The following summary describes at a high level the various functional groups and components of the Functional View as defined in the IoT-ARM (Bassi et al., 2013).
IoT Process Management
The Process Management FG provides the concepts needed for process management systems to integrate with the IoT world.
Process Modelling: Process Modeling FC allows the modelling of the business process using a
standard notation.
Process Execution: Process Execution FC executes the models defined by process modelling
using IoT services in the Service Organization layer. It is responsible for matching a process model with its execution environment, the execution environment will use IoT Services to perform the actual work.
Service Organization
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Service Orchestration: Service Orchestration FC resolves IoT services for other parts of the
system like the Process Execution FC or IoT users.
Service Composition: The Service Composition FC creates services with extended functionality
by composing other IoT services together. The combined services may be chosen for example by availability and security credentials of the user.
Service Choreography: The Service Choreography FC manages publish and subscribe
communications between services. A service may publish its availability and can be located by other interested services through service choreography.
Virtual Entity
The Virtual Entity FG contains methods for interacting with the IoT Platform via Virtual Entities (VEs). Virtual Entities are representations of a physical asset in software. The list of contacts on your cell phone is an information model with each contact being a Virtual Entity.
Virtual Entity Resolution: VE Resolution allows the IoT User to determine associations between
the VE’s and IoT Services in the system and context information (location, measurement units). VE Resolution also allows for associations to be inserted, updated and deleted. It may allow for
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the creation of new VE’s in the system. Users are able to subscribe to notifications about changes in associations for a VE or service.
Virtual Entity & IoT Service Monitoring: VE & IoT Service Monitoring FC is a watchdog
automatically looking for new services or possible physical entities that are then added to the system using VE Resolution. It updates, creates and deletes associations between the VE’s and Services based on changes in their state.
Virtual Entity Service: The VE Service FC works with an entity service. An entity service is the
primary access point to an entity. It enables reading or updating the attributes on an entity and may allow access to historical data and contextual information.
IoT Service
The IoT Service FG contains IoT services as well as functionality for service discovery.
IoT Service: An IoT Service exposes one Resource and makes it accessible to other parts of the
system. This resource could be information on a sensor or an actuator. IoT Services can get information on the resource or deliver messages to a resource, as in the case of an actuator turning the device on or off. Information may flow synchronously or asynchronously using subscription mechanism.
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IoT Service Resolution: The IoT Service Resolution FC provides the functionality needed for
users and other system components to discover and contact IoT Services. This is done through Service Descriptions which contain information on the location of the Service and required connection information.
Communication
The Communication FG is an abstraction of the communications between the devices, the network and the IoT Services.
Hop To Hop Communication: Hop To Hop Communication FC abstracts the physical
communication technology that may be used by a physical device. It manages communication between the Device and the Network Communication FC.
Network Communication: The Network Communication FC enables communications between
networks. It transmits packets from the Hop to Hop and End to End Communication FC’s.
End To End Communication: The End To End Communication FC interacts with the Network
Communication FC to get a message from the End to End FC to the IoT Service. It may provide other services such as caching and protocol translation as is needed in a Gateway for example.
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Security
The Security FG enables security within the IoT Platform.
Authorization: The Authorization FC manages access control and established policies. As an
example, determining of the user allowed to read an attribute on a particular resource using the IoT Service Resolution FC.
Authentication: Authentication FC checks and validates credentials and provides a secure
context for the authentication.
Identity Management: The Identity Management FC creates and manages ‘fictional’ identities in
the system. These could include such things as an anonymous user or role.
Key Exchange and Management: Key Exchange and Management (KEM) FC enables a secure
connection through the issuance and distribution of keys and the registration of security capabilities.
Trust and Reputation Architecture: Trust and Reputation Architecture FC calculates levels of
trust based on reputation scores. It enables an entity to request reputation information or recommendations about another entity.
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Management
The Management FG provides system functionality related to fault, system configuration, performance and security.
Configuration: The Configuration FC manages and stores configuration information on system
Functional Components and Devices.
Fault: The Fault FC manages the fault logs in the system. It gathers fault information and may be
responsible for archiving it and producing statistics. Interested parties may monitor fault information using a subscribe model.
Member: Member FC manages the membership and its related information for any entity in the
system (VE, FG, FC, Service or Device). Working with Security and Identity management FC’s, it manages information regarding ownership, rights and capabilities.
Reporting: Reporting FC may collect information from any of the management services. It may
perform analysis on the information establishing trends or predictions. Its primary function is to produce reports.
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State: The State FC keeps track of the current, past and predicted states of the system. The State
FC may for example by queried by Reporting. It may also enforce a particular state of the system through interaction with various Functional Component’s.
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