A metaprotocol-based Internet of Things architecture

Figures & data

Figure 1. A system example with various nodes and connections.

Figure 2. Node model.

Figure 3. Software architecture of middleware implementation.

Figure 4. Protocol format and encapsulation.

Listing 1. Implicit security checks before sending a message.

Listing 2. Implicit security checks upon message reception.

Figure 5. Example IoT System.

Figure 6. Architecture implementation guidelines.

Table 1. Operations related to addition of simple node in existing IoT system.

Architecture	Thing level	Gateway level	Server level	User level
Common 4–layer architecture	operation of the thing configuration for communication with remote node	optional configuration of the gateway for message processing and forwarding	inserting added node parameters to the server system optional higher-level logic	inserting settings for communication and message processing for added node on user application
Proposed architecture	operation of the node with thing role optional configuration for communication with remote node if implicit settings are not enough	optional configuration of the node with gateway role for message processing and forwarding if implicit settings are not enough	optional configuration for added node in the node with server role if implicit settings are not enough optional higher-level logic	optional insertion of added node settings for communication and message processing on node with user role if implicit settings are not enough

Table 2. Traffic comparison for a simple message transmission.

Payload/protocol	1 B rarely	20 B rarely	100 B rarely	100 B often
MQTT	64	83	163	123
XMPP	1130	1149	1229	146
CoAP	26	45	125	125
Metaprotocol with minimal message	1	21	101	101
Metaprotocol with full message (all elements)	21	40	120	120

Figure A1. A simple IoT system.

Table A3. Elements of message 1.

Element	Value
Header (HD)	0b11111000
Message id (ID)	0 × 48
Length (LEN)	0 × 0009
Destination node ID (DST)	0 × 333333FFFE333333
Source node ID (SRC)	0 × 111111FFFE111111
Payload (PL)	“pres = 1034”
Cyclic redundancy check (CRC)	(4 bytes)

Table A4. BLE packet for message 2.

Element	Value
Preamble	(1 byte)
Access Address	(4 bytes)
Header	(2 bytes)
AdvA	0 × 222222222222
AdvData	0 × 14
Cyclic redundancy check (CRC)	(3 bytes)

Figure A2. Distributed IoT system example.