Architecture for an efficient integration of wireless sensor networks to the Internet through Internet of Things gateways

In recent years, Internet of Things has changed the way people work and live, thereby opening new opportunities. This article describes a framework architecture for interconnecting several wireless sensor networks to the Internet to achieve the vision of Internet of Things. Connecting things together is done through gateways that act as single points of failure to bridge the connection between wireless sensor network and the traditional wired Internet. To cope with the unreliable nature of wireless links and scale to a large number of sensors and wireless sensor networks, several gateways should be installed. Given a number of previously deployed gateways, the contribution of this article is twofold. First, it focuses on choosing the most suitable ones for connecting wireless sensor networks to the Internet in a efficient and cost-effective manner, using integer linear programming to develop the mathematical model. Second, a network topology that puts the integration of wireless sensor networks to the Internet in place is built. A three-layer architecture is used in such a way that the intermediate layer adapts dynamically to network changes and evolution. Gateway selection procedure at this layer was implemented using CPLEX linear solver, and the gateway was integrated on Raspberry Pi cheaper hardware which serves as the routing protocol for low-power and lossy network root for the wireless sensor network configuration. Experiments and real deployments have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.