A survey of communication protocols for internet of things and related challenges of fog and cloud computing integration

The fast increment in the number of IoT (Internet of Things) devices is accelerating the research on new solutions to make cloud services scalable. In this context, the novel concept of fog computing as well as the combined fog-to-cloud computing paradigm is becoming essential to decentralize the cloud, while bringing the services closer to the end-system. This article surveys e application layer communication protocols to fulfill the IoT communication requirements, and their potential for implementation in fog- and cloud-based IoT systems. To this end, the article first briefly presents potential protocol candidates, including request-reply and publish-subscribe protocols. After that, the article surveys these protocols based on their main characteristics, as well as the main performance issues, including latency, energy consumption, and network throughput. These findings are thereafter used to place the protocols in each segment of the system (IoT, fog, cloud), and thus opens up the discussion on their choice, interoperability, and wider system integration. The survey is expected to be useful to system architects and protocol designers when choosing the communication protocols in an integrated IoT-to-fog-to-cloud system architecture.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

And QUIC meets IoT: performance assessment of MQTT over QUIC

We study the performance of the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport Protocol (MQTT) over QUIC. QUIC has been recently proposed as a new transport protocol, and it is gaining relevance at a very fast pace, favored by the support of key players, such as Google. It overcomes some of the limitations of the more widespread alternative, TCP, especially regarding the overhead of connection establishment. However, its use for Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios is still under consideration. In this paper we integrate a GO-based implementation of the QUIC protocol with MQTT, and we compare the performance of this combination with that exhibited by the more traditional MQTT/TLS/TCP approach. We use Linux Containers and we emulate various wireless network technologies by means of the ns3 simulator. The results of an extensive measurement campaign, show that QUIC protocol can indeed yield good performances for typical IoT use cases.The authors are grateful for the funding of the Industrial Doctorates Program from the University of Cantabria (Call 2018). This work has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the Elkartek program under the DIGITAL project (Grant agreement no. KK-2019/00095), as well as by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, FEDER) by means of the project FIERCE: Future Internet Enabled Resilient smart CitiEs (RTI2018-093475-AI00)

Even lower latency in IIoT: evaluation of QUIC in industrial IoT scenarios

In this paper we analyze the performance of QUIC as a transport alternative for Internet of Things (IoT) services based on the Message Queuing Telemetry Protocol (MQTT). QUIC is a novel protocol promoted by Google, and was originally conceived to tackle the limitations of the traditional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), specifically aiming at the reduction of the latency caused by connection establishment. QUIC use in IoT environments is not widespread, and it is therefore interesting to characterize its performance when in over such scenarios. We used an emulation-based platform, where we integrated QUIC and MQTT (using GO-based implementations) and compared their combined performance with the that exhibited by the traditional TCP/TLS approach. We used Linux containers as end devices, and the ns-3 simulator to emulate different network technologies, such as WiFi, cellular, and satellite, and varying conditions. The results evince that QUIC is indeed an appropriate protocol to guarantee robust, secure, and low latency communications over IoT scenarios.The authors are grateful for the funding of the Industrial Doctorates Program from the University of Cantabria (Call 2020). This work has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the Elkartek program under the DIGITAL project (grant agreement number KK-2019/00095), and by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, FEDER) by means of the project FIERCE: Future Internet Enabled Resilient smart CitiEs (RTI2018-093475-AI00)

An Experimental Investigation of Tuning QUIC-Based Publish-Subscribe Architectures in IoT

There has been growing interest in using the QUIC transport protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). In lossy and high latency networks, QUIC outperforms TCP and TLS. Since IoT greatly differs from traditional networks in terms of architecture and resources, IoT specific parameter tuning has proven to be of significance. While RFC 9006 offers a guideline for tuning TCP within IoT, we have not found an equivalent for QUIC. This paper is the first of our knowledge to contribute empirically based insights towards tuning QUIC for IoT. We improved our pure HTTP/3 publish-subscribe architecture and rigorously benchmarked it against an alternative: MQTT-over-QUIC. To investigate the impact of transport-layer parameters, we ran both applications on Raspberry Pi Zero hardware. Eight metrics were collected while emulating different network conditions and message payloads. We enumerate the points we experimentally identified (notably, relating to authentication, MAX\_STREAM messages, and timers) and elaborate on how they can be tuned to improve resource consumption and performance. Our application offered lower latency than MQTT-over-QUIC with slightly higher resource consumption, making it preferable for reliable time-sensitive dissemination of information

Low Latency Reliable Data Sharing Mechanism for UAV Swarm Missions

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms is increasing in many commercial applications as well as military applications (such as reconnaissance missions, search and rescue missions). Autonomous UAV swarm systems rely on multi-node interhost communication, which is used in coordination for complex tasks. Reliability and low latency in data transfer play an important role in the maintenance of UAV coordination for these tasks. In these applications, the control of UAVs is performed by autonomous software and any failure in data reception may have catastrophic consequences. On the other hand, there are lots of factors that affect communication link performance such as path loss, interference, etc. in communication technology (WIFI, 5G, etc.), transport layer protocol, network topology, and so on. Therefore, the necessity of reliable and low latency data sharing mechanisms among UAVs comes into prominence gradually. This paper examines available middleware solutions, transport layer protocols, and data serialization formats. Based on evaluation results, this research proposes a middleware concept for mobile wireless networks like UAV swarm systems

On the behavior of transport protocols over IIoT environments

RESUMEN: QUIC es un protocolo de transporte encriptado, multiplexado y de baja latencia promovido por Google y diseñado desde cero para abordar las limitaciones del protocolo TCP, que es la solución que se ha venido utilizando de manera más habitual. Sin embargo, QUIC ha sido diseñado principalmente para servicios web, por lo que su uso en entornos IIoT no ha sido suficientemente analizado, resultando particularmente interesante caracterizar su rendimiento cuando se utiliza en estos escenarios. En este proyecto se analiza el desempeño de QUIC como alternativa de transporte para IIoT, utilizando el protocolo MQTT, así como el papel de los algoritmos de control de congestión, que implementan un conjunto de técnicas para evitar situaciones de saturación en la red y recuperar datos en caso de pérdida. En ese sentido, Google propuso recientemente BBR para reemplazar los algoritmos tradicionales de control de congestión basados en pérdidas, como NewReno o CUBIC, con el objetivo de incrementar el rendimiento y reducir la latencia. Sin embargo, muchos estudios han puesto de manifiesto problemas de rendimiento de BBR, como la poco equidad en el reparto de capacidad entre flujos con diferentes RTT, o al compartir el canal con algoritmos basados en pérdidas como CUBIC. En la memoria se realiza, en primer lugar, una revisión del estado del arte, en la que se analiza el funcionamiento de los protocolos implicados. A continuación se ha empleado el simulador ns-3 para comparar el desempeño de QUIC con el observado al hacer uso del esquema tradicional TCP/TLS, así como las diferencias entre los algoritmos de control de congestión. Se han simulado diferentes tecnologías de red, y los resultados obtenidos ponen de manifiesto que QUIC ofrece un buen rendimiento, lo que permitiría su adopción en escenarios IIoT.ABSTRACT: QUIC is an encrypted, multiplexed, and low-latency transport protocol promoted by Google and designed from the ground up to tackle the limitations of the traditional TCP. However, QUIC use in IIoT environments is not widespread, and it is therefore interesting to characterize its performance when in over such scenarios. In this project, the performance of QUIC as a transport alternative for IIoT based on MQTT is analyzed, as well as the role of congestion control algorithms, which propose a set of techniques to avoid saturation situations in the network and recover from data losses. In that sense, Google recently proposed BBR to replace traditional loss-based congestion control algorithms, such as NewReno or CUBIC, to achieve high performance and low latency. However, many studies have reported performance issues in BBR operation, such as unfairness between flows with different RTTs or sharing the channel with loss-based algorithms. In order to introduce the information in a clear way, an analysis of the state of the art is first carried out in which the operation of the protocols involved is briefly analyzed and explained. The ns-3 simulator is then used to compare the performance of QUIC with that exhibited by the traditional TCP/TLS scheme, as well as the differences between the congestion control algorithms. Different network technologies are simulated, evincing that QUIC yields good performances in configurations resembling IIoT scenarios.Grado en Ingeniería de Tecnologías de Telecomunicació

Wireless communication technologies for the Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) is the inter-networking paradigm based on many processes such as identifying, sensing, networking and computation. An IoT technology stack provides seamless connectivity between various physical and virtual objects. The increasing number of IoT applications leads to the issue of transmitting, storing, and processing a large amount of data. Therefore, it is necessary to enable a system capable to handle the growing traffic requirements with the required level of QoS (Quality of Service). IoT devices become more complex due to the various components such as sensors and network interfaces. The IoT environment is often demanding for mobile power source, QoS, mobility, reliability, security, and other requirements. Therefore, new IoT technologies are required to overcome some of these issues. In recent years new wireless communication technologies are being developed to support the development of new IoT applications. This paper provides an overview of some of the most widely used wireless communication technologies used for IoT applications