A FAIR Extension for the MQTT Protocol

We address the realization of the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability (FAIR) data principles in an Internet of Things (IoT) application through a data transfer protocol. In particular, we propose an architecture for the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol that validates, normalizes, and filters the incoming messages based on the FAIR principles to improve the interoperability and reusability of data. We show that our approach can significantly increase the degree of FAIRness of the system by evaluating the architecture using existing maturity indicators in the literature. The proposed architecture successfully passes 18 maturity indicators out of 22. We also evaluate the performance of the system in 4 different settings in terms the latency and dropped messages in a simulation environment. We demonstrate that the architecture not only improves the degree of FAIRness of the system but also reduces the dropped messages rate.