A New Layered Architecture for Future Big Data-Driven Smart Homes

In this paper, a new layered architecture is proposed for big data-driven processing and management of future smart homes. The proposed Representational State Transfer (REST)-based architecture includes seven layers: physical, fog-computing, network, cloud-computing, service, session, and application for efficient data exchange and processing tasks of future smart homes. The smart home physical layer includes all the sensing technologies and smart devices within the smart home, which monitors the home environment and its residents. The data of these sensors will be sent to the smart home fog-computing layer that can do limited data storage and processing. Then, all the required data will be sent to the cloud-computing layer using smart home network layer. The cloud-computing layer provides the scalable solution for data processing and storage. The processed data in the cloud-computing layer will be provided as the data-driven services to different smart home and third-party (e.g., smart city) applications via smart home service layer. Based on the proposed architecture, the applications will utilize the session layer and RESTFUL APIs to use the data-driven services of the smart home. The proposed smart home architecture can provide a ubiquitous and shared data environment as the key aspect of Internet-of-Things systems.