Transparent Access to Heterogeneous IoT Based on Virtual Resources

The Internet of Things (IoT) inspires industries to deploy a massive number of connected devices to provide smart and ubiquitous services to influence our daily life. Edge computing leverages sufficient computation and storage at the edge of the network to enable deploying complex functions closer to the environment using Internet-connected devices. According to the purpose of the environment including privacy level, domain functionality, network scale and service quality, various environment-specific services can be provided through heterogeneous applications with sensors and actuators based on edge computing. However, for providing user-friendly service scenarios based on the transparent access to heterogeneous devices in edge computing, a consistent interface shall be provided to deliver services from edge computing to clients. In this paper, we propose transparent computing based on virtual resources to access heterogeneous IoT devices without considering the underlying network configuration at the edge of the networks. For supporting transparent access to different edge computing environments through a consistent interface, the virtual resource of edge gateway is proposed to bridge the Internet and devices which are deployed on the edge of the network. The proposed edge gateway exposes the services of the Internet of Things devices to the Internet using virtual resources that represent the resources of physical devices. The virtual resources provide a consistent interface to enable clients to access devices in edge computing without considering underlying protocols. The virtual resource is generated by the resource directory in the edge gateway through the registration of a device. Based on the device registration, the device information is stored in the gateway to link virtual resources and devices for translating messages according to the destination protocols and identifying physical devices that are represented by virtual resources. Moreover, through collaboration with the service provider, the function of device discovery and monitoring is provided to clients.