Sensor Virtualization Module: Virtualizing IoT Devices on Mobile Smartphones for Effective Sensor Data Management

The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) is coming closer to reality as a large number of embedded devices are introduced to our everyday environments. For many commercial IoT devices, ubiquitously connected mobile platforms can provide global connectivity and enable various applications. Nevertheless, the types of IoT resource-utilizing applications are still limited due to the traditional stovepipe software architecture, where the vendors provide supporting software on an end-to-end basis. This paper tries to address this issue by introducing the Sensor Virtualization Module (SVM), which provides a software abstraction for external IoT objects and allows applications to easily utilize various IoT resources through open APIs. We implement the SVM on both Android and iOS and show that the SVM architecture can lead to easy development of applications. We envision that this simplification in application development will catalyze the development of various IoT services.