FLA-IoT: Virtualization Enabled Architecture for Heterogeneous Systems in Internet of Things

Abstract

A flexible architecture is always required when trying to communicate with heterogeneous kind of systems, and IoT is the largest communication network of the history, which is bringing life to everything around us. Currently available three and four layered communication architectures are the popular basic structures to implement IoT. Where three Layers architecture is composed of perception, network and application layers and four layer architecture is composed of perception, network, service, application layer. The problem with existing architectures is that some layers are not well managed and complex in structure and lacks in the interoperability of different kind devices. In this research we present a virtualization enabled architecture Flexible Layered Architecture for Internet of Things (FLA-IoT) to overcome those challenges. FLA-IoT provides a simple structure with well-organized layers and introduces the creation of Virtual Mote (virtual object) from all real-world devices to enable the communication between unlike devices. This results in an indiscriminate communication between different real-world devices with a well-managed layered architecture.