Introducing Aspect-Oriented Programming in Improving the Modularity of Middleware for Internet of Things

TL;DR

This paper explores using Aspect-Oriented Programming to enhance the modularity and reusability of IoT middleware, demonstrating improvements through simulation and quantitative cohesion measurements.

Contribution

It introduces an AOP-based approach to model IoT middleware functionalities, improving modularity and reusability over traditional Java implementations.

Findings

Modularity and reusability increased with AOP implementation

Quantitative cohesion measurements support improved design

Simulation validates the effectiveness of AOP in IoT middleware

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) has become the buzzword for the development of Smart City and its applications. In this context, development of supporting software forms the core part of the IoT infrastructure. A Middleware sits in between the IoT devices and interacts between them to exchange data among the components of the automated architecture. The Middleware services include hand shaking, data transfer and security among its core set of functionalities. It also includes cross-cutting functional services such as authentication, logging and caching. A software that can run these Middleware services requires a careful choice of a good software modelling technique. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is a software development methodology that can be used to independently encapsulate the core and cross-cutting functionalities of the Middleware services of the IoT infrastructure. In this paper, an attempt has been made using a simulation environment to independently model the two orthogonal functionalities of the Middleware with the focus to improve its modularity. Further, a quantitative measurement of the core design property of cohesion has been done to infer on the improvement in the reusability of the modules encapsulated in the Middleware of IoT. Based on the measurement, it was found that the modularity and reusability of functionalities in the Middleware software has improved in the AspectJ version compared to its equivalent Java version.