Preparing for Highly Scalable and Replicable IoT Systems

Interoperability, reusability, and scalability are important design objectives as IoT systems become pervasive and begin to address complex use cases. They underpin the need for open-standard solutions which allow vendors and solution providers to collaborate. A horizontal architecture satisfies the three design objectives while breaking down the barriers between silo IoT applications. oneM2M, the global IoT standard, defines such a horizontal architecture. It consists of a middleware technology layer located between a lower layer that consists of devices and communications technologies, and an upper layer of IoT applications. This article describes the oneTRANSPORT Data Marketplace pilot project, based on the oneM2M standard. It enabled IoT data sharing from over 200 types of connected assets belonging to several public and private sector agencies. Through practical trials, the pilot illustrates how data scientists, operations staff, and facilities managers supervised transportation networks and offered real-time journey planning guidance to the traveling public. The value of the oneM2M standards-based data marketplace is illustrated by reference to other deployments that reuse the horizontal architecture over a larger geographic footprint and to implement other IoT use cases.