Architecture, Functional Requirements, and Early Implementation of an Instrumentation Grid for the IoT

This paper presents an innovative architecture for the instrumentation layer of a pervasive large-scale information system. State of the art examples already include an instrumentation layer in a grid infrastructure; nontheless these systems were not designed for large-scale ad-hoc networks, rapidly deployed, continuously upgraded, and dynamically reconfigured when the system is on-line. The main contribution is that of designing an instrumentation layer coherent with existing infrastructures capable of being federated with others, and already providing robust virtualization services in what concerns user authentication and access, distributed storage, and computing power. The large-scale instrumentation layer is inspired by the Internet of Things, and will consist of a large number of autonomous nodes organized in Wireless Sensor Networks and accessing the Internet following the 6LoWPAN specifications. An early implementation of this architecture is proven to respond to use cases centered on data- and event-driven services; it also permits a large degree of flexibility and adaptiveness in end nodes applications.