Taming the interoperability challenges of complex IoT systems

of communication protocols and data formats; hence ensuring diverse devices can interoperate with one another remains a significant challenge. Model-driven development and testing solutions have been proposed as methods to aid software developers achieve interoperability compliance in the face of this increasing complexity. However, current approaches often involve complicated and domain specific models (e.g. web services described by WSDL). In this paper, we explore a lightweight, middleware independent, model-driven development framework to help developers tame the challenges of composing IoT services that interoperate with one another. The framework is based upon two key contributions: i) patterns of interoperability behaviour, and ii) a software framework to monitor and reason about interoperability success or failure. We show using a case-study from the FI-WARE Future Internet Service domain that this interoperability framework can support non-expert developers address interoperability challenges. We also deployed tools built atop the framework and made them available in the XIFI large-scale FI-PPP test environment

Design tools for ontology-based network communication protocols

Internet of Things has evolved quickly and reached to every aspect of our lives over the years. The number of new heterogeneous, distributed devices and applications connecting to the Internet is growing exponentially every day. As a result, data interoperability has become a prerequisite for IoT networks. However, the current infrastructures and communication protocols do not provide a convenient way for applications from different domains to interpret and process each other’s data, which is stored in vastly diversified, non-standardized formats. Due to this lack of common ground, in many cases, the integration overhead hinders organisations from exchanging their data to generate business values. Semantic technologies would be a promising solution for these issues, thanks to its ability to capture the high-level meaning of data. Asema is developing SmartAPI, a semantics-based API framework for sharing data between IoT systems. This thesis work is a part of SmartAPI project, focuses on designing and developing a data designer application. I build a single page web application with a modern graphical user interface, allowing users to create, organise and share data models

Digital Twins for an Industrial Internet of Things Platform

Com o avanço da Indústria 4.0 e do surgimento de novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação tais como o IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things), o sector industrial tem procurado cada vez mais, evoluir as suas linhas de produção de modo a atingir a maior eficiência de produção possível. Aliado ao conceito IIoT, o termo Digital Twin e CPS (Cyber Physical System) começam a ganhar elevada relevância em vários sectores, nomeadamente no sector industrial. Apesar de serem conceitos que se podem confundir, o conceito de DT e CPS são aplicados em diferentes domínios. O conceito de CPS relaciona-se com a conexão de duas direções que é possível estabelecer entre o meio físico e o meio digital. Ele utiliza a rede IoT para capturar a informação do meio físico através de sensores e controladores e com esta informação, é possível no meio digital tornar a réplica mais inteligente a fim de conseguir reproduzir o comportamento da entidade física. O conceito de DT é um pouco menos abstrato, comparado com o conceito de CPS, e é o DT que implementa o CPS. O DT utiliza as funcionalidades do CPS para realizar modelos de simulação das entidades físicas de forma a conseguir espelhar a geometria e o comportamento da mesma no meio digital. Com estes modelos digitais é possível realizar uma monitorização e controlo em tempo real das entidades físicas. De forma a aplicar estes conceitos, esta dissertação tem como principal objetivo a implementação de um DT capaz de replicar o comportamento de uma determinada entidade física no meio digital. Dessa forma, através da aplicação web Jurassic Park como plataforma IoT, a dissertação pretende adicionar um conjunto de novas funcionalidades de controlo e monitorização à sua interface-gráfica, de modo a que o utilizador consiga não só observar em tempo real a variação de valores de variáveis previamente subscritas mas também controlar alguns eventos que também foram selecionados pelo utilizador previamente

A Customizable IoT Platform Developed Using Low-Code

In nowadays’ societies and businesses’ ecosystems of acceleration, it is of most importance the digitalization of the formers. In this sense, Internet of Things (IoT) emerges to connect devices to the internet, allowing the access to large amounts of data and, through its analysis, to act upon it. An IoT platform allows, among others, to manage IoT devices. Nonetheless, its development is still a complex and expensive process that requires high technical knowledge. To accelerate developments when building IoT applications, this thesis proposes the use of Low-Code platforms, such as Outsystems. To improve the user experience, an embedded customizable dashboard is included in the platform. To achieve this, a reusable Forge component was built and is currently available for download and in use by the community. This component allows to provide drag and drop functionalities to both web and mobile applications. In this case, it will allow the reordering of dashboard cards to personalize dashboards. Another component that enables barcode/qr code reading by Zebra devices is also included in this thesis. To assess the developed IoT platform, an IoT device prototype was created, using an Arduino with an ESP module, as well as a set of sensors and actuators that communicate with the IoT platform via the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol.No ecossistema de aceleração em que a sociedade e as indústrias se encontram actualmente, é da maior importância a rápida digitalização das mesmas. O conceito de Internet of Things (IoT) surge então para conectar uma grande diversidade de dispositivos à internet, possibilitando o acesso a uma grande quantidade de dados e, aquando da análise dos mesmos, optimizar um conjunto de operações. Plataformas IoT são ferramentas bastante úteis em projectos IoT. Estas permitem, entre outros, a gestão de dispositivos IoT, no entanto, o seu desenvolvimento é um processo complexo e demorado que requer elevados orçamentos e conhecimentos técnicos. Para acelerar o desenvolvimento deste tipo de plataformas, esta dissertação propõe o uso plataformas de desenvolvimento Low-Code, nomeadamente Outsystems. Para melhorar a experiência de utilizador, neste trabalho é proposta uma plataforma IoT com dashboards personalizáveis, utilizando uma arquitetura modular. Para tal, foi desenvolvido um componente reutilizável, publicado na Forge e que está atualmente disponível e a ser utilizado pela comunidade. O mesmo permite adicionar a funcionalidade de drag and drop em aplicações web e mobile. Neste caso, o componente permite arrastar cartões, de forma a personalizar dashboards. Um outro componente que permite a leitura de códigos qr/de barras foi também desenvolvido e encontra-se disponível para download. Para validar a plataforma desenvolvida, foi criado um protótipo de um dispositivo IoT, utilizando um Arduino com um módulo ESP e um conjunto de sensores e atuadores, que comunica com a plataforma através do protocolo MQTT

IoT Application Provisioning Service

Constant development of software requires updating our Internet of Things (IoT) devices regularly. Some services such as transportation, health care, surveillance and electronic payments require high availability, even during a software update. IoT updates in urban scenarios require connectivity based on the Internet Protocol (IP) and long range connection with adequate speed. Normally, these requirements are provided by cellular network (i.e., using a SIM card) to connect to the Internet. This option presents several disadvantages: it is very expensive and it exposes IoT devices to security threats due to the permanent connection to the Internet. These challenges could be addressed by leveraging long-range broadcast communication (e.g., FM broadcast). IoT devices periodically listen for and receive updates through such a communication infrastructure, without actually being connected to the Internet. This thesis presents a system to provide software updates for IoT devices through long-range broadcast communication technologies. A prototype has been developed based on the concept of “seamless updates”. This allows performing software updates in the background, hence ensuring the availability of a device during the installation time of an update. This seamless update process was implemented on an embedded device (i.e., a Raspberry Pi 3) with a Linux-based operating system. Furthermore, a web-based backend has been implemented. Such a backend allows IoT developers to upload their updates targeting a specific class of devices and schedule when the update will be sent. The security goals of integrity and authentication are accomplished by signing the updates in the backend and verifying it at the IoT device. Moreover, a performance evaluation is performed for the system upgrade service with different parameters to sign the updates