Abstract
IoT data exchange is supported today by different communication protocols and different protocolar frameworks, each of which with its own advantages and disadvantages, and often co-existing in a way that is mandated by vendor policies. Although different protocols are relevant in different domains, there is not a protocol that provides better performance (jitter, latency, energy consumption) across different scenarios. The focus of this work is two-fold. First, to provide a comparison of the different available solutions in terms of protocolar features such as type of transport, type of communication pattern support, security aspects, including Named-data networking as relevant example of an Information-centric networking architecture. Secondly, the work focuses on evaluating three of the most popular protocols used both in Consumer as well as in Industrial IoT environments: MQTT, CoAP, and OPC UA. The experimentation has been carried out first on a local testbed for MQTT, COAP and OPC UA. Then, larger experiments have been carried out for MQTT and CoAP, based on the large-scale FIT-IoT testbed. Results show that CoAP is the protocol that achieves across all scenarios lowest time-to-completion, while OPC UA, albeit exhibiting less variability, resulted in higher time-to-completion in comparison to CoAP or MQTT.
Highlights
Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios rely on IP-based messaging protocols, or protocolar frameworks such as Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) to meet the required application requirements, by providing support to asynchronous communication mediated via a server, or a broker entity
Information-centric Networking Research Group (ICNRG) [23] and gave rise to both Named-data Networking (NDN) and hICN. Both software architectures are quite similar, being the main difference the fact that hICN is focused on IP interoperability, while NDN is focused on the development of clearer networking semantics, that support better the aspects that IP cannot cope by design, such as security, mobility
UDP support is highly relevant in future IoT environments, as the devices present will become more mobile
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Internet of Things (IoT) communication architectures and protocols have been evolving in order to cope with new challenges derived from environments involving a large number of heterogeneous, resource-constrained devices. In practice, IoT scenarios rely on communication protocols and architectures that follow a broker-based publish/subscriber approach, which creates an abstraction between data sources (producers), data receivers (consumers). Albeit these solutions assist, for instance, frequent data polling, issues concerning mobility management, privacy, security, or resource consumption subsist. In order to further evolve communication protocols in a way that best sustains highly heterogeneous IoT environments, there is the need to better understand current implementation limitations, and performance aspects of the different available solutions.
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