Exploring the Challenges of a Flexible, Feature Rich IoT Testbed

Abstract

IoT is a field of technology of ever growing importance in our daily lives. From smart cities, health devices, climate observations, appliances, and so much more, IoT surrounds us now more than ever. The types of devices being added to IoT networks is ever growing, and as this variety of hardware and software increases, so does the difficulty of working with them. Ensuring inter-compatibility between devices, testing new communication protocols, and writing software for emerging technologies becomes a complex challenge. To help solve this challenge are IoT Testbeds. IoT Testbeds help developers, researchers, and many more groups of people explore and test their IoT solutions in contexts of real IoT Devices. These testbeds exist today, but as far as we know, no Jack of all trades testbed exists that supports all features one might want from a testbed. This thesis will introduce a first draft of a new testbed. Introducing a system design, architecture, and implementation that theoretically and practically implements all these features. Also highlighting issues with this design and ways to tackle them. In the end contributing a foundation onto which a powerful system could be built.

The challenge the thesis aims to tackle is, in short: What are the needed features that make up a good testbed? And how can we incorporate these features into a simple, flexible, unified system?