Support for heterogeneous dynamic network environments through a reconfigurable network service platform Eli De Poorter, Ingrid Moerman and Piet Demeester Ghent University - IBBT, Department of Information Technology (INTEC) Gaston Crommenlaan 8, Bus 201, 9050 Ghent, Belgium eli.depoorter@intec.ugent.be Abstract—In a future internet of things, an increasing number of every-day objects will be connected with each other. These objects can be very diverse in terms of their network protocols and communication technologies. As more resource constrained devices such as sensor networks and PDAs are added to our environment, supporting efficient communication between these heterogeneous devices becomes a key challenge in next-generation networks. To realize this challenge, this paper presents a re- configurable network framework (IDRA) that supports direct connectivity between heterogeneous co-located devices, without the need for complex translation gateways. I. I NTRODUCTION New communication technologies are introduced and de- ployed on a regular basis. Even common everyday objects nowadays come equipped with (wireless) communication pos- sibilities. As a result, several authors have described an ‘inter- net of things’ view of the future, in which every object is con- nected with every other object [1] (Figure 1). By connecting these different objects, intelligent next-generation applications such as wireless building automation applications [2] or e- health applications [3] become possible. However, as the number of communicating objects in- creases, so does the number of co-located communication technologies. When multiple networks operate in the same geographical environment, co-located networks overhear trans- missions from multiple networks. Most often, overhearing these transmissions results in harmful interference and perfor- mance degradation, since the overheard transmissions can not be interpreted by devices that are not part of the originating network. This is especially a problem in ‘last mile’ home and office networks. A typical example is the interference in the free license ISM band, which is used by a variety of communication technologies such as IEEE802.1 (WiFi), car alarms, baby monitors, IEEE802.15.1 (bluetooth), cordless DECT phones and IEEE802.15.4 (zigbee) personal body area networks. Even when co-located devices use the same radio tech- nology, direct communication between devices is not always supported. For example, existing sensor and actuator networks often use propriety network technologies that are incompatible with technologies from other vendors, even though the devices Fig. 1. In the vision of the internet of things, everyday objects will all become interconnected using a variety of communication technologies. These objects can use different communication technologies, different packet types and different network protocols. use the same radio chip. Currently, communication between heterogeneous devices is supported using one of the following methods. (i) Multiple (proprietary) communication stacks can be installed on a single device. The main disadvantage of this approach is that the memory overhead of using multiple communication stacks is significant. As a result, this approach is not well-suited for resource-constrained devices. (ii) An al- ternative approach is the use of technology specific translation gateways. All communication is routed through these (remote) translation gateway. These gateways terminate the connection from one network and set up a new connection to a second network. However, translation gateways break the end-to-end communication paradigm and have proven to be inherently complex to design, manage and deploy [4]. In addition, setting up a communication path to the (remote) gateway results in additional packet overhead, which in turn leads to increased interference, lower throughput and a lower network lifetime.