Internet of Things Search Engine: Concepts, Classification, and Open Issues

TL;DR

This paper reviews the concepts, classification, and open issues of Internet of Things Search Engines (IoTSE), organizing research efforts into eight groups based on a meta-path model from over a decade of studies.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive classification framework for IoTSE systems using the meta-path model and organizes existing research into eight distinct groups.

Findings

Proposes a meta-path model for IoTSE classification

Organizes over 200 works into eight research groups

Identifies open issues and future directions in IoTSE

Abstract

This article focuses on the complicated yet still relatively immature area of the Internet of Things Search Engines (IoTSE). It introduces related concepts of IoTSE and a model called meta-path to describe and classify IoTSE systems based on their functionality. Based on these concepts, we have organized the research and development efforts on IoTSE into eight groups and presented the representative works in each group. The concepts and ideas presented in this article are generated from an extensive structured study on over 200 works spanning over one decade of IoTSE research and development.