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2.11.4 Interoperability in the Internet of Things
2.11 IoT Related Standardisation 107
The Internet of Things is shaping the evolution of the future Internet. After
connecting people anytime and everywhere, the next step is to interconnect
heterogeneous things/machines/smart objects both between themselves and
with the Internet; allowing by thy way, the creation of value-added open and
interoperable services/applications, enabled by their interconnection, in such a
way that they can be integrated with current and new business and development
processes.
As for the IoT, future networks will continue to be heterogeneous, multivendors,
multi-services and largely distributed. Consequently, the risk of noninteroperability
will increase. This may lead to unavailability of some services
for end-users that can have catastrophic consequences regarding applications
related for instance to emergency or health, etc. Or, it could also mean that
users/applications are likely to loose key information out of the IoT due to this
lack of interoperability. Thus, it is vital to guarantee that network components
will interoperate to unleash the full value of the Internet of Things.
2.11.4.1 IoT interoperability necessary framework
Interoperability is a key challenge in the realms of the Internet of Things.
This is due to the intrinsic fabric of the IoT as: (i) high–dimensional,
with the co-existence of many systems (devices, sensors, equipment, etc.)
in the environment that need to communicate and exchange information;
(ii) highly-heterogeneous, where these vast systems are conceived by a lot
of manufacturers and are designed for much different purposes and targeting
diverse application domains, making it extremely difficult (if not impossible)
to reach out for global agreements and widely accepted specification;
(iii) dynamic and non-linear, where new Things (that were not even considered
at start) are entering (and leaving) the environment all the time and that
support new unforeseen formats and protocols but that need to communicate
and share data in the IoT; and (iv) hard to describe/model due to existence of
many data formats, described in much different languages, that can share (or
not) the same modelling principles, and that can be interrelated in many ways
with one another. This qualifies interoperability in the IoT as a problem of
complex nature!