An XMPP-Based XML Representation Middleware to Build Universal Service-Oriented Gateway in M2M Environment

Thanks to the advances of wireless communications, embedded systems, and IP-networks, developments in Machine-to-Machine communications grow rapidly. In the part of network layer of M2M, various vertical M2M solutions of local wireless networking have been developed, these include Bluetooth, ZigBee, and WiFi direct. Every kind of wireless local network has their own techniques in device discovery, service discovery, and data encryption. There is an issue whether we want the M2M devices using different local network protocols to interoperate with each other in massive M2M network. To deal with this issue, we propose a middleware approach that builds a service-oriented gateway. The features of our system are as follows: (1) Use XMPP protocol to establish a secured communication between M2M domains. (2) Build a higher layer abstraction to represent an M2M device in the network. (3) Rather than using a standard to map network-dependent services to network-independent services, we use a device-description-file method to help middleware translate the network-independent services to network-dependent services, and vice versa. Our approach is more flexible and extensible.