Service Virtualisation of Internet-of-Things Devices: Techniques and Challenges

Service virtualization is an approach that uses virtualizedenvironments to automatically test enterprise services inproduction-like conditions. Many techniques have been proposedto provide such a realistic environment for enterprise services. The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is an emerging field which connectsa diverse set of devices over different transport layers, usinga variety of protocols. Provisioning a virtual testbed of IoTdevices can accelerate IoT application development by enablingautomated testing without requiring a continuous connection tothe physical devices. One solution is to expand existing enterpriseservice virtualization to IoT environments. There are variousstructural differences between the two environments that shouldbe considered to implement appropriate service virtualizationfor IoT. This paper examines the structural differences betweenvarious IoT protocols and enterprise protocols and identifies keytechnical challenges that need to be addressed to implementservice virtualization in IoT environments.