Skip to main content
Disciplines
Automotive Business IT + Informatics Construction + Real Estate Electrical Engineering + Electronics Energy + Sustainability Insurance + Risk Finance + Banking Management + Leadership Marketing + Sales Mechanical Engineering + Materials
Events
DE
EN
Books
Journals
Topic Page
Marketing
Start single access now
Access for companies
EXTENDED SEARCH
Log in
Top

2013 | Book

Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

Middleware Solutions for the Internet of Things

Authors: Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista

Publisher: Springer London

Book Series : SpringerBriefs in Computer Science

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Login to get access
insite
SEARCH

About this book

After a brief introduction and contextualization on the Internet of Things (IoT) and Web of Things (WoT) paradigms, this timely new book describes one of the first research initiatives aimed at tackling the several challenges involved in building a middleware-layer infrastructure capable of realizing the WoT vision: the SmartSensor infrastructure. It is based on current standardization efforts and designed to manage a specific type of physical devices, those organized to shape a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), where sensors work collaboratively, extracting data and transmitting it to external networks to be further analysed and processed. Middleware Solutions for the Internet of Things describes this infrastructure and its RESTful-based programming model that allows developers create applications without having specific knowledge about physical devices or networking environments. It is also shown, step by step, how to create a Web Mashup application using SmartSensor.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a step forward in the well-known wide-spread Internet revolution. It consists in a world of physical objects embedded with sensors and actuators linked by wireless networks and communicating using the Internet, shaping a network of smart objects, with processing power and able to capture environmental variables and to react to external stimuli. Such objects are connected and can be controlled over the Internet, enabling a myriad of novel applications. IoT is one of the key technologies to enable the creation of cyber physical systems and realize the vision of new IT application domains such as Smart Cities. Several recent technological advances enabled the emergence of IoT such as nanotechnology, wireless sensor networks, mobile communication, and ubiquitous computing. However, there is still a set of challenges to be addressed in order to fully realize the IoT paradigm, mainly related to the development of IoT applications dealing with the heterogeneity arising from the diversity of hardware, sensors and actuators, and wireless technologies inherent to such an environment.
Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista
Chapter 2. Basic Concepts
Abstract
The Web of Things (WoT) paradigm is based on the use of protocols and standards widely accepted and already in use in the traditional Web, such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), to support information sharing and device interoperation. These standards combined with other elements such as the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural pattern and the Resource-oriented architecture (ROA) allow sensed data, provided by the sensing physical devices via a Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), to be treated as any other resource on the Web. Such physical devices are identified by URIs and accessed via HTTP basic operations (HTTP verbs). This Chapter briefly presents the main key concepts that support the WoT paradigm, such as wireless sensor networks, REST and ROA. We also discuss about the requirements that a middleware for IoT/WoT should meet and we give an overview of existing proposals for such a middleware.
Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista
Chapter 3. SmartSensor: An Infrastructure for the Web of Things
Abstract
In order to fast populate the Web of Things, approaches based on ubiquitous protocols and standards are attractive to promote interoperability among heterogeneous devices and to facilitate the development of applications on top of such devices. In this context, this Chapter presents SmartSensor, an infrastructure for WoT built at the middleware layer and based on current efforts of standardization, with the main purpose of integrating Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to the Web in a transparent, seamless and flexible way. By integrating WSNs to the Web via SmartSensor, sensor-generated data can be provided to client applications or users exactly in the same way as documents or other Web resources. Furthermore, SmartSensor considers the emerging scenario where multiple WSNs from different technologies and owners are integrated in a unique, virtual sensing infrastructure, enabling data from different networks to be provided to various applications running on top of them. In this Chapter, the infrastructure architecture and operation are briefly presented, emphasizing the features that make SmartSensor fully complaint to the WoT paradigm.
Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista
Chapter 4. The Sensor Integration Module (SIM)
Abstract
The SmartSensor architecture encompasses three main software modules: (i) the Sensor Integration Module (SIM), (ii) the Programming and Execution Module (PEM), and (iii) the Web 3.0 Integration Module (WIM). In this Chapter we detail the SIM logical and physical components as well as their operation. In the SmartSensor infrastructure a set of wireless sensor networks (WSN) is connected to the Web through one gateway node, that exposes to client applications the sensing data produced by the networks as RESTful Web resources. The Sensor Integration Module (SIM) is responsible for providing the RESTful interface to access the resources of a given WSN. Its components receive application requests describing their desired sensing data, translate HTTP messages to and from the several sensor specific formats and protocols, coordinate the functions needed to meet the received sensing tasks and manage the different communication models required to produce and deliver the data back to the requesting applications.
Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista
Chapter 5. The Programming and Execution Module (PEM)
Abstract
This Chapter presents the Programming and Execution Module (PEM) of SmartSensor. The main purpose of PEM is to allow end users to program Web mashup applications through the composition of a mixing of public available services and services provided by SmartSensor registered in SIMs. Web mashups are ad-hoc Web applications built upon the combination of real-time information (data, presentation and functionality) from multiple Web sources. The PEM’s programming environment provides a Web Mashup DSL (Domain Specific Language) specifically tailored for the WSN environment, as well as an interpreter for such DSL. Moreover, this module contains components for publishing and discovering the capacities of available WSNs. PEM’s DSL is an extension of the Enterprise Mashup Markup Language (EMML), which is an open language specification, promoted by the Open Mashup Alliance. The main goals of EMML are to provide programming mechanisms to promote mashup design portability and interoperability of mashup solutions aiming at reducing vendor lock-in.
Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista
Chapter 6. SmartSensor Proof of Concept
Abstract
This chapter illustrates the use of the SmartSensor infrastructure through the development of an application in the domain of smart buildings. Smart buildings are buildings instrumented with smart devices designed to provide high flexibility of use and the ability to evolve and adapt according to the needs of organizations and human beings, aiming at increasing users comfort and safety and optimizing the operation and managing of several functions inside and outside the building while increasing its energy efficiency. There are plenty of applications within the broad domain of smart buildings, varying from applications to control light, humidity and temperature of rooms to fire and intrusion detection. We choose a parking lot management application to present the main functionalities and potential benefits of SmartSensor. The application consists of a wireless sensor network (WSN) based vehicle detection sub-system connected to the SmartSensor infrastructure. The WSN gathers information on the availability of each parking lot and the SmartSensor infrastructure processes the information and provides a Web interface to guide the driver to the available lots.
Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista
Chapter 7. Final Remarks
Abstract
In this chaper we summarize the contributions of this Book to advance the state-of-the-art in the development of IoT applications. The main contributions are: (i) to present a middleware-layer infrastructure, SmartSensor, that focuses on the integration of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in the Web, providing WSN as a service, acessible as any other Web resource and enabling the discovery and composition of services to form Web mashup applications; (ii) to describe step by step the development of an application using the SmartSensor infrastructure, the Parking Lot Application, that helps drivers to find available parking space in a building. SmartSensor is composed of three software modules: (i) the Sensor Integration Module (SIM) integrates the distinct WSN devices and provides a RESTFUL interface to access them as Web resources; (ii) the Programming and Execution Module (PEM) enables the composition of value-added services from multiple Web sources; (iii) the Web 3.0 Integration Module (WIM) integrates the resources with Web 3.0 applications and platforms.
Flávia C. Delicato, Paulo F. Pires, Thais Batista
Metadata
Title
Middleware Solutions for the Internet of Things
Authors
Flávia C. Delicato
Paulo F. Pires
Thais Batista
Copyright Year
2013
Publisher
Springer London
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4471-5481-5
Print ISBN
978-1-4471-5480-8
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5481-5

Premium Partner

    Image Credits