A Combined MQTT 5.0 and DTN Architecture for Mobile Edge IoT Nodes

Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is an OASIS standard publish/subscribe protocol widely used for Internet of Things (loT) deployments since it provides efficient many-to-many communications. IoT deployments may include mobile devices leading to unstable and intermittent wireless connections. M QTT relies on TCP and hence faces difficulties with intermittent connectivity. In support of this challenging task, Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) architecture han-dles intermittent IoT communications; however, it is incompatible with current IoT standards. In this work, we combine the recently released MQTT version 5.0 and DTN into an integrated architecture for edge IoT nodes to allow interoperability between continuously-connected MQTT and partially-connected DTN devices while preserving MQTT and DTN operations intact. The proof-of-concept results of our prototype implementation revealed that our solutions allow MQTT and DTN devices to stay interconnected under various disruption patterns.