A global generic architecture for the future Internet of Things

Abstract

The envisioned 6A Connectivity of the future Internet of Things (IoT) aims to allow people and objects to be connected anytime, anyplace, with anything and anyone, using any path/network and any service. Due to diverse resources, incompatible standards and communication patterns, the current IoT is constrained to specific devices, platforms, networks and domains. As the standards have been accepted worldwide, most existing IoT platforms use Web Services to integrate heterogeneous devices. Human-readable protocols of Web Services cause non-negligible overhead in object-to-object communication. Other issues, such as lack of applications and modularized services, high cost of devices and software development, also hinder the common use of the IoT. In this paper, a global generic architecture for the future IoT (GGIoT) is proposed to meet the envisioned 6A Connectivity of the future IoT. GGIoT is independent of particular devices, platforms, networks, domains and applications, and it can minimize transmission message size to fit devices with minimal capabilities, such as passive RFID tags. As a result, lower physical size and cost are possible, and network overhead can be reduced. The proposed GGIoT is evaluated via performance analysis and proof-of-concept case studies.