Towards high-availability cyber-physical systems using a microservice architecture

Abstract

In the past few years the use of IoT devices has grown exponentially. When it comes to working with them, we find a series of problems that are not easy to solve. On the one hand, the simple fact of communicating with those devices can be problematic since they can use different types of technologies regarding that communication. On the other hand, these types of devices usually aim to perform their function using the lowest possible energy, meaning they have certain constraints in terms of performance. Trying to work with these devices in high-availability environments becomes difficult because of those restraints. This paper introduces digital dice, a virtual representation of IoT devices and cyber-physical systems based on microservices that uses the standard established by the W3C, the Web of Things, as the underlying framework to declare its possible interactions. The article puts forward the different strategies that Digital Dice uses to mitigate the problems raised. Furthermore, we contrast the performance of Digital Dice with using the devices directly, demonstrating its advantages in a process that requires High Availability.