Using JSON to manage communication between services in the Internet of Things

The emerging Internet of Things results in new challenges for the interconnection of devices and the efficient management of available resources. In this paper, a specification for communication between FPGA-based systems is presented. It is based on the combination of reconfigurable FPGA technology with the concepts of distributed computing. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a standardized human-readable data-interchange format. Even though it is based on JavaScript, JSON is completely language independent. The high rate of flexibility in combination with a light-weight structure avoids unnecessary overhead, associated with the benefits of standardization. JSON can be used in heterogeneous compute nodes, as it can be parsed easily and without special requirements. This way it provides an efficient method for transferring various data and for exploiting dynamic and partial reconfiguration in the area of distributed embedded systems. The result is an efficient communication structure with a consistent format for highly flexible and adaptive systems.