Multiple Protocols Interworking With Open Connectivity Foundation in Fog Networks

Intelligent applications have greatly promoted the development of fog computing. The protocols have emerged diversely, causing the problems in the interworking between terminal devices, which has seriously hindered the development of fog computing. Based on the open connectivity foundation (OCF) protocol, this paper proposes an interworking solution for intelligent devices and designs an OCF-based multi-protocol gateway to access non-OCF services. The main functions are divided into three categories: manager, adapter, and device agent. In part, the manager provides centralized management services, the adapter provides communication services between the client and the server device, and the device agent provides access services for the server device. The semantic conversion scheme of an OCF protocol with other protocols is proposed in the device agent, which solves the problem of interoperability between an OCF client device and non-OCF server devices. Finally, the OCF multi-protocol interworking gateway was built, and the semantic conversion between the OCF protocol, AllJoyn protocol, and the ZigBee protocol was implemented. The interoperability between the OCF client, AllJoyn device, and ZigBee device was verified.