EZPlugIn: Plug-n-Play Framework for a Heterogeneous IoT Infrastructure for Smart Home

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) introduces a very large scale of technologies. An IoT system is comprised of a large number of smart devices and sensors connected together that are often non-intrusive, transparent, and invisible. Current IoT networks using IP-based Internet architecture are facing limitations in scalability and interoperability among the devices. In this work, we propose a plug-n-play IoT framework to significantly improve the interoperability among devices so as to obtain a more flexible IoT infrastructure. To achieve the plug-n-play feature in an IoT network, we propose to modify the notion of communication among the devices by adapting the Named Data Networking (NDN) communication paradigm in the IoT infrastructure. In NDN, a device communicates with other devices and sends data requests by the name of the accessing component instead of their physical locations. Security issues in such a framework can be more easily handled than in the current Internet. But adaptation of NDN in the current communication model is a challenging task. So we have modified data structures as well as the format of exchanged messages to fit the NDN with the service based communication model. The proposed framework has been studied in a smart home environment. Simulation results show that the proposed framework has less transmission delay and better throughput compared to IP-based systems.