Middleware Solutions for the Internet of Things: A Survey

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT), along with its wider variants including numerous technologies, things, and people: the Internet of Everything (IoE) and the Internet of Nano Things (IoNT), are considered as part of the Internet of the future and ubiquitous computing allowing the communication among billions of smart devices and objects, and have recently drawn a very significant research attention. In these approaches, there are varieties of heterogeneous devices empowered by new capabilities and interacting with each other to achieve specific applications in different domains. A middleware layer is therefore required to abstract the physical layer details of the smart IoT devices and ease the complex and challenging task of developing multiple backend applications. In this chapter, an overview of IoT technologies, architecture, and main applications is given first and then followed by a comprehensive survey on the most recently used and proposed middleware solutions designed for IoT networks. In addition, open issues in IoT middleware design and future works in the field of middleware development are highlighted.