Semantic Interoperability in the IoT: Extending the Web of Things Architecture

Abstract

The adoption of the Internet of Things is gradually increasing. However, there remains a significant obstacle that hinders its adoption as a truly ubiquitous technology: the ability of constrained devices to unambiguously exchange data with shared meaning. In this respect, the World Wide Web Consortium has developed the Web of Things architecture to provide semantic data exchange. However, such an architecture does not cover all possible use cases and still has important limitations. This article specifically addresses these issues. In particular, it discusses the design and implementation of a solution that extends the Web of Things architecture to achieve a higher level of semantic interoperability for the Internet of Things. The proposed solution relies on a human-assisted translation process and defines an architecture that enhances the semantic compatibility between components in the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is demonstrated through both a quantitative and a qualitative evaluation, in terms of performance and key properties in comparison with the state of the art.