System architecture for Internet of Things with the extensive use of embedded virtualization

The proposed applications of Internet of Things (IoT) are abundant (smart buildings, smart cities, smart infrastructure, vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to road communications, smart utilities, wearable computing, etc.). However, the construction and operation (Constructability and Operability) of such large scale distributed embedded systems are not straightforward. The deployment of commercially viable IoT solutions is primarily limited by our capabilities of constructing and operating such complex and heterogeneous systems. In this paper we propose a system architecture using various delicately selected types of embedded virtualization approaches to keep the constructability and operability issues under control. We evaluate the proposed system architecture using a prototype built from commercially available single board computers, sensors, and actuators. The software components of the system are selected from open source, free software, for example, we use Linux, QEMU, python, etc. on the prototype. The paper also investigates how the use of various virtualization solutions influences performance and resource requirements.