Design of Over-the-Air Firmware Update and Management for IoT Device with Cloud-based RESTful Web Services

Abstract

As the number of IoT device grows exponentially, there are many causes to update firmware and software for adding new functions, fixing bugs, or speeding up innovation cycles. Therefore, a simple, convenient and reliable wireless method to update the firmware is very important to avoid costly recalls and in-field servicing. We firstly analyze the architecture and mechanism of Over-the-Air (OTA) update as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Then we have designed a firmware update and management system based on RESTful Web Services. At the cloud site, we have designed a group of REST APIs, almost all OTA firmware updates can be performed using these APIs, including building firmware for the targeted devices, uploading the firmware binary and releasing the firmware to devices. In addition, a reliable firmware upgrade mechanism was implemented in boot loader including new firmware detection, the firmware verification, firmware update and rollback processing when update failure for some unexpected reasons. Compared with some other traditional methods, our solution is a full stack IoT platform, which OTA firmware functionality is a more efficient and effective way to update remote IoT devices for a broad range of device-makers involved with full device life-cycle. It is also suitable for personal IoT application and managed IoT deployment with 3rd party services.