Enabling direct connectivity between heterogeneous objects in the internet of things through a network-service-oriented architecture

Abstract

In a future internet of things, an increasing number of everyday objects are connected with each other. These objects can be very diverse in terms of the used network protocols and communication technologies, which leads to a wild growth of co-located networking technologies. Unfortunately, current consumer items are not designed to communicate with co-located devices that use different communication technologies. In addition, commercially available internet of things devices, such as sensor nodes, often use vendor-specific propriety network solutions. As a result, communication between these devices is only possible through the use of gateway nodes, resulting in inefficient use of the wireless medium. To remedy this situation, this paper discusses which features are required to integrate such a diverse number of heterogeneous objects into a single internet of things. In addition, the paper introduces the IDRA architecture, which is designed specifically to enable connectivity between heterogeneous resource-constrained objects. The IDRA architecture has the following advantages. (1) IDRA can connect co-located objects directly, without the need for complex translation gateways. (2) The architecture is clean slate, but supports backward compatibility with existing deployments. (3) Due to its low memory footprint, the architecture can be used in resource-constrained objects. Finally, the paper evaluates the performance of the IDRA architecture and discusses the feasibility of introducing IDRA in existing networks.