Towards a Quality-centric Big Data Architecture for Federated Sensor Services

As the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm gains popularity, the next few years will likely witness 'servitization' of domain sensing functionalities. We envision a cloud-based eco-system in which high quality data from large numbers of independently-managed sensors is shared or even traded in real-time. Such an eco-system will necessarily have multiple stakeholders such as sensor data providers, domain applications that utilize sensor data (data consumers), and cloud infrastructure providers who may collaborate as well as compete. While there has been considerable research on wireless sensor networks, the challenges involved in building cloud-based platforms for hosting sensor services are largely unexplored. In this paper, we present our vision for data quality (DQ)-centric big data infrastructure for federated sensor service clouds. We first motivate our work by providing real-world examples. We outline the key features that federated sensor service clouds need to possess. This paper proposes a big data architecture in which DQ is pervasive throughout the platform. Our architecture includes a markup language called SDQ-ML for describing sensor services as well as for domain applications to express their sensor feed requirements. The paper explores the advantages and limitations of current big data technologies in building various components of the platform. We also outline our initial ideas towards addressing the limitations.