Towards dynamic and heterogeneous social IoT environments

Nowadays, there are millions of smart devices connected to the Internet. The purpose of these devices is to make people’s lives easier. Thanks to the collaboration among them, the possibilities that the Internet of Things brings can grow exponentially. However, many manufacturers develop closed protocols and devices to protect their market share, limiting in many ways this collaboration. This paper presents a conceptual architecture that improves the proactive collaboration between IoT devices regardless of the protocols developed by their manufacturers. This architecture aims to identify entities in smart environments, describe their features and interfaces, and identify strategies fostering their collaborations. As a result, devices from different manufacturers can communicate to create a collaborative environment in a simple, efficient, and affordable way. This architecture has been evaluated in a real and a simulated environment, to validate its feasibility and efficiency.