An Approach to the Unified Management of Heterogeneous IoT Environments

Abstract

While the traditional Internet of Things (IoT) relies on electronic sensors/actuators, today’s IoT involves a variety of sensors, comprising not only physical, electronic-based devices but also virtual and even human social sensors/actuators. In this context, how can we efficiently and effectively manage different types of IoT data sources? In this article, we propose a solution to manage different types of sensors/actuators and analyze which management protocols are best in terms of performance. The proposal is based on open and broadly adopted technologies in IoT, with emphasis on the FIWARE middleware. We showed that the management of the heterogeneity of the sensing/actuating IoT devices is feasible, by presenting functionalities related to real use cases. We took advantage of the implemented prototype to compare the performances of lightweight machine to machine (LwM2M) and ultralight device management services in FIWARE. In addition to demonstrating the viability of the proposed approach, the obtained results point to mixed advantages/disadvantages of one protocol over the other.