A Novel Approach of IoT Services Orchestration Based on Multiple Sensor and Actuator Platforms Using Virtual Objects in Online IoT App-Store

The information and communication technology (ICT) is witnessing a revolutionary era with the advancements in the Internet of Things (IoT). An IoT network is a combination of sensor and actuator networks, connected and communicating in certain ways to design and provide IoT services to the end users. These IoT services are created by mapping physical-world objects into virtual-world objects. In this work, we propose a novel approach of IoT services orchestration based on multiple sensor and actuator platforms using virtual objects in online IoT application-store (app-store). In this work, we focused on combining the concepts of do-it-yourself (DIY) IoT marketplace, virtual objects (VOs), and virtual services. We built a fusion IoT services platform on a previously proposed IoT application store. The IoT application store enables the sharing and discovery of IoT VOs, along with micro-services associated with each VO uploaded into the application store. The fusion IoT services platform enables the user to fetch the desired or all VOs from the IoT app store and map the available VOs to form the fusion IoT services. The user can either select all the available VOs and see all the possible services’ combinations or select the desired (DIY) services and customize the virtual services scope. The performance of the proposed fusion IoT services platform was evaluated on the basis of the service connection times, service response times with varying load of VOs, virtual users, and active platforms. The proposed idea also offers a sustainable solution by proposing the reuse of existing resources and reducing duplicate deployments, which can lessen the total cost of the physical networks’ deployment and maintenance. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed work is the first of its kind.