The Hive: An Edge-based Middleware Solution for Resource Sharing in the Internet of Things

Abstract

With today's unprecedented proliferation in smart-devices, the Internet of Things Vision has become more of a reality than ever. With the extreme diversity of applications running on these heterogeneous devices, numerous middle-ware solutions have consequently emerged to address IoT-related challenges. These solutions however, heavily rely on the cloud for better data management, integration, and processing. This might potentially compromise privacy, add latency, and place unbearable traffic load. In this paper, we propose The Hive, an edge-based middleware architecture and protocol, that enables heterogeneous edge devices to dynamically share data and resources for enhanced application performance and privacy. We implement a prototype of the Hive, test it for basic robustness, show its modularity, and evaluate its performance with a real world smart emotion recognition application running on edge devices.