IoTWC: Analytic Hierarchy Process Based Internet of Things Workflow Composition System

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) allows the creation of virtually endless connections into a global array of distributed intelligence. However, the design, development, and deployment of IoT applications are complex and complicated due to various unwarranted challenges. For instance, addressing the IoT application users’ subjective and objective opinions with IoT workflow instances remains a challenge for the design of a more holistic approach. Moreover, the complexity of IoT applications increased exponentially due to the heterogeneous nature of the Edge/Cloud services, utilised with the aim of lowering latency in data transformation and increase re-usability. Hence, in this paper, we present an IoT workflow composition system (IoTWC) to allow IoT users to pipeline their workflows with proposed IoT workflow activity abstract patterns. IoTWC leverages the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to compose the multi-level IoT workflow that satisfies the requirements of any IoT application. Moreover, the users are befitted with recommended IoT workflow configurations using an AHP based multi-level composition framework. The proposed IoTWC is validated on a user case study to evaluate the coverage of IoT workflow activity abstract patterns and a real-world scenario for smart buildings. The comprehensive analysis shows the effectiveness of IoTWC in terms of IoT workflow abstraction and composition.