Resource discovery techniques in the internet of things: A review

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a hot research topic in recent years to extend Internet connectivity to physical devices in our day-to-day activities. The high diversity of IoT objects, their properties, and capabilities pose significant challenges on the realization of open and interoperable IoT platforms. Resource discovery is a key concept that enables smarter interactions and communications between different IoT artifacts. The ultimate objective of resource discovery in IoT environments is to find devices and services of interest to the requesting entity. The unique characteristics of IoT environments such as limited resources and heterogeneity pose additional challenges on resource discovery. This paper investigates different resource discovery approaches, associated challenges, and state-of-the-art solutions, as well as providing a comprehensive study of the technological landscape related to resource discovery in IoT scenarios. It also presents the communication protocols that are used for resource discovery and outlines their advantages and drawbacks. Lastly, the paper describes the evaluation parameters of discovery methods in the IoT ecosystem.