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Digital Twin Digital Twin 2022, 2:5 Last updated: 28 APR 2022
METHOD ARTICLE
Internet-of-Things object model [version 1; peer review:
awaiting peer review]
Rong Long1, Xiaohui Fan1, Kai Wei2, Junxuan Bai 1, Shanpeng Xiao1
1China Mobile Research Institute, Beijing, 100053, China
2China Mobile IOT Company Limited, Chongqing, 401121, China
v1 First published: 12 Apr 2022, 2:5 Open Peer Review
https://doi.org/10.12688/digitaltwin.17562.1
Latest published: 12 Apr 2022, 2:5
https://doi.org/10.12688/digitaltwin.17562.1 Approval Status AWAITING PEER REVIEW
Any reports and responses or comments on the
Abstract article can be found at the end of the article.
Background: With the advancement of communication technology
and advanced sensors, there are massive demands for Internet-of-
Things (IoT) applications in buildings, communities, factories, parks,
etc. Accessing IoT devices provides convenience for scene
management and monitoring, ameliorating production and life
intelligently. However, due to the lack of a unified model for IoT
devices, data is often skipped over IoT platforms and transmitted to
applications directly. This leads to the fact that each manufacturer
needs to produce its devices and develop its customized software,
which hugely increases the development cycle. On the other hand, it is
difficult to convey information between different systems, limiting
cross- system control. Moreover, digital twin relies on large amounts
of heterogeneous data, and it is impracticable to provide enough data
without a unified model for device description.
Methods: First, we illustrate the motivation, design goals, and design
principles for creating the Internet-of-Things Object Model (IoT-OM).
Then we propose a unified description to define IoT devices. The
proposed concept has been accepted by several companies, and we
analyse one platform that adopts the model. To demonstrate the
effectiveness of the model, we introduce two projects based on the
platform. One project is an intelligent fire protection system, and
another project is an intelligent air quality monitoring system.
Results: We measured the time taken by five companies when
developing IoT devices and their applications, including the
development cycle duration without utilizing the proposed model and
the duration using the model at China Mobile’s OneNET platform. The
results prove that the proposed model can significantly shorten the
development cycle.
Conclusions: This paper proposes a model for IoT devices, which
helps to unify heterogeneous data among different manufacturers
and helps to shorten the development cycles for developers.
Keywords
Object model, Internet of Things, development cycle, digital twin
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Digital Twin Digital Twin 2022, 2:5 Last updated: 28 APR 2022
Corresponding authors: Rong Long (longrong@chinamobile.com), Junxuan Bai (baijx6@163.com), Shanpeng Xiao (
xiaoshanpeng@chinamobile.com)
Author roles: Long R: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Software, Writing – Review & Editing; Fan X: Funding Acquisition, Project
Administration, Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing; Wei K: Resources, Software, Validation; Bai J: Investigation, Writing – Original
Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing; Xiao S: Funding Acquisition, Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing
Competing interests: Long Rong, Xiaohui Fan, Junxuan Bai, and Shanpeng Xiao are affiliated with (and receive salary from) China
Mobile Research Institute, and they are responsible for the demand research and design of IoT-OM. Kai Wei is affiliated with (and
receives salary from) China Mobile IOT Company Limited, and is responsible for collecting the properties and functions of IoT devices.
Grant information: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [U21B2029].
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Copyright: © 2022 Long R et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
How to cite this article: Long R, Fan X, Wei K et al. Internet-of-Things object model [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]
Digital Twin 2022, 2:5 https://doi.org/10.12688/digitaltwin.17562.1
First published: 12 Apr 2022, 2:5 https://doi.org/10.12688/digitaltwin.17562.1
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Digital Twin 2022, 2:5 Last updated: 28 APR 2022
Introduction network communication knowledge. Therefore, this will increase
With the development of communication technology and new the workload for manufacturers and restrict the deployment
sensors, there are massive demands for Internet-of-Things of IoT devices.
(IoT) applications in buildings, communities, factories, parks,
etc. For example, fire detection of a surveillance system can To handle the problem, we propose a unified model for describ-
be notably enhanced by connecting monitoring IoT devices ing the device in the classic network model, called IoT
in buildings or outdoor scenes1,2, and construction sites tend Object Model (IoT-OM). As illustrated in Figure 1, the data
to apply IoT devices and digital twin techniques for new for IoT-OM is transmitted in Application Layer in TCP/IP
projects3. Also, remote production management can be achieved network model13.
in some factories by accessing IoT manipulators4–6. In large
parks, IoT devices are set up in public areas to scan the pas- From a business perspective, IoT-OM facilitates device man-
senger volume or traffic load7–10, thereby avoiding security agement for IoT platforms. As shown in Figure 2, IoT-OM
incidents. It can be observed that the accessing of IoT devices locates between the terminal devices and applications. After
provides convenience for production and human life11,12. employing IoT-OM, the IoT platform can rapidly obtain device
information, which is supplied by different manufacturers.
However, since IoT devices are produced by different manu- Moreover, it is effortless to provide plenty of services, such
facturers, a unified model for describing devices is miss- as data storage, online debugging, key management.
ing. After being encapsulated on IoT devices, data is often
transmitted to applications directly through the gateway, The design objectives of IoT-OM is listed as follows:
whereas IoT platforms are skipped. As the data path becomes
longer, the timeliness of the system will be weakened. In addi- • T
here is a need to design a unified description method
tion, it is laborious to expand the scale of IoT devices under to realize data sharing for devices from different
these circumstances. Digital twin relies on large amounts of manufacturers.
heterogeneous data. As a result, the perception and simulation
abilities of digital twin cannot be fully developed.
From an industrial point of view, the current development proc-
ess will ultimately lead to three difficulties: (1) due to the low-
level data sharing, it is hard to provide a large amount of data
for potential digital twin applications; (2) the cost for busi-
ness deployment is high; (3) there are numerous obstacles for
industrial cooperation. Specifically, since different compa-
nies have defined their own model for device description, no
connection is constructed between massive data, which leads
to low data utilization. In addition, due to different standards
of devices, new applications need to be customized and devel-
oped multiple times to obey the standards, which increases Figure 1. The position of IoT-OM (Internet-of-Things
the cost of service deployment. Last but not least, due to Object Model) in the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
different descriptions, each company has its own production Protocol (TCP/IP) model. LwM2M: Lightweight Machine-to-
chain, making it difficult for collaboration, and increasing the Machine, HTTP: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, MQTT: Message
Queuing Telemetry Transport, CoAP: Constrained Application
difficulty for maintenance.
Protocol, TCP: Transmission Control Protocol, UDP: User Datagram
Protocol, IPv4: Internet Protocol version 4, IPv6: Internet Protocol
In this paper, we propose a unified IoT object model, called version 6.
IoT-OM, to describe the devices, which is capable of dealing
with the problems mentioned above. The model describes the
attributes and capabilities of the device over existing network
protocols, forming the twin entity in virtual space. In order to
explain the proposed unified object model, we introduce two
projects to verify our model. In addition, a statistical result
proves that the proposed model can significantly shorten the
development cycle.
Motivation, objectives, principles, and definition
of IoT-OM
Nowadays, most IoT devices transmit data based on the classic
network model, i.e., Open System Interconnection Reference
Model (OSI) and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP). This paradigm requires manufacturers not Figure 2. The usage of IoT-OM (Internet-of-Things Object
only to master product-related techniques but also to acquire Model).
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• I t is necessary to decouple the data for device access can wash clothes, so washing-related components
and application, providing developers with concise data are regarded as industrial components.
without considering the hardware.
• F
unctions are partitioned into Properties, Actions, and
• I t should not be complicated to access terminal Events.
devices, which can reduce the setup difficulties for
manufacturers. – P
roperties define what the device is, and the device
states when it is running.
Therefore, when designing IoT-OM, there are several principles
to follow: – A
ctions define what the device can do and describe
the capabilities that the platform can employ.
• S
implicity. The model needs to be independent of net-
work and protocols and pay more attention to device – Events define periodic messages or alarm messages.
description. It should provide manufacturers with a simple
and intuitive understanding. Specifically, the composition of an IoT device is defined in
Figure 4.
• C
ompatibility. In order to be compatible with devices
produced from different manufacturers, the model • o mThing defines the entire IoT device, but it does not
should be divided into common attributes and specific contain specific content. It corresponds to the Devices
attributes. Different devices contain the same common level.
attributes and include specific attributes according to • o mInfo describes what the device is, its manufacturer,
functions and purposes. Moreover, templates should be brand, date of production, etc.
provided for different industries.
• o mComponent corresponds to the Components level,
• S
calability. Due to the rapid advancement of smart devices, and each component describes a capability of the device.
IoT-OM should support future services. Also, a device may consist of multiple components.
To meet the requirements mentioned above, we define the • o mProperty corresponds to the Properties module. It con-
hierarchical architecture of the unified object model in tains readable variables, parameters, and states of the
Figure 3. As demonstrated in Figure 3, IoT-OM consists of three device.
levels: Devices, Components, and Functions.
• o mAction corresponds to the Actions module. It describes
active functions of the platform, such as obtaining
• D
evices level is the top level of the model, which defines device information, changing device states, etc.
different IoT devices, but is not responsible for specific
capabilities. Taking a house as an example, it includes • o mEvent corresponds to the Events module. It describes
lights, displays, curtains, door locks, etc. passive process of the device, such as periodic
message reporting, abnormal alarm, etc.
• C
omponents are divided into Public Components and
• o mSchema describes the formats and the ranges of data,
Industrial Components.
such as type, default value, maximum and minimum,
etc.
– P
ublic Components record shared information and
capabilities, for example, a switching component.
Each device has a switching component to start
and stop the device.
– I ndustrial Components record specific information
and capabilities. For instance, only washing machines
Figure 3. The hierarchical architecture of IoT-OM (Internet- Figure 4. The composition of an IoT device using IoT-OM
of-Things Object Model). (Internet-of-Things Object Model).
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To illustrate IoT-OM, we take intelligent lights as an exam- The process of creating an IoT device is illustrated in
ple (see Figure 5 and Extended data14). The light has a timing Figure 6. There are two types of devices: new devices that
switch, consisting of a timing component and a switching will be added to the scenario and existing ones already planted.
component. The functions are implemented by different proper- For both devices, the first two steps are the same: creating the
ties, actions, and events. The timing component contains start product on the platform and defining the instance for the
time, current time, and duration. The current time of the device device based on IoT-OM. The third step is different. Generic
can be modified by setting time. Also, the light needs to report SDK (Software Development Kit) will be generated for new
the current time periodically and send it to the platform. By devices based on the designated functions. For existing devices,
combining these two components, a timing switch is protocol-related SDK will be created. Then these SDKs need
defined. Moreover, other devices may have the same func- to be installed on IoT devices to connect to IoT platforms.
tions, which can be implemented rapidly by reusing these two After the installation, these devices need to be debugged on the
components. platforms.
Before transmitting data, it is necessary to describe the device In Figure 7, the data flow of OneNET platform is presented.
and specify the device parameters on the platform, and the IoT devices transmit data to the platform through CoAP (Con-
defined model has to be installed on the device. After that, strained Application Protocol) or MQTT (Message Queuing
there is no need to transmit vast and complicated headers on Telemetry Transport) protocols, and the platform uses com-
the internet. Only the model values (IoT-OM (Payload) in mands to control the devices. Also, when the application
Figure 1) need to be transmitted between devices and platforms. tries to control the devices or retrieve some data, it will send
commands to the platform. The data gathered at the platform
Use cases is used to create twin devices. After creating a twin device, it
China Mobile OneNET Studio can simulate the operation and fault information so that manu-
Currently, the proposed IoT-OM has been adopted by several facturers can debug the device on the twin device. Also, soft-
companies and implemented in their platforms, such as China ware engineers can develop software on the twin device.
Mobile OneNET Studio15. Similar concepts are also utilized by See Software availability for further information on creating
other companies, such as AWS IoT16, Microsoft Azure IoT17, object models using OneNET studio. This parallel collaborative
Alibaba Cloud18, and Tencent Cloud19. development can shorten the development cycle (Table 1).
Figure 5. The illustration of an intelligent light.
Figure 6. The pipeline for creating a device on OneNET platform. SDK: Software Development Kit.
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Figure 7. The data flow of OneNET Studio. CoAP: Constrained Application Protocol, MQTT: Message Queuing Telemetry Transport.
Table 1. The information of Internet-of-Things devices, number of accessed devices, and development
cycles from a selection of companies that utilize IoT-OM and who have accesses to OneNET Studio
(data published with permission from each of the companies).
Company Product Num. Access Original Dev. Cycle Current Dev. Cycle
Wiselink Face Recognition Interphone 8-Inch 100 8 weeks 2 weeks
AIPOWER Charging Pile EVSE827 200 9 weeks 3 weeks
SKYWORTH Interactive Smart Tablet MH6526 240 7.5 weeks 3 weeks
CHOKSEND Temperature Watch A5 1000 8 weeks 1.5 weeks
OMRON Blood Pressure Monitor 600 8.5 weeks 1 week
Intelligent fire protection system
At present, China Mobile OneNET Studio has been utilized a fire occurs. (2) It is slow to detect small fires, and fires can not
in several applications. The first application is an intelligent be noticed when unattended, which will result in damaging fires.
fire protection system. Fire protection systems have become (3) Fire fighting system is not associated with cross-platform
highly complex as technology advances, including many data, i.e., the spatial structure of a building, which hinders
subsystems and hundreds of devices. The monitoring and the fire fighting operations. OneNET Studio adopts IoT-OM
alarm system involves gas detection equipment, electrical fire and realizes a fire monitoring system in a densely populated
monitoring devices, manual alarm equipment, sound and light neighborhood in Guiyang, China. Figure 8 demonstrates the
alarms, etc. The fire protection system in buildings involves architecture of a smoke and temperature monitoring application.
fire hydrants, foam extinguishers, dry powder extinguish- IoT devices transmit data to OneNET Studio using NB-IoT
ers, smoke exhaust equipment, fire doors, fire telephones, fire (Narrow Band Internet of Things) techniques. Then, the device
power supplies, fire water level controllers, etc. For evacuation information will be displayed on the PC platform instantly,
systems, it involves emergency broadcasting, emergency and an alarm message will be promptly sent to the mobile
lighting, evacuation indicators, etc. The fire protection system application. Figure 9 illustrates the architecture of a fire water
outside buildings involves fire hydrants, fire manhole covers, monitoring application. Compared with traditional fire-fighting
fire pumps, fire trucks, etc. For these complex subsystems and facilities, the intelligent system can obtain equipment informa-
hardware, if they can cooperate, the efficiency of the entire tion accurately and instantaneously by appending IoT devices.
system will be hugely enhanced. Figure 10 shows an application of electricity safety monitoring.
The device data will be sent to the platform and can be utilized
Traditional fire protection system has the following shortcom- for monitoring. Figure 11 presents the visual interface, and it
ings. (1) The management and maintenance of fire protection shows the fire-monitoring devices in this area, the number of
facilities are not timely, and equipment may not be available when alarming devices, etc.
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Figure 8. Demonstration of smoke and temperature monitoring. NB-IoT: Narrow Band Internet-of-Things.
Figure 9. Demonstration of fire water monitoring. NB-IoT: Narrow Band Internet-of-Things.
Figure 10. Demonstration of electricity safety monitoring. NB-IoT: Narrow Band Internet-of-Things.
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Figure 11. The visual interface of the monitoring module in the intelligent fire protection system in Guiyang, China (The
system is in Chinese at present).
In addition to displaying the status of a device, IoT-OM can real- Studio. Also, we count the number of accessed devices and the
ize control between different systems. In traditional systems, comparison of development cycles. As illustrated in the table,
the data of a system can not be transmitted to other systems. the development cycles for the product are hugely reduced after
For example, when a fire occurs, the information of the fire utilizing IoT-OM. The data is provided with the permission
monitoring system can not be conveyed to the elevator control of these companies.
system. However, the IoT platform can couple different systems
and provide cross-system control. Conclusions
In this paper, we propose an object model to provide a
Intelligent air quality monitoring system unified description for IoT devices, which can simplify the
Air quality is increasingly important to the health of citizens, development processes for manufacturers and software engi-
and it is of great significance to monitor the air quality of build- neers. Especially, the descriptions and capabilities of devices are
ings. Traditional monitoring systems are implemented using defined on the communication protocols. A twin device can be
wired networks, which is expensive and complicated in construc- created using IoT-OM to debug the virtual device. Moreover, it
tion and maintenance. Since there is no need to set up a wired is possible to develop applications based on the twin device.
network, IoT techniques can reduce the difficulty of building At present, China Mobile OneNET Studio has adopted the
an intelligent monitoring system. In addition, considering the proposed IoT-OM and provided SDK to manufacturers.
large variety of equipment and manufacturers, it was laborious We counted the development cycles of five companies and
to connect the massive number of devices onto a platform. uploaded the result (see DevCycles.xlsx in Extended data14).
According to these statistics, manufacturers can significantly
By utilizing IoT-OM, OneNET Studio can connect an amount reduce development cycles. In addition, utilizing a unified
of IoT devices produced by other companies and monitor the air description for devices makes it easier to establish the connection
quality. Figure 12 illustrates the structure of the air quality between different systems and improves the intelligence for cities
monitoring system, and Figure 13 shows the devices and the and buildings.
visual interface of OneNET Studio.
The realization of digital twin relies on a large amount of
Comparison for development cycle real-world data, and IoT-OM provides a practical way to obtain
Table 1 lists the production information from a selection of com- heterogeneous data. Although virtual debugging and develop-
panies that utilize IoT-OM and who have accesses to OneNET ment have been implemented on some platforms, twin devices
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Figure 12. Demonstration of air quality monitoring. NB-IoT: Narrow Band Internet-of-Things, CO2: carbon dioxide, NH3: Ammonia,
SO2: sulfur dioxide, H2S: hydrogen sulfide, HCHO: formaldehyde, TVOC: Total Volatile Organic Compounds.
Figure 13. Internet-of-Things devices for air quality monitoring from the manufacturer and the visual interface of OneNET
Studio.
are not intelligent enough. In the future, we plan to improve the Extended data
proposed model in two aspects. The first aspect is to utilize B2SHARE: Internet-of-Things (IoT) Object Model. http://doi.
IoT-OM in more scenarios to verify the effectiveness of the org/10.23728/b2share.25290da7604a4211a45a88b6f79b98ff
model. The second aspect is to investigate how to improve the
intelligence of twin devices through collected data. This project contains the following extended data:
- night_light.json (a basic object model for IoT night light.
Data availability Visual Studio Code is required to review the code).
Underlying data
No underlying data are associated with this article. - Night Light.png (the structure of the IoT night light).
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Digital Twin 2022, 2:5 Last updated: 28 APR 2022
- s treet_light.json (a basic object model for IoT street light. China Mobile Communications Corporation. For readers who
Visual Studio Code is required to review the code). wish to use IoT-OM and define IoT devices using OneNET
platform, please send an access request email to the correspond-
- Street Light.png (the structure of the IoT street light). ing author (longrong@chinamobile.com) including a detailed
- D
evCycles.xlsx (the information of IoT devices, number description of the purpose of usage and scenario. If read-
of accessed devices, and development cycles listed in Table 1). ers agree to only use the account for research purposes and
without redistributing the associated software/code, We will
Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons send readers a trial account of OneNET platform.
Zero “No rights reserved” data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain
dedication). The OneNET platform provides an open-source Software
Development Kit (SDK) here: https://open.iot.10086.cn/doc/
Software availability iot_platform/book/device-connect&manager/sdk.html. The SDK
The source code for creating the object model on the OneNET can be used for software development of IoT applications and is
website is not publicly available due to the nature of the pro- under BSD license. The SDK is installed on the devices that
prietary software license, and the copyright is owned by handles communications, and describes the devices.
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