Future Internet Systems Design and Implementation: Cloud and IoT Services Based on IoT-A and FIWARE

Abstract

In recent years, Cloud Computing and Internet of Things (IoT) have been rapidly advancing as the two fundamental technologies of the Future Internet (FI) concept. Different IoT systems are designed and implemented according to the IoT domain requirements, thus not taking into consideration issues of openness, scalability, interoperability, and use case independence. This work focuses on the presentation of a framework that integrates future IoT systems in smart cities by utilizing state-of-the-art architectures, technologies, solutions, and services developed by the IoT-A and FIWARE FP7 projects of the EU. We expect that in future smart city environments, an IoT infrastructure will act as a key enabler for the revolution of smart networked systems with embedded devices. Also, the proposed solution overcomes the fragmentation of vertically oriented closed systems, architectures, and application areas and move towards open systems and platforms that support multiple applications. This is a key requirement for smart city infrastructures that can be reused by a plethora of applications in various domains, such as transportation systems, energy, waste management, environmental monitoring, buildings, etc. The proposed system will encompass FIWARE and IoT-A to develop innovative IoT platforms and services and it will include generic IoT devices that are independent of connectivity modes and are not coupled to specific IoT protocols. It will further supply interoperability with emerging connectivity protocols based on actions regarding standardization and requirements. We expect that future solutions will simplify data transfer by supporting the vast majority of transfer protocols and will allow effective utilization of network capabilities for transition and reception of real-time data. Using FIWARE services will ensure reliability, modularity, and uniform APIs independent of the underlying hardware and it will move beyond current solutions that are platform dependent, and vendor specific. The result will be a dynamic configurable infrastructure, scalable, interoperable, heterogeneous, and secure that could also seamlessly integrate other existing and future platforms and devices. Information can flow among IoT systems in a secure and privacy-preserving way, allowing for extracting context for developing cross-domain applications and breaking the domain silos of today’s IoT world.