world and are resource constrained i.e. they have limited processing capabilities, memory, power and bandwidth etc. IoT devices are of wide range each with varying capabilities and to organize, structure and represent IoT, there is a need of standardized architecture with respect to hardware, network, software, process and conceptual. IoT reference architecture is a very recent topic of research and not much have been done so far. Just like OSI Reference Model proposed by International Standards Organization (ISO) for the network communication, there is a need of IoT reference architecture which can ease the developers by breaking down the complex network into understandable parts, providing the common terminology and information for the identification of different IoT levels, abstracting the technical specifications easing the developers to create interoperable products and providing them with functional and non-functional elements. IoT needs a modular and scalable architecture which will pave way for creating domain specific concrete architecture for IoT networks. In this thesis core requirements for an IoT networks are identified and those are broken down into quantifiable metrics. Five existing reference architectures and models surveyed were proposed by WSO2, Chine Communication Standards Association, Korean Study Group, European Union and Cisco. Shortcomings in each were identified and based on those shortcomings a layered architecture is proposed which will help the future development of application generic concrete architectures. As a part of validation and to show the functions of each layer a simulator is developed. MARC Preview: Show