STube: An Architecture for IoT Communication Sharing

In many IoT applications, there is a need to transmit the data collected by smart things to the cloud. The emerging SPS is one such system. Manufacturers/vendors have great interest in collecting data on their products for analysis and to enhance the overall smartness of the community. One obstacle is how to transmit the data from the things to the cloud. Rather than infiltrating other access networks for data transmission (e.g., a WiFi network in a building), a self-contained solution is preferred. It should be noted that many smart things are low-priced, making it impossible for them to afford the readily available channels (e.g., 3G/4G). To support this need, the industry is actively developing less expensive wireless communication channels. Unfortunately, the number of available choices in wireless communication channels is limited. However, the requirements of IoT applications for different costs and data rates are significantly more diversified. In this article, we address this problem by proposing Sharing Tube (sTube), an architecture for IoT communication channel sharing. Intrinsically, a greater number of smart things can share a smaller number of dedicated channels. We present the design and a case implementation of sTube. Our evaluation results demonstrate that sTube can achieve a cost saving of more than one order compared to a dedicated thing-to-cloud communication choice. This clears a core obstacle for many IoT applications in connecting to the cloud.