Design and Implementation of an Interworking IoT Platform and Marketplace in Cloud of Things

An internet of things (IoT) platform is a multi-layer technology that enables automation of connected devices within IoT. IoT platforms serve as a middle-ware solution and act as supporting software that is able to connect different hardware devices, access points, and networks to other parts of the value chain. Virtual objects have become a vital component in every IoT platform. Virtual objects are the digital representation of a physical entity. In this paper, we design and implement a cloud-centric IoT platform that serves a purpose for registration and initialization of virtual objects so that technology tinkerers can consume them via the IoT marketplace and integrate them to build IoT applications. The proposed IoT platform differs from existing IoT platforms in the sense that they provide hardware and software services on the same platform that users can plug and play. The proposed IoT platform is separate from the IoT marketplace where users can consume virtual objects to build IoT applications. Experiments are conducted for IoT platform and interworking IoT marketplace based on virtual objects in CoT. The proposed IoT platform provides a user-friendly interface and is secure and reliable. An IoT testbed is developed and a case study is performed for a domestic environment to reuse virtual objects on the IoT marketplace. It also provides the discovery and sharing of virtual objects. IoT devices can be monitored and controlled via virtual objects. We have conducted a comparative analysis of the proposed IoT platform with FIWARE. Results conclude that the proposed system performs marginally better than FIWARE.