sDDS: A portable data distribution service implementation for WSN and IoT platforms

In the last years many different protocols, middleware approaches and software stacks were developed for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Limited interoperability and support for heterogeneous target platforms are often problematic. A good match for this problem domain would be the OMG Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, which specifies a data-centric publish/subscribe middleware with real-time capabilities and a rich set of Quality-of-Service polices. Although DDS was not intended for embedded systems with limited resources as found in WSN, the authors of this paper propose an approach for a customisable DDS implementation (sDDS) using an model-driven software-development process to tailor the middleware functionality on an individual node level. In this paper, the platform-abstraction layer of sDDS, the platforms supported so far and the effort needed for the porting process are presented. With this approach, it was possible to port sDDS to different platforms, like Contiki, RIOT-OS, FreeRTOS and self-contained ZigBee stack implementations.