Measuring Data Transfer in Heterogeneous IoT Environments

Internet-of-Things (IoT) is characterized by the heterogeneity of the used devices, which leads to information exchange problems. To address these problems, the Plug´n´Interoperate approach is used, where the steps needed to perform the information exchange between devices are described by interoperability specifications (IS) and are operated by the devices. However, more than one IS can exist to describe the information exchange between each pair of devices, so to choose the suitable IS, there is the need to measure the information exchange described by each one. To do this, there already exist some methods. But, they rely on a deep understanding of the IS and the data formats involved. To overcome this, an advanced measurement method is presented. This method advances by measuring the data transfer provided by an IS, without the need of specific knowledge about it. This measurement does that, by relying only on an abstract view of the data transfer and providing results that allows the benchmarking of the entire interoperability performance of the IoT environment. Thus allowing the comparison of different IS without the need of being specialized on them.