A Semantic-Enabled Framework for Future Internet of Things Applications

While the challenge of connecting Internet of Things (IoT) devices at the lowest layer has been widely studied, integrating and interoperating huge amounts of sensed data of heterogeneous IoT devices is becoming increasingly important because of the possibility of consuming such data in supporting many potential novel IoT applications. A common approach to processing and consuming IoT data is a centralized paradigm: sensor data is sent over the network to a comparatively powerful central server or a cloud service, where all processing takes place. However, this approach has some limitations as it requires devices to interact directly with a cloud which is not cost effective. First, it has high demands on the device's storage and computational capabilities. Second, as devices grow rapidly in a deployment area, sending all the data to a centralized cloud server requires high network bandwidth. Moreover, this often creates data privacy concerns as all raw data will be sent to a centralized place. To address the above limitations for building future Internet of Things applications, we present an early design of a novel framework that combines Internet of Things, Semantic Web, and Big Data concepts. We not only present the core components to build an IoT system, but also list existing alternatives with their merits. This framework aims to incorporate open standards to address the potential challenges in building future IoT applications. Therefore, our discussion revolves around open standards to build the framework, rather than proprietary standards.