The Web of Things: A Survey (Invited Paper)

In the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), an increasing number of embedded devices of all sorts (e.g., sensors, mobile phones, cameras, smart meters, smart cars, traffic lights, smart home appliances, etc.) are now capable of communicating and sharing data over the Internet. Although the concept of using embedded systems to control devices, tools and appliances has been proposed for almost decades now, with every new generation, the ever-increasing capabilities of computation and communication pose new opportunities, but also new challenges. As IoT becomes an active research area, different methods from various points of view have been explored to promote the development and popularity of IoT. One trend is viewing IoT as Web of Things (WoT) where the open Web standards are supported for information sharing and device interoperation. By penetrating smart things into existing Web, the conventional web services are enriched with physical world services. This WoT vision enables a new way of narrowing the barrier between virtual and physical worlds. In this paper, we elaborate the architecture and some key enabling technologies of WoT. Some pioneer open platforms and prototypes are also illustrated. The most recent research results are carefully summarized. Furthermore, many systematic comparisons are made to provide the insight in the evolution and future of WoT. Finally, we point out some open challenging issues that shall be faced and tackled by research community.