Internet of Things Platforms for Academic Research and Development: A Critical Review

Luca De Nardis,Giuseppe Caso,Usman Ali,Alireza Mohammadpour,Maria-Gabriella Di Benedetto

doi:10.3390/app12042172

Abstract

Tens of different IoT platforms are currently available on the market as a result of the high interest in IoT, characterized by very different characteristics in terms of utilization models, features and availability. This paper provides a review of existing platforms, both adopting a closed source and an open source access model, focusing on five evaluation criteria: communication protocols, data visualization, data processing, integration with external services and security. Afterward, the paper focuses on ten open source platforms, that are deemed more suitable for research and development activities in academia, and provides an evaluation of such platforms according to the five criteria previously defined, combined with two criteria specific to open source platforms: installation procedure and documentation. The evaluation indicates that the FIWARE platform is the best suited platform when taking into account the combination of the seven criteria; other platforms might, however, be preferred, depending on the context, thanks to specific features such as native support for a programming language, or ease and flexibility in the installation procedure.

Highlights

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fastest growing markets in the telecommunications industry
Several works were recently published that identify a set of key characteristics defining an IoT platform and/or review existing IoT platforms, aiming at providing a tool for the selection of the platform that best suits a specific application
This paper analyzed existing IoT platforms from the perspective of R and D activities in academia, for which the possibility of adding new features and introducing new processing algorithms, by extending and tweaking the source code, can be considered the most important aspect to be taken into account in the selection of an IoT platform

Summary

Introduction

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fastest growing markets in the telecommunications industry. The growing interest in IoT applications and services in both consumer and industrial markets led, in turn, to the introduction of a plethora of IoT hardware and software elements, spanning an extremely wide range of architectures, features, and business models. A market study in 2015 identified over 300 IoT platforms providing support for IoT to some extent [5], while more recent estimates place this number beyond 450 [6]. Given such a wide availability, the selection of the correct IoT platform, which is a key preliminary step in the design and deployment of an IoT application, can be a daunting task. Several works were recently published that identify a set of key characteristics defining an IoT platform and/or review existing IoT platforms, aiming at providing a tool for the selection of the platform that best suits a specific application

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Conclusion