Virtual-Thing: Thing Description based Virtualization
This addresses a specific issue for IoT mashup developers by providing a virtualization tool, but it is incremental as it builds on existing W3C standards.
The paper tackles the problem of simulating Internet of Things devices before physical access by developing a method to create virtual Things based solely on Thing Descriptions, enabling easier mashup development.
Integrating different Internet of Things devices from different manufacturers to create a mashup scenario can be a tedious and error-prone task that involves studying non-standard datasheets. A Thing Description (TD) as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) can make such a task less complicated by providing a standardized model for describing the metadata and the interface of a Web of Things (WoT) entity. However, a situation where a mashup developer has access to a Thing's TD before having access to the Thing itself may still arise. A way of simulating devices based only on their TDs is thus helpful during the development process of a mashup. In this work, we present a method of creating a virtual Thing that simulates the behavior of a WoT-enabled entity based only on its Thing Description.