networking

Internet of thIngs:
The Protocols Landscape
T
he next era of computing is the The other termInternet is defined as a
Internet of Things (IoT), also known global communication network connecting
as the Internet of Objects. IoT trillions of computers across the planet,
refers to the networked interconnection of enabling information sharing.
everyday objects, which are equipped with
ubiquitous intelligence. A recent report by IoT architecture
McKinsey Global Institute reported that As the IoT is capable of connecting billions
the number of connected machines has of heterogeneous objects via the Internet,
increased by 300 per cent over the last few there is an emerging requirement for a
Prof. Anand Nayyar is
an assistant professor years. By 2025, economic impact of the dynamic layered architecture. Fig. 1 repre-
in the department of IoT is estimated to range from $2.7 tril- sents a standard IoT layered architecture.
computer applications
and IT at KCL Institute lion to $6.2 trillion. Wikibon predicts that Objects layer. The first layer (perception
of Management the value created from the Internet will be layer) represents physical sensors of the IoT,
and Technology,
Jalandhar, Punjab. He about $1279 billion in 2020, growing annu- which sense, collect and process information.
loves to work on and ally at a rate of 14 per cent. Object abstraction layer. This layer
research open source
technologies, cloud The International Telecommunication transfers the data acquired by the object
computing, sensor Union (ITU) defines the IoT as, A global layer to the service management layer via
networks, hacking and
network security infrastructure for the information society, secure channels. Data can be transferred
enabling advanced services by interconnect- using different technologies like 3G, 4G,
ing (physical and virtual) things based on GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee.
existing and evolving interoperable informa- Service management layer. This layer
tion and communication technologies. enables IoT application programmers to
The scope of the IoT is increasing in work with heterogeneous objects, irrespec-
diverse ways, as IoT-based solutions are tive of the hardware platform.
extending to virtually all areas of everyday Application layer. This layer enables
life, from smart homes to smart industrial high-quality smart services to fetch what
production. And the evolution of Industry the customers need. It covers smart homes,
4.0 has begun. smart production units, transportation, smart
The term Internet of Thingsconsists of healthcare-based biosensor equipment, etc.
two words: Internet and things. The latter Business layer. This layer manages the
refers to various IoT devices with unique overall IoT systems activities and services.
identities, which are capable of remote It is responsible for building the business
sensing, actuating and live monitoring of model, graphs and flowcharts on the basis
certain kind of data. IoT devices are also of data acquired at the application layer.
Fig. 1: IoT enabled for live exchange of data with other
layered connected devices and applications, either IoT protocols
architecture
directly or Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engi-
Application Layer Application Business Layer indirectly, neers (IEEE) and European Telecommuni-
or collect- cations Standards Institute (ETSI) have de-
Middleware Layer Service Application
Application Layer
Composition Layer ing data fined some of the most important protocols
Coordination Layer Service Service from other for the IoT. These are listed below.
Management Management
Backbone
devices, Constrained Application Protocol
Network Layer Network Layer Objects processing it (CoAP). Created by the IETF Constrained
Object Abstraction
Abstraction
Existed alone
Access
Layer
and sending RESTful Environments (CoRE) working
Application
Perception Layer System Edge
Technology
Objects Objects it to vari- group, CoAP is an Internet application pro-
ous servers. tocol for constrained devices. It is designed

74 october 2017 | electronics For You www.eFYmag.com

 networking
for use between devices on end-to-end encryption. Being
CoAP Environment
the same constrained network, a secure protocol, it sits on
between devices and general REST Internet top of core IoT protocols and
nodes on the Internet, and be- connects the client to the
tween devices on different con- server via a stream of XML
strained networksboth joined stanzas. The XML stanza
REST-CoAP CoAP Server
on the Internet. This protocol is Proxy has three main components:
especially designed for IoT sys- CoAP Communication
CoAP Clients message, presence and IQ.
HTTP Communication
tems based on HTTP protocols. Advanced Message
CoAP makes use of the UDP Fig. 2: How CoAP works Queuing Protocol (AMQP).
protocol for lightweight imple- Developed by John OHara at
mentation. It also makes use of JPMorgan Chase in London,
RESTful architecture, which is Publish AMQP is an application-layer
very similar to the HTTP pro- protocol for message-oriented
Subscribe
tocol. It is used within mobiles Publish middleware environments. It
and social-network-based appli- supports reliable communi-
cations and eliminates ambigu- Publish Topics Subscribe cation via message delivery
ity by using the HTTP get, post, assurance primitives like at-
put and delete methods. Apart most once, atleast once and
from communicating IoT data, exactly once delivery.
Publishers Broker Subscribers
CoAP allows secure exchange The AMQP protocol con-
of messages by using datagram Fig. 3: MQTT protocol architecture sists of a set of components
transport layer security (DTLS) that route and store messag-
protocol. es within a broker service,
MQTT protocol. Message Internet
with a set of rules for wiring
queue telemetry transport Client
the components together. It
(MQTT), a messaging proto- enables client applications to
col, was developed by Andy talk to the broker and inter-
Stanford-Clark of IBM and Server act with the AMQP model.
Arlen Nipper of Arcom in Server This model has the following
Gateway
1999. It is mostly used for re- three components:
mote monitoring in the IoT. Its Client Client
1. Exchange. Receives
primary task is to acquire data messages from publisher-
from many devices and trans- Fig. 4: XMPP architecture based applications and routes
port it to the IT infrastructure. them tomessage queues
MQTT connects devices and networks routing functions to small, cheap, 2. Message queue. Stores messages
with applications and middleware. A low-memory and power-consuming until these can be safely processed by
hub-and-spoke architecture is natural devices in vulnerable and low-band- the consuming client application
for MQTT. All the devices connect to width networks. 3. Binding. States the relationship
data concentrator servers like IBMs Extensible Messaging and between the message queue and the
new MessageSight appliance. MQTT Presence Protocol (XMPP). It is exchange
protocols work on top of TCP to pro- a communication IoT protocol for These components are connected
vide simple and reliable data streams. message-oriented middleware based into processing chains in the server to
MQTT protocol consists of three on XML language. It enables real- create the desired functionality.
main components: subscriber, time exchange of structured yet Data Distribution Service (DDS).
publisher and broker. The publisher extensible data between any two or This IoT protocol for real-time ma-
generates the data and transmits the more network entities. The protocol chine-to-machine communication was
information to subscribers through was developed by the Jabber open developed by the Object Management
the broker. The broker ensures secu- source community in 1999, basically Group (OMG). It enables scalable, real-
rity by cross-checking the authorisa- for real-time messaging, presence time, dependable, high-performance
tion of publishers and subscribers. information and maintenance of con- and interoperable data exchange
MQTT protocol is the preferred tact lists. XMPP enables messaging via publish-subscribe methodology.
option for IoT-based devices, and is applications to attain authentication, Compared to MQTT and CoAP IoT
able to provide efficient information- access control, and hop-by-hop and protocols, DDS makes use of broker-

www.eFYmag.com electronics For You | october 2017 75

 networking
less architecture and multi- than a protocol. It is highly
AMQP Broker Queues
casting to bring high-quality Subscriber
scalable, has a low footprint
QoS to applications. DDS can Publisher and is a free-cum-open source
be deployed in platforms rang- solution for device discovery
ing from low-footprint devices Publisher Exchange Subscriber and identification, device con-
to the cloud, and supports figuration, autonomous device
efficient bandwidth usage as Publisher Subscriber
functionality, secure firmware
well as agile orchestration of updates and connection of
system components. devices from sensor to smart
DDS protocol has two Fig. 5: AMQP architecture user interface. VSCP makes
main layers: data-centric things interact at the applica-
publish-subscribe (DCPS) and Application 1 Application 2 Application 3 tion layer. It makes use of
data-local reconstruction layer DLRL CAN, RS-232, Ethernet, TCP/
(DLRL). DCPS delivers the in- IP, MQTT and 6LowPan.
DDS Domain Receiver
formation to subscribers, and VSCP uses an event
Subscriber
DLRL provides an interface to Topic
format and supports global
Topic data values
DCPS functionalities, enabling Data Object unique identifiers for nodes,
DataReader
sharing of distributed data thus making a node identifi-
DDS

Sender
among IoT-enabled objects. able no matter where it is in-
Publisher Receiver
Simple Text Oriented Mes- stalled in the world. Besides,
Subscriber
saging Protocol (STOMP). data values data values
it includes a register model
This text-based protocol was DataWriter in order to provide a flexible
DataReader
developed to work with mes- common interface for node
dissemination

sage-oriented middleware. It configuration and a model

provides an interoperable wire Network for controlling the functional-
format that enables STOMP ity of each node. VSCP does
clients to communicate with Fig. 6: DDS protocol architecture not make any assumptions
any STOMP message broker to regarding the lower level
enable easy and widespread SEND
SimpAnnotationMethod broker
system used to realise the
MessageHandler channel
messaging interoperabil- SEND
/app
physical interconnection
request
ity among many languages, destination:/topic/a
...
channel with the node. Therefore it
/topic StompBrokerRelay
platforms and brokers. Like WebSocket client messages MessageHandler
/topic
works with different transport
AMQP, STOMP provides mes- mechanisms such as Ether-
MESSAGE
sage header with properties MESSAGE response
STOMP
TCP
net, TCP/IP, wireless, Zigbee,
channel
and a frame body. destination:/topic/a
...
Message
Broker
Bluetooth, CAN, GPRS, RS-
However, STOMP does not 232 and USB.
deal in queues and topicsit Fig. 7: STOMP architecture VSCP is event-based.
uses a SEND semantic with a Every time an event occurs, it
destination string. The broker Button 1 Lamp 1 Lamp 2 is broadcast to all other nodes
must map it onto something on the network. From there
that it understands inter- on, each node decides on
nally, such as a topic, queue Node 1 Node 2 Node 3 its own if the event received
or exchange. Consumers then DM DM
needs to be processed or not.
subscribe to those destinations. Event The final decision depends
Since those destinations are not Bus on the nodes decision ma-
mandated in the specifications, Fig. 8: VSCP operations trix, which is made up of a
different brokers may support number of if condition>then
different flavours of the destination. some transactional semantics. One action>lines, where the condition>
So, its not always straightforward to of the most interesting examples is is evaluated based on the fields pres-
port code between brokers. RabbitMQ Web STOMP, which al- ent in the VSCP datagram broadcast
However, STOMP is simple and lows you to expose messaging in a to the network.
lightweight (although somewhat ver- browser through Websockets. This is a reprint of the article pub-
bose on the wire), with a wide range Very Simple Control Protocol lished in June issue of Open Source
of language bindings. It also provides (VSCP). VSCP is more a framework For You magazine.

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