Overcoming Service-Level Interoperability Challenges of the IoT

Abstract

The Internet of things (IoT) is a complex ecosystem of devices, solutions, services and applications. IoT is highly-heterogeneous because devices focus on proprietary technology and interfaces. To realize its full value, interoper- ability must be achieved. For now, it is impossible to manage individually a vast amount of different IoT devices and their application programming interfaces (APIs). Interoperability is one of the main problems of the IoT. Much of the exist- ing IoT interoperability research elaborates on techniques and methods to achieve interoperability. Multiple IoT standards exist today and new ones are being creat- ed. Different IoT standards compete. A widely-accepted standard does not current- ly exist. There are many unsolved interoperability problems at different levels, in- cluding: data, service, network, and application. This chapter will focus on service-level IoT interoperability problems and solutions. It will review the use case of possible interoperability resolutions. The chapter will also identify future research problems related to IoT service-level interoperability. Keywords: