Designing a Broker Extension for Seamless CoAP and MQTT Interoperability

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a transformative paradigm facilitating connectivity among everyday objects and devices via the internet, simplifying industrial processes, and enhancing quality of life for individuals, while also fostering the development of innovative applications. However, the creation of an interconnected network of heterogeneous “things” presents unique adaptation challenges in hardware and software characteristics, notably communication protocols, leading to major interoperability issues. This work addresses these challenges by proposing a solution for seamless integration of two widely adopted protocols, MQTT and CoAP, through the development of an interoperability broker extension. By effectively mapping REST and publish/subscribe mechanisms, this broker extension enables secure and seamless interaction between heterogeneous clients, utilizing a single broker structure and eliminating the need for additional middleware. Comprehensive testing demonstrates comparable performance in latency and memory resource consumption, validating the system as a promising solution to resolve IoT interoperability issues.