A web-based two-layered integration framework for smart devices

Wu Zhenyu, Itälä Timo, Tang Tingan, Zhang Chunhong, Ji Yang, Hämäläinen Matti, Liu, Liu Yunjie

Description

The explosions of Internet of Things industry have been bringing more and more smart devices (SDs) into business and people's daily life. This creates new opportunities to build applications that better integrate real-time state of the physical world and requires agility for the software to accommodate customers' requirements. Nevertheless, devices are usually provided by different manufacturers, and applications are independently constructed based on their own infrastructures with little interoperability. Web of Things concept has enabled the interoperability between devices by RESTful web service in a light-weight way; however, it make less efforts to discuss how to integrate devices into complex business environment. Service-Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management approach are becoming applicable to embedded real-world devices and provide flexible service composition. However, it is based on WS-* web service specification which is too heavy and complex for devices and not compatible to RESTful style. In such situation, integrating device into business application with simplicity and providing agility composition of service based on device are significant challenges. We propose a web-based two-layered integration framework that enables SD to integrate with each other via light-weight interface and other back-end applications into agile business process. A real-life use case on elderly care is studied in detail based on the framework.

Sujets

• Intégration
• Smart device
• Web of Things
• Rest
• SOAP
• Soa
• Service Composition

Informations

• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 16
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Wu et al . EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 2012, 2012 :150 http://jwcn.eurasipjournals.com/content/2012/1/150

R E S E A R C H Open Access A web-based two-layered integration framework for smart devices Zhenyu Wu 1* , Timo Itälä 2 , Tingan Tang 2 , Chunhong Zhang 1 , Yang Ji 1 , Matti Hämäläinen 2 and Yunjie Liu 1,3

Abstract The explosions of Internet of Things industry have been bringing more and more smart devices (SDs) into business and people ’ s daily life. This creates new opportunities to build applications that better integrate real-time state of the physical world and requires agility for the software to accommodate customers ’ requirements. Nevertheless, devices are usually provided by different manufacturers, and applications are independently constructed based on their own infrastructures with little interoperability. Web of Things concept has enabled the interoperability between devices by RESTful web service in a light-weight way; however, it make less efforts to discuss how to integrate devices into complex business environment. Service-Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management approach are becoming applicable to embedded real-world devices and provide flexible service composition. However, it is based on WS-* web service specification which is too heavy and complex for devices and not compatible to RESTful style. In such situation, integrating device into business application with simplicity and providing agility composition of service based on device are significant challenges. We propose a web-based two-layered integration framework that enables SD to integrate with each other via light-weight interface and other back-end applications into agile business process. A real-life use case on elderly care is studied in detail based on the framework. Keywords: integration, smart device, Web of Things, REST, SOAP, SOA, service composition, business process management.

1. Introduction grained block from business application ’ s point of view. In the current Internet of Things (IoT) industry, devices  The situation means that integration from device level is are usually provided by different manufacturers, and still not able to effectively bring devices into market for applications are independently constructed based on  business usage. Moreover, Web 2.0 mashup of these their own infrastructures. It means that these devices building blocks is still development-specific for some and applications are fragmentally distributed. This situa- static requirements of simple scenario; however, the tion makes the sharing of data and collaboration  speed of business environment changes is rapidly between companies quite difficult. Even though Web of  increasing, so these static, unstructured, and unrepeata- Things (WoT) [1] has initialized an insight of connect- ble mashup applications will not accommodate their ing devices to the Web via Internet protocols – Represen- customers ’ demand. tative State Transfer (REST) [2] web service that In the context of this background, the research ques- physical objects could be acted as building blocks of tions come out that: how to integrate the fragmental Web applications which facilitates developing applica- devices with each other, as well as with other back-end tions based devices, the building block for a device still applications for a more large-grained composition for remains simple and fragmental with each other, as well business usage , and how to also guarantee business agi- as with other back-end applications. It is still a fine- lity via business process? Within the scope of WoT concept, since many devices usually offer rather simple and atomic functionalities (e. 1 * Sc C h or o re ol sp o o f n In d f e o n r c m e: at s i h o o n w a e n r d 05 T 1 e 2 le @ c b o u m pt m .e u d ni u c .c at n ionEngineering,Beijing g., reading sensor values), modeling them using REST is University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China often straightforward. While REST services are well Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2012 Wu et al; licensee Springer. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.