A Specification for a Decentralised Internet of Things

Abstract

This paper presents DSF-IoT, a novel distributed approach enabling a future decentralised Internet of Things (IoT). DSF-IoT is designed to address key challenges in the IoT, providing a novel secure and efficient specification for the description of IoT services and their data, as well as novel mechanisms for consistent dynamic and contextually relevant service discovery and interaction. Distributed technologies provide an alternative to existing centralised and firmly capitalised models for service provision, removing the requirements for trusted vendor infrastructure and simplifying the deployment of IoT devices, while end-to-end trust, authenticity, and confidentiality ensure user interactions and data are secure-by-default. DSF-IoT is demonstrated through the development of a network of demonstration devices, and evaluated against existing frameworks for IoT service specification and discovery.