AMBER: An advanced gateway solution to support heterogeneous IoT technologies

The great interest in the business that can be generated by the IoT has led over the years to the development of a large number of communication technologies able to allow IoT smart objects to be wireless connected. Even though on the one hand such a multitude of technologies has enabled a wide range of applications, on the other hand, it has produced a growing heterogeneity in the IoT scenario. By considering the high-level IoT architecture, such heterogeneity can be overcome by using IoT gateways providing modularity, flexibility and scalability features. In the paper the role of an IoT gateway in the IoT architecture is first described, as well as main wireless communication standards adopted to connect IoT objects, then the AMBER board is presented as an advanced solution able to cope with network heterogeneity in the IoT scenario while providing all above reported features. Thanks to its design concept based on the support of Extender modules and System-on-Modules, AMBER is able to host multiple IoT wireless subsystems developed by a large number of vendors, as well as to increase over the time its computational capabilities, thus being able to accomplish more and more demanding tasks assigned to IoT gateways.