Smart IoT Gateway For Heterogeneous Devices Interoperability

Abstract

The Internet of things (IoT) will interconnect a huge amount of devices, leading to a new way of interaction in the physical and virtual world, inspired by the idea of ubiquity, where all the objects around us, such as: sensors, automobiles, refrigerators, thermostats, industrial robots, tablets, smartphones, etc. could be connected anytime and anywhere. However, one of the main challenges that faces IoT is the high degree of heterogeneity in terms of communication capabilities of the devices, protocols, technologies or hardware. We focus on the implementation of a new Smart IoT Gateway designed to allow interconnection and interoperability between heterogeneous devices in the IoT. The proposed gateway offers significant advantages: (i) it enables connectivity of different protocols and traditional communication technologies (Ethernet) and wireless (ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi); (ii) it uses a flexible protocol that translates all the data obtained from the different sensors into a uniform format, performing the analysis of the data obtained from the environment-based-rules related to the different types of sensors; (iii) it uses a lightweight and optimal protocol on the use of devices with limited resources for delivering information environment; and (iv) it provides local data storage for later use and analysis. Our proof of concept demonstrates the performance and capacity of the proposed Smart IoT Gateway is related with Active and Healthy Aging (AHA).