Self-adaptive Architectures in IoT Systems: A Systematic Literature Review

TL;DR

This systematic review analyzes various self-adaptive strategies in IoT architectures, highlighting their trade-offs and proposing a comprehensive view of handling multiple simultaneous environmental changes affecting QoS.

Contribution

It provides a holistic analysis of IoT self-adaptation strategies, identifying gaps and proposing a research agenda for future developments.

Findings

Different adaptation strategies focus on isolated change types

Trade-offs exist between adaptation approaches

A need for integrated solutions to handle multiple changes

Abstract

Over the past few years, the relevance of the Internet of Things (IoT) has grown significantly and is now a key component of many industrial processes and even a transparent participant in various activities performed in our daily life. IoT systems are subjected to changes in the dynamic environments they operate in. These changes (e.g. variations in bandwidth consumption or new devices joining/leaving) may impact the Quality of Service (QoS) of the IoT system. A number of self-adaptation strategies for IoT architectures to better deal with these changes have been proposed in the literature. Nevertheless, they focus on isolated types of changes. We lack a comprehensive view of the trade-offs of each proposal and how they could be combined to cope with simultaneous events of different types. In this paper, we identify, analyze, and interpret relevant studies related to IoT adaptation and develop a comprehensive and holistic view of the interplay of different dynamic events, their consequences on QoS, and the alternatives for the adaptation. To do so, we have conducted a systematic literature review of existing scientific proposals and defined a research agenda for the near future based on the findings and weaknesses identified in the literature.