IoT Interoperability: Challenges, Trends, and Solutions

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept which aim is to enlarge the traditional Internet of Computers to the other things has been promoting innovative solutions at the full stack, ranging from devices, bridges and gateways to applications and services. In the other perspective, IoT has been also supporting new and fascinating research areas such as Ambient Intelligence and Ambient Assisted Living, Smart Objects, Sensor Networks, Smart agriculture, Fog and Edge Computing, Industry 4.0, Smart Grid, Environmental Monitoring, just to name a few.

The increasing success and expansion of the IoT brought several challenges where the interoperability is one of the most relevant as it directly impacts on the success of the IoT adoption by companies and institutions. The ability of heterogeneous devices and systems to seamlessly interact regardless of their intrinsic characteristics depends on interoperability but its materialization has not been an easy task. Standardization organizations as well as associations of commercial companies have be specifying interoperability standards but none was yet assumed as a worldwide IoT Standard. This situation has led research community to adopt different standards and to provide specific interoperability mechanisms for each layer of the IoT stack.

This Topical Collection seeks original and unpublished articles addressing the IoT interoperability challenge or generalist IoT applications and services that provide an approach for seamlessly address vertical and/or horizontal market integration.

Keywords:

Internet of Things, Interoperability, Technical Interoperability, Syntactical Interoperability, Semantic Interoperability, Semantic Technologies, Ontologies, Integration, Gateways, Multi-Platform Integration, Web of Things, Standardization, Real-word Web of Things Systems