Web services on embedded systems - a performance study

A platform-independent communication mechanism is essential for the seamless integration of embedded devices into the Web of Things. Web services provide for such communication, though there remains an open question as to whether they are suitable for hardware-constrained devices. While there is a general perception that they are too resource-intensive, there are few scientific studies dedicated to answering this question. As a result, researchers or developers investigating applications for the Web of Things have little evidence to support a decision on the best technical solution. This paper presents the results of a study designed to assess the performance of Web services on embedded devices. For our investigation, we deployed Web services on Sun SPOTs, representing medium-sized wireless sensor platforms, and analysed disk space, message size, response time and energy consumption. Our study quantifies the overhead of Web services and provides empirical data on whether this Web technology is a suitable approach for embedded devices.