Today, it is inconceivable to think about modern life without the Internet. The Internet has transformed our lives, serving as a digital backbone for communication, media and Web-based interaction among human users. It has, however, begun to evolve into the Internet of Things (IoT), interconnecting constrained devices such as sensors, actuators and miniaturised computing platforms. Aided in large part by advances in decreasing hardware costs, better battery, radio and computational technology, these kinds of connected IoT devices have rapidly begun to proliferate. The traffic generated and exchanged by IoT devices is expected to dwarf that produced by humans.
IoT gateways, simply put, are physical or virtual devices that connect devices, sensors and actuators placed in different kinds of environments, to the Internet. On the surface, their function may sound simple. However, IoT gateways are sophisticated components which are vital in ensuring the success of the IoT in order to create vast and integrated ecosytems that can further facilitate the development of new software and hardware solutions for the IoT. IoT gateways need to cope with new radio technologies, sensors, embedded systems and heterogeneous communication strategies to securely connect the suppliers of the data with the consumers. IoT gateways require distinct solutions that must carefully consider the communication protocols, energy management policies, security mechanisms as well as data and information management models that need to be specifically developed for them.
The main research question of this dissertation is: “For various kinds of IoT network topologies, how can gateways be configured and managed, to support connectivity and communication with IoT end devices?”. By recognising and abstracting the many roles that IoT gateways need to perform, the main goal of this dissertation is simplifying the integration and interoperability of edge IoT devices to the Internet, and facilitating remote configuration and management. Four research areas for IoT gateways were studied: Network Connectivity, Energy Consumption, Protocol Composition, and Gateway Man- agement.
For network connectivity, the communication and reachability requirements exerted on IoT gateways by IoT devices and various IoT edge network topologies were studied. For energy consumption, the utilisation of gateway energy consumption patterns were investigated, in order to optimise communication as well as monitor operational performance. For protocol composition, the specification, implementation and deployment of protocols, gateway protocol stacks and network services was researched. Lastly, for gateway management, the research into redundancy management as well as development of IoT management practices for operational management and configuration, was performed.
The results and contributions of this dissertation are categorised into three abstraction levels of an IoT gateway. These are at the network, management and communication levels of abstractions respectively. At the network abstraction, the work is oriented towards IPv6- based networks. The results describe the various IoT topologies, and gateway configuration and design to aid with IPv6 address allocation and network connectivity for edge devices. At the management abstraction, the dissertation identifies patterns in IoT gateway management and contributes object models and communication techniques for gateway configuration, operational monitoring, redundancy management and device proxying. At the communication abstraction, the dissertation contributes an implementation framework and a specification language allowing rapid development of communication protocols. The results also describe how energy consumption in IoT gateways can be employed both to optimise data transmissions as well as detect network-based attacks.
Both proofs of concept as well as conducted field experiments were used to verify the results of the dissertation. Empirical findings and obtained results have also been adopted both for Internet and IoT device management standardisation.
The doctoral dissertation of M.Sc. (Tech) Bilhanan Silverajan titled Communication Protocol and Management Considerations for Internet of Things Gateway will be publicly examined in the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences of Tampere University at 12 o’clock on Tuesday 29th of June 2021. The venue is TB109, Tietotalo, Korkeakoulunkatu 1. Professor Sasu Tarkoma from University of Helsinki will be the Opponent. The Custos will be Professor Kari Systä from the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences of Tampere University.
The dissertation is available online at http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-1981-6.
You can participate in the dissertation via remote connection (Zoom).