Semantic Framework for Energy-Aware Resource Management of IoT in Business Processes

Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) revolution was kick started with the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) Tags, Sensors and Sensor network in supply chain management (SCM) to track physical objects (Ashton, 2009). However, the recent improvement in hardware technology has contributed to the real momentum for the adoption of IoT. This is because these devices have become better and more affordable for mass production and usage (Ruppen, 2013). In general, an IoT device interacts with the physical world and provides information about it via a standard service. In fact, IoT is considered as one of the key technology enablers for fostering the vision of a “smart ecosystem” such as smart cities, smart logistics, and smart factories, i.e., Industry 4.0 (Suri, Cuccuru, et al., 2017). However, these IoT devices are multi-modal and heterogeneous in nature due to their specific properties and characteristics such as energy capacity, sensitivity or computation power (Atzori, 2010). This leads to interoperability issues, increased complexity, and creates a bottleneck for their application in various domains. These concerns can be tackled by using semantic technologies (Thoma, 2014). Moreover, several research initiatives have been aiming towards fostering the IoT domain, such as the EU FP7 project, The Internet of Things Architecture (IoT-A¹) (Bauer, 2013). In IoT-A, researchers defined the IoT domain model, identified its main concepts, and the inter-relationships between them (De, 2017). Likewise, the EU H2020 project, Federated Interoperable Semantic IoT Testbeds and Applications (FIESTA-IoT²), contributed towards solving interoperability issues in IoT domain (Agarwal, 2016). In addition, these heterogeneous IoT devices must be orchestrated in a specific sequence to create a defined value for an end user (or system). Thus, it is natural to see the IoT devices participating in several cross-organizational business processes (BPs), which orchestrates them along with other resources, i.e., human and non-human (e.g. enterprise services) to achieve a specific business goal.