NovaGenesis and Future Internet of Things (FIoT): Recent Demonstration at CSBC 2017

Internet of things (IoT) has been deeply challenging current Internet architecture. Many limitations, like weak security, data distribution efficiency, provenance and traceability of sources, excessive human intervention, lack of interoperability and service-awareness in devices configuration, have been exposed now and are calling attention of society. NovaGenesis addresses these limitations by properly integrating the following strategies:

• Efficient IoT data exchanging, storage, and processing via information-centric networking (ICN) paradigm;
• Contract-based IoT services dynamic composition;
• Software-control/management of IoT devices accordingly to services requirements;
• Naming and name resolution of physical and virtual entities, proving identifier/locator splitting and semantics rich self-organization;
• Name-based routing and network caching. We demonstrate NovaGenesis as a viable alternative for current IoT architectures - a new paradigm we call Future Internet of Things (FIoT).

Our Future Internet of Things proposal with NovaGenesis is a mix of IoT and "clean slate" architectures for Internet. A proof-of-concept prototype was developed to demonstrate temperature measurement by a sensor with embedded NovaGenesis. Devices are represented by a proxy/gateway/controller service (PGCS) that "sell" its measuring capability. An IoT application looks for available devices to measure temperature. Dynamic contracts are established between the application and the PGCS and the PGCS and the embedded NovaGenesis service. Temperature samples are transported under the umbrella of contracts, using self-verifying naming, name-based routing, and a distributed network cache with publish/subscribe. Results indicate competitive performance in terms of data transfer, memory and CPU consumption at nodes. Embedded NovaGenesis has smaller RAM and ROM requirements when compared to a similar RPL + 6LowPAN stack. Data exchanging is performed in few milliseconds in a local area network. No TCP, UDP, IP, CoAP, MQTT, HTTP protocols are used in this demonstration. Only Wi-Fi and NovaGenesis. We demonstrated dynamic composition of IoT services towards a service-defined architecture (SDA).

The prototype have been demonstrated at the CSBC (Congresso da Sociedade Brasileira de Computação) 2017. The scenario as deployed at the CSCB 2017 is shown bellow. We employed Wireshark to show NovaGenesis messages. Local temperature have been displayed using gnu plot. We displayed one sample per second as captured by NXP LPC 1769 Wi-Fi device. Behind the computer there is a Wi-Fi access point.

NovaGenesis project started in 2008 considering the integration of the ingredients bellow:

Repair that Internet of Things is a key ingredient since the beginning of the design. To better understand this process, check out this paper published in 2011: Searching for Synergies among Future Internet Ingredients, Convergence and Hybrid Information Technology, Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Editors: Lee, Geuk and Howard, Daniel and Ślęzak, Dominik and Hong, You Sik, pp.61-68.

Our demonstration called attention of CSBC audience during coffee breaks. Bellow the visitation of Profs. Rodrigo Righi and Cristiano Costa from Unisinos, Brazil.

We also called attention of Prof. José Suruagy Monteiro from Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil.

NovaGenesis is also being experimented at FIBRE future Internet testbed. Victor Hugo D'Avila, a master degree student, presented this effort at the 2º Workshop do testbed FIBRE.

Finally, we presented NovaGenesis at Cloudscape Brazil and Workshop on Cloud Networks 2017. We presented the slide bellow, describing our latest advances, supporting institutions, team and other details of Inatel's Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) laboratory, which is a laboratory associated to the Radiocommunications Reference Center (CRR) initiative. We are also extending this scenario to run it at the Inatel Smart Campus experimental facility.

Future Internet of Things (FIoT) with NovaGenesis demonstrates the integration of key technologies for smart environments. Considering the current state-of-the art, our main contributions can be summarized as follows: proposal of a novel service-defined architecture (SDA), in which device configurations are a reflex of the real needs of services and applications (given by established contracts); combination of ICN benefits with named-services self-organization; and perennial identification of IoT devices, operating systems, services, and data using self-verifiable naming.

In this context, the gaps of current architectures that are covered by a FIoT supported by NovaGenesis are: (1) Interoperability of things - via smart object concept; services - by employing a service-oriented ecosystem; and data - through metadata published together with information objects. NG offers an unique API for communication among all services, favoring interoperability of heterogeneous devices, platforms, data and applications; (2) Distributed storage of data and information objects to improve scalability and efficiency of sharing. NovaGenesis aligns to the advantages of Information Centric Network (ICN) for IoT and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA); and (3) SOA-driven IoT services/applications ecosystem. NG encompasses self-organizing IoT services aimed at reducing human intervention. Services discover and contract one another by using names and their bindings. The aim here is to support complete IoT services life-cycling following SOA principles.

With these features, NovaGenesis is relevant for Cloudscape Brazil and Workshop on Cloud Networks 2017. FIoT with NovaGenesis proof-of-concept demonstrates the integration of many ingredients discussed in EUBrasilCloudFORUM Deliverable 3.1. More specifically, NovaGenesis addresses driver DR1.1 (security and privacy) with new techniques (self-verifying naming and contract-based operation), that improve trust-ability and integrity of IoT content. NovaGenesis addresses DR1.2 (data flow) with name-based routing and network caching. Data portability (DR1.3) is granted by semantics operator made of name bindings. NovaGenesis is ready to run virtualized. Our scenario is also being integrated to Federated Union of telecommunication Research Facilities for a EU Brazil Open Laboratory (FUTEBOL) project.

Please, access our demonstration video bellow:

We have also a channel in Youtube and two pages in Facebook: