Modeling IoT Applications with SysML4IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a paradigm that refers to the ubiquitous presence around us of physical objects equipped with sensing, networking and processing capabilities that allow them to cooperate with each other and with their environment to reach common goals. General objectives of IoT are improving the quality of human life and optimizing industrial processes, by automating tasks that humans must perform. Such benefits are obtained by developing IoT applications. The heterogeneity and interdisciplinary present in the development of any IoT application classifies such a task as a Systems Engineering problem. However, to the best of our knowledge, no Systems Engineering approach to develop IoT applications has been proposed so far. The objective of this paper is to introduce a Model-Based Systems Engineering methodology for IoT application development, focusing on the design phase, which aims at helping organizations to develop IoT applications to fully achieve the benefits of this new paradigm. The approach is comprised of a method and a tool, which are aligned with proven concepts from Systems Engineering and Software Architecture literature.