The Interoperability of Things: Interoperable solutions as an enabler for IoT and Web 3.0

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the interoperability concepts along with the challenges for the IoT domain and the upcoming Web 3.0. We identify four levels of interoperability and the relevant solutions for accomplishing vertical and horizontal compatibility between the various layers of a modern IoT ecosystem, referred to as: technological, syntactic, semantic, and organizational interoperability. The goal is to achieve cross-domain interaction and facilitate the proper usage and management of the provided IoT services and applications. An interoperability framework is also proposed where the involved system components can cooperate and offer the seamless operation from the device to the backend framework. This by-design end-to-end interoperation enables the interplay of several complex service composition settings and the management of the system via patterns. The overall proposal is adopted by the EU funded project SEMIoTICS as an enabler towards the IoT and Web 3.0, even when products from different vendors are utilized.