IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2023 - 44

A Futuristic Architecture for Consumer IoT (CIoT)
to receive incentives. Although CIoT devices
generate small-size ME-centric data, the frequency
of data generation is massive. Furthermore,
there are monitoring devices that create
big file sizes and posing issues in current centralized
solutions. Decentralized storage solutions
are beneficial for big file sizes like videos since
they occupy a chunk of storage, and with
cheaper solutions, it is valid.
Semantic Interoperability
Edge computing and decentralized storage
solutions ME-centric environment can overcome
latency, reliability, and security challenges. However,
the diverse CIoT environment needs interoperability,
enabling the devices to understand
and interpret data from other devices autonomously
without human intervention. A key attribute
to facilitate data interoperability among the
CIoT devices is using standard ontologies like
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).4 Semantic
ontology for CIoT devices can envelop the
device's behavior, interaction possibilities, data
schema, security configuration, and protocol
bindings. Semantics can enable heterogeneous
devices and applications to interoperate among
themselves, interpret the data unambiguously,
and take the desired action.7 W3C has the main
spotlight in proposing a vendor and platformindependent
framework to enable interoperability
among various IoT devices using a metadatabased
file format called Thing Description (TD).8
TD provides a semantic description of a specific
IoT device, as well as its interactions. The
Web of Things (WoT) architecture provides
domain-specific metadata through TD, for which
we can conceptualize the knowledge on IoT systems.
In addition toW3C and its WoT architecture,
other standardization groups have taken similar
efforts to bring some level of consistency to the
IoT semantics. A fewof themare the Internet Architecture
Board and the Internet Research Task
Force, who organized a different event called
Workshop on IoT Semantic Interoperability . The
final objective of adopting standards (vocabularies
and protocols) and leveraging tools that enhance
interoperability is to provide advanced, valueadded,
interoperable information services. In light
of the above mentioned explanation, we describe
44
some of the requirements for standardized semantic
interoperability for CIoT devices as follows.
Data integrity and reliability: Most of the CIoT
devices use translation services, and the
adopted semantic model should provide the
complete set of data required by various services
based on their needs. The volume of data
produced using these vocabularies needs an
assessment since most of the computations
are currently carried out at the edge.
User-Generated semantic ontology: Standard
vocabulary is the most important requirement
to facilitate data interoperability
among CIoT devices. The semantic ontology
should be capable enough to explain concepts
and vocabularies to existing ontologies
and new possible ones for sustained development.
There are collaborative communitydriven
approaches like schema.org with
objectives to create and maintain a collection
of schemas usable for IoT applications.
Pervasive connectivity: The standardized semantic
interoperability mechanisms should not
affect the current CIoT application deployment.
It should be flexible enough to adapt to
the existing implementations to enable smooth
pervasive connectivity among CIoTdevices.
Blockchain
Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin work triggered
interest in blockchain technology in 2008.9 Inherently,
blockchain, also called Distributed Ledger
Technology , is a decentralized database hosting
various techniques like cryptographic hashing
functions for data storing, time-stamping data,
and digital signatures for authentication. A blockchain
contains a set of blocks, and each block
comprises the previous block's hash, creating a
connected, immutable chain of hashed blocks.
All the blockchain players participate independently
and reach a consensus on the system's
state without centralized third parties.10 Consensus
allows the entities to decide on the next block
and ensures consistency by eliminating malicious
behaviors. The potential benefits that we
can reap from blockchain while using in our MEcentric
architecture include decentralized control
of ME-centric data, data transparency, auditability,
immutability, and security.11 Figure 4
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine
http://www.schema.org
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2023

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