Microservice based scalable IoT architecture for device interoperability

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) revolutionizes the technology landscape by enabling a wide spectrum of services and applications, characterized by a large number of devices, communication protocols, and data formats. Seamless integration among various IoT-enabled technologies is the most challenging task as the technical standards are disjoint. This often results in monolithic structures with very poor scalability. Further, data heterogeneity in IoT networks increases the measure of multidimensionality, which poses a critical challenge of sharing data with other business applications. Therefore, IoT-based solution requires an architectural framework supported by a large number of independent and specialized microservices towards providing sufficient scalability and interoperability. In this manuscript, a layered architectural framework is proposed where a novel device template concept is introduced to enable flexible and interoperable integration of microservices with IoT devices. The proposed model is formally validated using Event-B in the Rodin platform with the help of proof obligations. Again, a service aggregation algorithm is proposed to reduce the latency and increase the reuse of microservices. Further, the proposed architectural framework is implemented and compared with other similar frameworks. The experimental result shows that the proposed architectural framework enables enhanced interoperability, scalability, and reusability of IoT devices and microservices.