A broker-embedded data distribution service for resource-constrained IoT environments

The Data Distribution Service (DDS) is a middleware framework that facilitates brokerless, data-centric publish–subscribe communications across diverse domain networks. Its decentralized nature and a wide range of Quality of Service (QoS) policies enable DDS to be both scalable and reliable. However, DDS requires substantial resources, making it challenging to use with small devices, such as those commonly found in Internet of Things (IoT) environments – networks of interconnected physical devices embedded with sensors, software, and connectivity that collect and exchange data over the Internet, often under resource constraints. To address this, we present $b$-DDS (broker-embedded DDS), a novel approach that extends DDS by integrating broker functionalities. This enhances DDS’s compatibility with lightweight devices and its adoptability in resource-limited networks, while retaining the advantages of DDS, including scalability and reliability. The model was evaluated using a pedestrian safety system in the Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) domain, and the results demonstrate that the model improves network traffic by 71.83% compared to standard DDS, provides resilience to the single-point failure problem in broker-based protocols, and exhibits the efficiency to satisfy stringent performance benchmarks for real-time systems.