Interoperability in Internet of Things

Dr. Sudip Misra

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
IIT KHARAGPUR
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.cse.iitkgp.ac.in/~smisra/

Introduction to Internet of Things 1

 Current Challenges in IoT
 Large Scale of Co-Operation:
 The cooperation and coordination of millions of distributed devices are required on
Internet
 Global Heterogeneity:
 Heterogeneous IoT devices and their subnets
 Unknown IoT Device Configuration:
 The different configuration modes for IoT devices which come from unknown
owners
 Semantic Conflicts:
 Different processing logics applied to same IoT networked devices or applications.
Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.

Introduction to Internet of Things 2

 What is Interoperability?

 Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system,

whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with
other products or systems, present or future, in either
implementation or access, without any restrictions.
 Communicate meaningfully
 Exchange data or services

Source: "Definition of Interoperability". dedicated website for a Definition of Interoperability at interoperability-definition.info. Copyright AFUL under CC BY-SA.

Introduction to Internet of Things 3

Why Interoperability is Important in Context of IoT?

 To fulfill the IoT objectives

 Physical objects can interact with any other physical objects and can
share their information
 Any device can communicate with other devices anytime from
anywhere
 Machine to Machine communication(M2M), Device to Device
Communication (D2D), Device to Machine Communication (D2M)
 Seamless device integration with IoT network

Introduction to Internet of Things 4

Why Interoperability is required?
 Heterogeneity
 Different wireless communication protocols such as ZigBee (IEEE
802.15.4), Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1), GPRS, 6LowPAN, and Wi-Fi (IEEE
802.11)
 Different wired communication protocols like Ethernet (IEEE 802.3) and
Higher Layer LAN Protocols (IEEE 802.1)
 Different programming languages used in computing systems and
websites such as JavaScript, JAVA, C, C++, Visual Basic, PHP, and Python
 Different hardware platforms such as Crossbow, NI, etc.

Introduction to Internet of Things 5

Why Interoperability is required? (Contd.)
 Different operating systems
 As an example for sensor node: TinyOS, SOS, Mantis OS, RETOS, and
mostly vendor specific OS
 As an example for personal computer: Windows, Mac, Unix, and Ubuntu
 Different databases: DB2, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL
Server, and Sybase
 Different data representations
 Different control models
 Syntactic or semantic interpretations

Introduction to Internet of Things 6

Different Types of Interoperability?

 User Interoperability
 Interoperability problem between a user and a device
 Device Interoperability
 Interoperability problem between two different devices

Introduction to Internet of Things 7

 Example of Device and User Interoperability
 Using IoT, both A and B provide a real-time
security service
 A is placed at Delhi, India, while B is placed
at Tokyo, Japan
 A, B, U use Hindi, Japanese, and English
language, respectively
 User U wants real-time service of CCTV
camera from the device A and B

Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.

Introduction to Internet of Things 8

 Example of Device and User Interoperability
Problems are listed below
 The user does not know the devices A and B
 Devices A and B are different in terms of
syntactic and semantic notions
 Therefore, it is difficult to find CCTV device
 User U can’t understand the service
provided by A and B
 Similarly, A and B do not mutually
understand each other

G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10, no. 2 pp.
1486-1496, May 2014.

Introduction to Internet of Things 9

User Interoperability

The following problems need to be solved

 Device identification and categorization for discovery
 Syntactic interoperability for device interaction
 Semantic interoperability for device interaction

Introduction to Internet of Things 10

 Device identification and categorization for
discovery
There are different solutions for generating unique address
 Electronic Product Codes (EPC)
 Universal Product Code (UPC)
 Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
 IP Addresses
 IPv6

Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.

Introduction to Internet of Things 11

 Device identification and categorization for
discovery (Contd.)
There are different device classification solutions
 United Nations Standard Products and Services Code
(UNSPSC) *
 an open, global, multi-sector standard for efficient, accurate, flexible
classification of products and services.
 eCl@ss **
 The standard is for classification and clear description of cross-industry
products
Reference: * http://www.unspsc.org/, **http://www.eclass.eu/

Introduction to Internet of Things 12

Syntactic Interoperability for Device Interaction

 The interoperability between devices and device user in term

of message formats
 The message format from a device to a user is understandable
for the user’s computer
 On the other hand, the message format from the user to the
device is executable by the device

Introduction to Internet of Things 13

Syntactic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
Some popular approaches are
 Service-oriented Computing (SOC)-based architecture
 Web services
 RESTful web services
 Open standard protocols such as IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.15.1, and
WirelessHART*
 Closed protocols such as Z-Wave*
*But these standards are incompatible with each other

Introduction to Internet of Things 14

Syntactic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
 Middleware technology
 Software middleware bridge
 Dynamically map physical devices with different domains
 Based on the map, the devices can be discovered and controlled,
remotely
 Cross-context syntactic interoperability
 Collaborative concept exchange
 Using XML syntax

Introduction to Internet of Things 15

Semantic Interoperability for Device Interaction

 The interoperability between devices and device user in term

of message’s meaning
 The device can understand the meaning of user’s instruction
that is sent from the user to the device.
 Similarly, the user can understand the meaning of device’s
response sent from the device

Introduction to Internet of Things 16

 Semantic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
Some popular approaches
 Ontology
 Device ontology
 Physical domain ontology
 Estimation ontology
Ontology-based solution is limited to the defined domain
/context
Source: G. Xiaoand, J. Guo, Li Da Xu, and Z. Gong, "User Interoperability With Heterogeneous IoT Devices Through Transformation,” IEEE Trans. Indust. Informatics, vol. 10,
no. 2 pp. 1486-1496, May 2014.

Introduction to Internet of Things 17

Semantic Interoperability for Device Interaction
(Contd. )
 Collaborative conceptualization theory
 Object is defined based on the collaborative concept, which is called
cosign
 The representation of a collaborative sign is defined as follows:
 cosign of a object = (A, B, C, D ), where A is a cosign internal identifier, B is
a natural language, C is the context of A, and D is a definition of the object
 As an example of CCTV, cosign = (1234, English, CCTV, “Camera Type:
Bullet, Communication: Network/IP, Horizontal Resolution: 2048 TVL”)
 This solution approach is applicable for different domains/contexts

Introduction to Internet of Things 18

 Device Interoperability

Solution approach for device interoperability

 Universal Middleware Bridge (UMB)
 Solves seamless interoperability problems caused by the
heterogeneity of several kinds of home network middleware
 UMB creates virtual maps among the physical devices of all
middleware home networks, such as HAVI, Jini, LonWorks, and UPnP
 Creates a compatibility among these middleware home networks

source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.

Introduction to Internet of Things 19

 Device Interoperability (Contd.)

UMB consists
 UMB Core (UMB-C)
 UMB Adaptor (UMB-A)

Fig 1: The Architecture of Universal Middleware Bridge

Image source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network
middleware,” IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.

Introduction to Internet of Things 20

 Device Interoperability (Contd.)
 UMB Adaptor
 UMB-A converts physical devices into
virtually abstracted one, as described by
Universal Device Template(UDT)
 UDT consists of a Global Device ID,
Global Function ID, Global Action ID,
Global Event ID, and Global Parameters
 UMB Adaptors translate the local
middleware’s message into global
metadata’s message Fig 2: The Structure of UMB-A
Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.

Introduction to Internet of Things 21

 Device Interoperability (Contd.)

 UMB Core
 The major role of the UMB Core is routing
the universal metadata message to the
destination or any other UMB Adaptors
by the Middleware Routing Table (MRT)

Fig 3: The Structure of UMB-C

Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.

Introduction to Internet of Things 22

 Device Interoperability (Contd.)

Fig 4: Flow when a new device is plugged in

Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.

Introduction to Internet of Things 23

 Device Interoperability (Contd.)

Fig 5: Flow when a device is controlled and monitored

Source: K.-D. Moon, Y.-H. Lee, C.-E. Lee, and Y.-S. Son, “Design of a universal middleware bridge for device interoperability in heterogeneous home network middleware,” IEEE
Trans. Consum. Electron., vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 314–318, Feb. 2005.

Introduction to Internet of Things 24

Introduction to Internet of Things 25