Omni

Abstract

Device-to-device (D2D) communication technologies are growing in availability and popularity and are commonly used to facilitate applications in Internet of Things (IoT) environments. Such environments are characterized by heterogeneous devices, often employing diverse communication technologies with varying energy consumption, discovery ranges, and transmission rates. These complexities pose a daunting setting for the development of IoT applications that could leverage direct communication with proximal mobile and embedded devices. While current approaches focus either on device discovery in the IoT setting or content transfer assuming established communication channels, none facilitate the intelligent discovery of useful devices and the seamless formation of temporary D2D connections to transfer content directly between devices. Our Omni middleware provides both of these features critical in the development of applications that leverage proximal devices in IoT settings. Using Omni, we demonstrate the feasibility of building applications that use heterogeneous D2D communication channels in an efficient and realistic (in terms of energy and time) manner.