Edge Computing and Social Internet of Things for Large-Scale Smart Environments Development

Large-scale smart environments (LSEs) are open and dynamic systems typically extending over a wide area and including a huge number of interacting devices with a heterogeneous nature. Thus, during their deployment scalability and interoperability are key requirements to be definitely taken into account. To these, discovery and reputation assessment of services and objects have to be added, given that new devices and functionalities continuously join LSEs. In spite of the increasing interest in this topic, effective approaches to develop LSEs are still missing. This paper proposes an agent-based approach that leverages edge computing and Social Internet of Things paradigms in order to address the above mentioned issues. The effectiveness of such an approach is assessed through a sample case study involving a commercial road environment.