# DeOTA-IoT: A Techniques Catalog for Designing Over-the-Air (OTA) Update Systems for IoT

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a structured catalog of techniques for designing secure and reliable OTA update systems in IoT, helping engineers make better design choices.

## Contribution

A consolidated catalog of 34 OTA techniques organized into six mechanisms, validated through an industrial experiment.

## Key findings

- The catalog was evaluated in a controlled experiment with 10 engineers, showing its effectiveness in real-world design scenarios.
- Each technique in the catalog includes a quality-attribute trade-off analysis to guide decision-making.
- The catalog clarifies architectural definitions of techniques and mechanisms for OTA system design.

## Abstract

The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) applications requires robust mechanisms to ensure the security, reliability, and maintainability of embedded software throughout its lifecycle. Over-the-Air (OTA) update systems play a central role in enabling the continuous evolution of IoT deployments. Despite their importance, OTA solutions are often designed in an ad hoc manner, supported by fragmented guidelines that lack a structured basis for selecting mechanisms and techniques aligned with the quality needs of IoT systems. This work presents a consolidated catalog for designing OTA update systems in IoT environments, developed through a review of academic and industrial literature. The catalog comprises 34 techniques organized into six mechanisms, each with representative use cases and a mapping to relevant quality attributes that make beneficial and adverse impacts explicit. The catalog was evaluated through a controlled industrial experiment involving 10 engineers, balanced between novices and experts, who designed an OTA update system for a real application scenario using either their prior knowledge and experience or the catalog. This work offers four contributions: (1) a catalog of 34 OTA techniques structured into six mechanisms; (2) clarified architectural definitions of technique and mechanism; (3) a controlled industrial experiment evaluating the catalog in a realistic setting; and (4) a quality-attribute trade-off analysis for each technique. Together, these contributions establish a coherent foundation for systematic and quality-aware OTA update system design.