Ontological Modelling of Non-Functional Characteristics of Devices in IoT systems

Internet of Things (IoT) describes a network of interconnected things that are embedded with sensors and are capable of collecting and exchanging data over the internet. A 'thing' here can refer to any device fitted with sensors and has the ability to collect and transfer data over a network. Our planet has got billions of connected devices as IoT has transformed and changed the way everything runs. Humans, governments and businesses are all connected to a lot of devices. For example, Humans canwear a smartwatch that can communicate with a mobile device. With newupcoming technologies and development in networking field, IoT market will continue to evolve and come up with new innovations. has predicted an average growth rate of 16.2% between the year 2020 and 2027 in the smart health market. There is so much investment done in this field as IoT has a huge impact on the businesses and also in our personal lives. Due to the tremendous growth in this sector the IoT ecosystem has grown at a very high pace and in the future it is expected to expand to other areas as well. As the IoT sector is developing rapidly the issues concerning this field are also increasing. Issues such as networking, security, device management, cost, connectivity and more. One such issue is the device model followed by the IoT devices. All devices follow some device model for device management and configuration. There are many device models available which provide these functionalities to the devices. Our aim in this thesis is to provide a global device model for device management in IoT which is independent of device specific type and also free from specific architectural assumptions. Such a global device model can fit over all types of devices as it does not involve the specific functions of a device and also does not follow the architecture of the device. All devices have some or the other function whether it is a motion sensor or fire alarm which are different from each other and they also follow different type of architecture style. By removing these and taking only the common properties under consideration which will be same for all devices that can easily be used on all devices we proceed to develop our global device model. Under the subsection we discuss why such a device model is important, what methodology we follow to achieve our work and the several different challenges faced.