Interoperability in Internet of Things
Dr. Sudip Misra
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
IIT KHARAGPUR
Email:
[email protected] Website: http://www.cse.iitkgp.ac.in/~smisra/
Introduction to Internet of Things 1
Current Challenges in IoT
Large Scale of Co-Operation:
The cooperation and coordination of millions of distributed devices are required on
Internet
Global Heterogeneity:
Heterogeneous IoT devices and their subnets
Unknown IoT Device Configuration:
The different configuration modes for IoT devices which come from unknown
owners
Semantic Conflicts:
Different processing logics applied to same IoT networked devices or applications.
Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.
Introduction to Internet of Things 2
What is Interoperability?
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system,
whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with
other products or systems, present or future, in either
implementation or access, without any restrictions.
Communicate meaningfully
Exchange data or services
Source: "Definition of Interoperability". dedicated website for a Definition of Interoperability at interoperability-definition.info. Copyright AFUL under CC BY-SA.
Introduction to Internet of Things 3
Why Interoperability is Important in Context of IoT?
To fulfill the IoT objectives
Physical objects can interact with any other physical objects and can
share their information
Any device can communicate with other devices anytime from
anywhere
Machine to Machine communication(M2M), Device to Device
Communication (D2D), Device to Machine Communication (D2M)
Seamless device integration with IoT network
Introduction to Internet of Things 4
Why Interoperability is required?
Heterogeneity
Different wireless communication protocols such as ZigBee (IEEE
802.15.4), Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1), GPRS, 6LowPAN, and Wi-Fi (IEEE
802.11)
Different wired communication protocols like Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) and
Higher Layer LAN Protocols (IEEE 802.1)
Different programming languages used in computing systems and
websites such as JavaScript, JAVA, C, C++, Visual Basic, PHP, and Python
Different hardware platforms such as Crossbow, NI, etc.
Introduction to Internet of Things 5
Why Interoperability is required? (Contd.)
Different operating systems
As an example for sensor node: TinyOS, SOS, Mantis OS, RETOS, and
mostly vendor specific OS
As an example for personal computer: Windows, Mac, Unix, and Ubuntu
Different databases: DB2, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL
Server, and Sybase
Different data representations
Different control models
Syntactic or semantic interpretations
Introduction to Internet of Things 6
Different Types of Interoperability?
User Interoperability
Interoperability problem between a user and a device
Device Interoperability
Interoperability problem between two different devices
Introduction to Internet of Things 7
Example of Device and User Interoperability
Using IoT, both A and B provide a real-time
security service
A is placed at Delhi, India, while B is placed
at Tokyo, Japan
A, B, U use Hindi, Japanese, and English
language, respectively
User U wants real-time service of CCTV
camera from the device A and B
Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.
Introduction to Internet of Things 8
Example of Device and User Interoperability
Problems are listed below
The user does not know the devices A and B
Devices A and B are different in terms of
syntactic and semantic notions
Therefore, it is difficult to find CCTV device
User U can’t understand the service
provided by A and B
Similarly, A and B do not mutually
understand each other
G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10, no. 2 pp.
1486-1496, May 2014.
Introduction to Internet of Things 9
User Interoperability
The following problems need to be solved
Device identification and categorization for discovery
Syntactic interoperability for device interaction
Semantic interoperability for device interaction
Introduction to Internet of Things 10
Device identification and categorization for
discovery
There are different solutions for generating unique address
Electronic Product Codes (EPC)
Universal Product Code (UPC)
Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
IP Addresses
IPv6
Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.
Introduction to Internet of Things 11
Device identification and categorization for
discovery (Contd.)
There are different device classification solutions
United Nations Standard Products and Services Code
(UNSPSC) *
an open, global, multi-sector standard for efficient, accurate, flexible
classification of products and services.
eCl@ss **
The standard is for classification and clear description of cross-industry
products
Reference: * http://www.unspsc.org/, **http://www.eclass.eu/
Introduction to Internet of Things 12
Syntactic Interoperability for Device Interaction
The interoperability between devices and device user in term
of message formats
The message format from a device to a user is understandable
for the user’s computer
On the other hand, the message format from the user to the
device is executable by the device
Introduction to Internet of Things 13
Syntactic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
Some popular approaches are
Service-oriented Computing (SOC)-based architecture
Web services
RESTful web services
Open standard protocols such as IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.15.1, and
WirelessHART*
Closed protocols such as Z-Wave*
*But these standards are incompatible with each other
Introduction to Internet of Things 14
Syntactic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
Middleware technology
Software middleware bridge
Dynamically map physical devices with different domains
Based on the map, the devices can be discovered and controlled,
remotely
Cross-context syntactic interoperability
Collaborative concept exchange
Using XML syntax
Introduction to Internet of Things 15
Semantic Interoperability for Device Interaction
The interoperability between devices and device user in term
of message’s meaning
The device can understand the meaning of user’s instruction
that is sent from the user to the device.
Similarly, the user can understand the meaning of device’s
response sent from the device
Introduction to Internet of Things 16
Semantic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
Some popular approaches
Ontology
Device ontology
Physical domain ontology
Estimation ontology
Ontology-based solution is limited to the defined domain
/context
Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.
Introduction to Internet of Things 17
Semantic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
Collaborative conceptualization theory
Object is defined based on the collaborative concept, which is called
cosign
The representation of a collaborative sign is defined as follows:
cosign of a object = (A, B, C, D ), where A is a cosign internal identifier, B is
a natural language, C is the context of A, and D is a definition of the object
As an example of CCTV, cosign = (1234, English, CCTV, “Camera Type:
Bullet, Communication: Network/IP, Horizontal Resolution: 2048 TVL”)
This solution approach is applicable for different domains/contexts
Introduction to Internet of Things 18
Device Interoperability
Solution approach for device interoperability
Universal Middleware Bridge (UMB)
Solves seamless interoperability problems caused by the
heterogeneity of several kinds of home network middleware
UMB creates virtual maps among the physical devices of all
middleware home networks, such as HAVI, Jini, LonWorks, and UPnP
Creates a compatibility among these middleware home networks
source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.
Introduction to Internet of Things 19
Device Interoperability (Contd.)
UMB consists
UMB Core (UMB-C)
UMB Adaptor (UMB-A)
Fig 1: The Architecture of Universal Middleware Bridge
Image source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network
middleware,” IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.
Introduction to Internet of Things 20
Device Interoperability (Contd.)
UMB Adaptor
UMB-A converts physical devices into
virtually abstracted one, as described by
Universal Device Template(UDT)
UDT consists of a Global Device ID,
Global Function ID, Global Action ID,
Global Event ID, and Global Parameters
UMB Adaptors translate the local
middleware’s message into global
metadata’s message Fig 2: The Structure of UMB-A
Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.
Introduction to Internet of Things 21
Device Interoperability (Contd.)
UMB Core
The major role of the UMB Core is routing
the universal metadata message to the
destination or any other UMB Adaptors
by the Middleware Routing Table (MRT)
Fig 3: The Structure of UMB-C
Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.
Introduction to Internet of Things 22
Device Interoperability (Contd.)
Fig 4: Flow when a new device is plugged in
Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.
Introduction to Internet of Things 23
Device Interoperability (Contd.)
Fig 5: Flow when a device is controlled and monitored
Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.
Introduction to Internet of Things 24
Introduction to Internet of Things 25
