Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOS
Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOS

FhP-AICOS team awarded for Best WIP Paper for Emerging Technologies

10.11.2022

 

In the paper, NextGenGW: a software-based architecture targeting IoT interoperability, “we propose a solution based on a recent IETF standard, the Semantic Data Format (SDF), which addresses semantic and syntactic interoperability”. These words are from Carlos Resende, Researcher at FhP-AICOS, and co-author of the before-mentioned article, recently awarded for Best Work In Progress (WIP) Paper for Emerging Technologies at the 27th IEEE International Conference ETFA 2022.

The paper has been published in the scope of the PhD of Carlos Resende, and also as a result of the work developed on the ongoing project City Catalyst. Senior researcher, Waldir Moreira Júnior, and Luís Almeida, Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at FEUP, are co-authors.

According to Carlos Resende, “IoT interoperability is still a problem in IoT installation due to the increasing number of devices connected to the Internet and their heterogeneity. IoT Analytics estimates a growth of 13% in device connections between 2020 and 2025.

Additionally, a McKinsey study from 2021 estimates that the value that could be enabled by interoperability in IoT installations is between 30% and 89% in industrial settings, such as factories, work sites and retail environments.”

Carlos Resende goes into more technical detail, adding that, in the authors’ vision, “the massive and dense networks of devices foreseen in IoT need to be provisioned and managed in a (semi-)autonomous manner. The autonomous provisioning and lifecycle management of the IoT infrastructure in the Cloud and the Edge is already being addressed. However, in the Far-Edge, the device provisioning and lifecycle management are not yet automatized. Achieving such a vision requires such devices to be interoperable, so this publication is the first step toward accomplishing the (semi-)autonomous provisioning and lifecycle management of the network of devices in the Far-Edge.”

Regarding the award, Carlos Resende admits being “surprised and very happy when the paper was announced as the best work in progress in emerging technologies at the award ceremony”. “The validation by our peers of the identified problem and the solution we propose is what the award means to me and the most important thing about it. It is like a pill of motivation indicating that the direction we are heading is correct”, he adds.