Digital Communications and Networks xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Digital Communications and Networks

journal homepage: www.keaipublishing.com/dcan

Analysis of identifiers on IoT platforms

Haris Aftab a, Komal Gilani a, JiEun Lee a, Lewis Nkenyereye a, SeungMyeong Jeong b,
JaeSeung Song a, *
a
Software Engineering and Security (SES) Lab, Department of Computer and Information Security, Sejong University, Seoul, 05006, Republic of Korea
b
IoT Convergence Platform Lab, Korea Electronics Technologies Institute, Sungnam-Si, 13509, Republic of Korea

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The Internet of Things (IoT) provides new opportunities for different IoT platforms connecting various devices
Internet of things together. The need to identify those devices is foremost important to perform any kind of operation. Many or-
Identifiers ganizations and standard bodies that provide specifications and frameworks for the IoT currently have their own
Identification schemes
identification mechanisms. Some existing industrial identification mechanisms can also be used in the IoT. There
IoT platforms
IoT standards
is no common Identification Scheme (IS) for the IoT as yet, because of the political and commercial differences
amongst the standard bodies. The unavailability of a unified IS and method makes the inter-working among IoT
platforms challenging. This paper analyses and compares ISs used by several selected IoT platforms. This work
will help in understanding the need of a common identification mechanism to provide inter-working among
different IoT platforms.

1. Introduction example of a network node. The Communication identifier, which is

generally made of an IP address, is used for addressing. Application
Since the emergence and rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) identifiers identify service layer applications, objects, and logical entities,
[1,2], many global organizations have been providing specifications and etc. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and Uniform Resource Locator
guidelines for creating IoT applications. Therefore, IoT applications are (URL) are some examples for application identifiers.
very diverse in nature due to the heterogeneity of the platforms available. In order to communicate with IoT applications running on different
An identifier has a string of characters used to identify any physical or IoT platforms, a unified identification methodology is needed [8]. This is
virtual entity. For example, an IP address is an identifier of a computer the most prominent issue in the IoT [9]. The interoperability of identi-
connected to the network [3]. Basically, the IoT devices or the applica- fiers is a key challenge since many different IoT platforms co-exist. The
tions need to be recognized before being used in an IoT environment [1]. diverse nature of the hardware devices [3] of different IoT platforms
There are many platforms that use various globally unique Identification makes it even more difficult for the inter-working of heterogeneous
Schemes (ISs) [4,5] or their own proprietary methods. The problem identifiers. There are various universal ISs, such as Object IDentifier
arises when devices from different platforms need to exchange data or (OID), Electronic Product Code (EPC), Universally Unique IDentifier
communicate with other applications. Due to the lack of an identification (UUID), and International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI), etc[10,11].
standard, the inter-working among IoT platforms remains challenging [4, These ISs are used in identifying objects or devices in different domains,
6]. such as the supply chain [12], cellular phones and information systems.
The identifiers in an IoT standard can be typically divided into the Unfortunately, there is no single universally unique IS, and different
following categories: object identifier, communication identifier and platforms use different schemes in the IoT. This makes the interopera-
application identifier [7]. Object identifiers represent physical or virtual bility across various platforms difficult to achieve [13].
objects. Barcodes and Radio Frequency IDentifier (RFID) are some ex- Before discussing the details about ISs, it is important to understand
amples for identifiers that cannot be used for addressing or communi- the difference between an identifier and an IS. In order to understand the
cating. Communication identifiers uniquely identify nodes on a network identifier of an object, we first need to understand the distinction be-
having communication capabilities. Any sensor or network device is an tween the identifier of an object and its network address. In general, the

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: harisaftab07@gmail.com (H. Aftab), komalsyeda29@gmail.com (K. Gilani), love9ly@gmail.com (J. Lee), nkenyele@sejong.ac.kr (L. Nkenyereye),
sm.jeong@keti.re.kr (S. Jeong), jssong@sejong.ac.kr (J. Song).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcan.2019.05.003
Received 27 March 2018; Received in revised form 28 January 2019; Accepted 9 May 2019
Available online xxxx
2352-8648/© 2019 Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-
NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: H. Aftab et al., Analysis of identifiers on IoT platforms, Digital Communications and Networks, https://doi.org/10.1016/
j.dcan.2019.05.003
H. Aftab et al. Digital Communications and Networks xxx (xxxx) xxx

identifier of an object and its network address are different and serve
different purposes. The former provides a unique meaning to the object,
whereas the latter might change with the physical location of the object.
In the case where the address of the object differs from the identifier, the
identifier is generated by using different ISs. The EPC, as stated earlier, is
one of the well-known ISs that uniquely identifies an object associated
with a RFID tag.
An IoT IS is based on the concept of providing management, main-
tenance and mapping discovery of identifiers and the retrieval of iden-
tifier information. Currently, the IoT has not achieved a common
identification mechanism due to various reasons. A preliminary approach
towards a unified scheme or inter-working mechanism is to understand
the various ISs that are used by IoT platforms.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows:

We review the ISs and the methods used by some selected IoT
platforms.

We provide a comparison of the practical ISs used by the IoT
platforms.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 discusses the

state of the art ISs that are globally used in various industries. Section 3
explores the ISs used by various IoT platforms. Section 4 analyses
different ISs and compares these schemes in some selected platforms.
Section 5 concludes the paper, highlights the importance of the research
and proposes future work. Fig. 1. OID structure by ITU.

2. State of the art ISs efficiently and safely. In the field of the RFID, unique identification
methods are urgently needed. In the RFID, EPC and ISO codes are used
There are a lot of existing ISs, and each has its own way of assigning for existing barcodes. Therefore, special identification methods are
identifiers to various physical and virtual entities (devices, users, appli- needed for the new RFID service to avoid collision with the system that
cations, etc.). This section discusses some of the current mainstream ISs, uses previous code systems, such as the EPC. Based on these reasons, the
including OID, EPC and UUID. concept of OID is essential in the RFID.

2.1. OID 2.2. EPC

The OID is an identification mechanism developed by the ITU-T (In- An EPC is a universal identifier that assigns the identity to any
ternational Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardiza- physical object that is unique amongst all objects and categories all
tion Sector) [14] and the ISO/IEC (International Organization for around the world. These unique identifiers can be used for referring to or
Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission) [15], to tracking objects in information systems that are part of the EPCglobal
name specific objects so that the objects can be distinguished easily. Network [17]. EPCglobal Inc™ has the responsibility to oversee the EPC
Objects are represented as a sequence of base integer values and corre- standards, specifications and guidelines for the auto ID infrastructure to
sponding unicode values according to a hierarchical name structure so support its use [18]. EPCglobal is a non-profit joint venture of GS1
that they can be identified. The OIDs address the interoperability issues (formerly EAN International) and GS1 US (formerly the Uniform Code
of heterogeneous inter-industry identification systems. The OID scheme Council). EPCglobal and other third-party providers aim to achieve a
uses a tree-like hierarchy to assign unique numbers to objects so that they common goal towards an enhancement in business flows and computer
are not duplicated. There is no name for the root and it only has three of applications through the use of EPCs.
the top-level areas, which are managed by the ISO. 0 is the ITU-T, 1 is the The identification of each object, such as an asset, a trade item and a
ISO, and 2 is jointly managed by the ISO and the ITU-T [16]. document, has a corresponding GS1 key, which is shown in Table 1. GS1's
Below is an example scheme based on the OID: EPC Tag Data Standard (TDS) 1.11 [19] specifies the data format of the
{ 0.2.481.1.999.xxxx } EPC and provides encodings for numbering schemes, which include the
Each digit in the OID hierarchy is called an arc. The first arc repre- GS1 keys within an EPC. The TDS is concerned with the encoding of EPCs
sents the managing organization and 0 here represents the ITU-T. The onto the RFID tags, as well as with defining the standards for other data
second arc represents the type for which it is used. In this example, 2 apart from the EPC that may be stored on a Gen 2 RFID tag.
represents the administration. The third arc is the Data Country Code A large subset of EPC adapted applications rely on the RFID as a data
(DCC), which is assigned to each country. In Korea, 450, 480 and 481 carrier. For such applications, the EPC identifiers are encoded on the
codes are assigned, and KISA is responsible for the management. 450 is RFID tags and can be captured using radio waves. The EPC is an identi-
used to discriminate the RFID code type. The other two numbers are not fier, and the RFID is a data carrier. The RFID tags contain other data
used nowadays, but number 1 of 481 is experimentally granted and used besides the EPC identifiers, whereas in some applications, they may not
by SKT. The fifth arc 999 means the grant for the IoT and the sixth arc carry an EPC identifier at all. The EPC identifier can also exist in non-
means the given organization or company. Fig. 1 shows the OID structure RFID contexts.
which is managed by the ITU-T. The identifier can be represented in two forms: the text form and the
The OID can be used in various fields, such as Internet management, binary form. The EPC text form represented within computer systems,
security, medical care, and the RFID. It can identify objects that are including electronic documents, databases and electronic messages, is
managed by the Internet. It can also be used for digital signature certif- referred as the pure identity EPC URI. The term EPC binary encoding is
icate items used by banks or various security duties to manage them used specifically to refer to the form that the EPC takes within the

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Table 1
EPC identification schemes.
EPC Scheme Identifier Syntax

Serialised Global Trade Identification Number (SGTIN) urn:epc:id:sgtin:CompanyPrefix.ItemRefAndIndicator.SerialNumber

Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) urn:epc:id:sscc:CompanyPrefix.SerialReference
Global Location Number with or without Location (SGLN) urn:epc:id:sgln:CompanyPrefix.LocationReference.Extension
Global Returnable Asset Identifier (GRAI) urn:epc:id:grai:CompanyPrefix.AssetType.SerialNumber
Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI) urn:epc:id:giai:CompanyPrefix.IndividulAssetReference
Global Service Relation Number Recipient (GSRNR) urn:epc:id:gsrn:CompanyPrefix.ServiceReference
Global Service Relation Number Provider (GSRNP) urn:epc:id:gsrnp:CompanyPrefix.ServiceReference
Global Document Type Identifier (GDTI) urn:epc:id:gdti:CompanyPrefix.DocumentType.SerialNumber
Component/Part Identification (CPI) urn:epc:id:cpi:CompanyPrefix.ComponentPartReference.Serial
Serialised Global Coupon Number (SGCN) urn:epc:id:sgcn:CompanyPrefix.CouponReference.SerialComponent
Global Identification Number of Consignment (GINC) urn:epc:id:ginc:CompanyPrefix.ConsignmentReference
Global Shipment Identification Number (GSIN) urn:epc:id:gsin:CompanyPrefix.ShipperReference
General Identifiers (GID) urn:epc:id:gid:ManagerNumber.ObjectClass.SerialNumber

memory of the RFID tags. The basic format of the EPC identifier can To ensure its uniqueness, a UUID relies upon a combination of com-
represent the product's manufacture date, origin, and batch number. It ponents. A generated UUID contains the network address of the system
consists of a header, an EPC manager number, an object class and a serial that has generated the UUID, a timestamp and a randomly generated
number [20]. The header identifies the length, type, structure, version component. As both the network address and timestamp of each UUID
and generation of the EPC. The EPC manager number is responsible for are unique, a combination of the two components are practically enough
maintaining the subsequent partitions. The object class identifies a class to guarantee the uniqueness of a UUID. The randomly generated
of objects and a serial number identifies the instance. component acts as an extra protection to avoid any unpredictable
The standardization and application of the EPC are managed by problem.
EPCglobal and GS1. The EPC framework architecture includes the EPC UUIDs are widely used as database keys in database tables. Auto-
fundamentals, the pure identity EPC URI, the EPC tag URI and the binary matically generated ID functions in databases usually return every
encoding. The pure identity EPC URI is the identifier representation used variant of the UUID. MySQL provides a function to generate version 1
to identify objects in documents, databases or computer programs, such UUIDs [22]. Various versions of GUIDs are used in Microsoft's Compo-
as the identification of resources in a website. The EPC tag URI consists of nent Object Model (COM) [23]. Commonly they are used to identify
the EPC and the control information. The control information is used to various classes and library identifiers in the Windows registry. UUIDs are
guide the processing of the data captured from the RFID tags. It is used at also used in Linux-based operating systems at the file system and parti-
the data capture level to extract information from the RFID tags. The tion level.
third standard is the binary encoding. It is a compressed encoding rep-
resentation of the memory bank content, and it is only encountered at a 3. Identification in IoT standards
very low level of software and hardware. The EPC identifier is repre-
sented as the Internet URI in any kind of data carrier. This URI is called There are many different global organizations and industry groups
pure identity EPC URI. The former syntax of the EPC is as follows: that provide specification standards, security solutions and interopera-
EPC-URI:: ¼ SGTIN-URI j SSCC-URI j SGLN-URI j GRAI-URI j GIAI-URI bility guidelines for the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and IoT technolo-
j GSRN-URI j GDTI-URI j CPI-URI j SGCN-URI j GID-URI j DOD-URI j ADI- gies. oneM2M, Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) and FIWARE
URI j BIC-URI represent some of the most popular standards and platforms providing
end-to-end IoT services. Apart from the standards that focus only on the
2.3. UUID IoT, there are some organizations that develop global standards for
business communication. GS1 is the most famous amongst those orga-
The UUID is a 128 bit number that is used to uniquely identify an nizations. Barcodes and the RFID are the best examples of the standards
entity or object across space and time. It is also termed as Globally from GS1 that are also used in the IoT for connecting the physical and
Unique IDentifier (GUID) [21]. The probability of having a duplicated digital worlds. The following sections discuss the architecture, resource
UUID is almost zero and can be considered negligible. Because of this modelling mechanisms, identifiers and ISs employed by oneM2M, GS1,
characteristic, it can be safely used as a unique IS. UUIDs were used OCF and FIWARE.
initially in Apollo Network Computing System (ANCS) and later on Open
Software Foundation's (OSF) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) 3.1. oneM2M
and in Microsoft Windows platforms. The first design of the UUID was
based on the ANCS UUIDs. Microsoft Windows platforms use GUIDs oneM2M standards partnership project platform was founded in 2012
which are based on DCE's design of UUID. by eight of the world's leading Information and Communication Tech-
In the canonical structure of the UUID, 32 hexadecimal (base 16) nology (ICT) organizations [24]. The main objective of oneM2M is to
digits represent the sixteen octets of a UUID. The display format of the define a comprehensive M2M platform to provide interoperability ser-
UUID is in five groups as 8-4-4-4-12 for a total of 36 characters, four of vices within an organization and among multiple organizations. The
which are hyphens. The following is a sample UUID: architecture of oneM2M derives a layered approach in which each layer
61f8a73e-52bf-11e8-9c2d-fa7ae01bbebc GUID used by Microsoft is is responsible for a certain set of actions. The layers in the architecture
usually represented in surrounding braces which are shown as below: include the application layer, the common services layer and the network
{61f8a73e-52bf-11e8-9c2d-fa7ae01bbebc}. The Internet Engineering layer, which are shown in Fig. 2. The oneM2M system has different en-
Task Force (IETF) RFC 4122 defines the URN namespace for UUIDs. The tities that operate on different layers, including the Application Entity
UUID as a URN namespace is described as: (AE), the Common Services Entity (CSE) and the Network Service Entity
(NSE) [25,26]. The AE is responsible for providing the application logic,
urn:uuid:61f8a73e-52bf-11e8-9c2d-fa7ae such as a smart home application that provides M2M services. The CSE is
01bbebc responsible for providing the Common Services Function (CSF) to other
CSEs or AEs, such as data management and device management. The NSE

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Fig. 2. oneM2M reference architecture.

delivers underlying network services to the CSE, for example, device

triggering, location services and device management. The locations of
AEs and CSEs can be on a device, gateways, or servers. The entities are
linked to each other via oneM2M reference points. oneM2M provides
three reference points for communication in a single oneM2M system.
These reference points include Mca, Mcc and Mcn [27]. The Mca refer-
ence point allows AEs to use services offered by the CSE. The Mcc
reference point provides inter-CSE communication. The Mcn reference
point permits CSEs to use services offered by the underlying network or
the NSEs. The reference point Mcc’ is like the Mcc except that it provides
a communication flow between two CSEs in the domain of infrastructure.
oneM2M follows the resource-based data model where all services are
represented in the form of resources. The CSE base represents a CSE and
it is the root of all resources that reside in the CSE. It can have various
resources as its child resources, including resources for the AE, the
container, the content instance and others. Like the CSEs, the AE can also
have multiple child resources. Both the CSE and the AE have their
respective resource types. There are other resource types used for data
management and data instances. Data management and tracking are
supported by the < Container> resource type, and data instances are
stored in the < Content Instance > resource type. The < Subscription >
resource type contains information for its subscribed-to resource. Fig. 3
shows an example of resource tree in the oneM2M. In this figure, the <
Subscription > resource type is a child of the CSE base, the AE and the
container resource. Fig. 3. oneM2M resource tree.
Identifiers in the oneM2M system uniquely identify an entity (CSE or
AE), an object (M2M node or M2M service provider) or a resource (IMEI) number. The IMEI number consists of 15 decimal digits, including
(<Container>, < Content Instance>, < Subscription>, etc.) as specified by 1 digit as the check digit. It contains various information, including the
oneM2M technical specification 3.12 [28]. Also, the identifier in a device model, the origin and the serial number. Alternatively, the OID
oneM2M system should not change its value over the life cycle of the can be used as the IS for the M2M-Node-ID. The OID consists of a tree
entity, resource or object. The CSE-ID uniquely identifies a CSE when structure format and uses integer values for its construction. It uses one
instantiated in an M2M node in the M2M system. It is adequate for the higher level arc and a sequence of four other arcs. The higher arc rep-
CSE-ID to be unique within the domain of the M2M service provider. The resents the M2M device indication ID and is managed by the ITU-T/ISO.
AE-ID uniquely identifies the AE residing in the M2M node and the AE The remaining four arcs represent the manufacturer ID, the product
that wants to communicate to an M2M node. It is also adequate for the model ID, the serial number ID and the expanded ID, respectively.
AE-ID to be unique within the domain of the M2M service provider. The Let's presume 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 to be an OID-based M2M
CSE-ID and the AE-ID are required to be globally unique once they are device ID. The interpretation of the M2M-Node-ID is described as below:
used outside the domain of the M2M service provider. An M2M service
provider is uniquely identified by the M2M-SP-ID. It is a static value
(0 2 481 1) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 represents the M2M device
assigned to the service provider. The App-ID uniquely identifies a indication ID (higher arc):
oneM2M application. The oneM2M application runs in the oneM2M node – (0) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 identifies the managing organiza-
which is identified by the M2M-Node-ID. tion: ITU-T.
The M2M-Node-ID refers to the node where the oneM2M application – (2) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 identifies the “Administration”.
is running and thus it requires to be globally unique. oneM2M provides – (481) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 identifies the data country code
flexibility in choosing among ISs for a globally unique identifier. One for Korea.
example of such an IS is the International Mobile Equipment Identity – (1) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 identifies an M2M device.

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(100) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 identifies the device element string syntax and the EPC URI syntax [30]. The plain syntax is
manufacturer. composed of GS1 identification keys as a sequence of characters with no

(3030) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 identifies the device model. additional syntactic feature. The plain syntax is used where a single type

(10011) in 0 2 481 1 100 3030 10011 identifies the device serial of key is expected. For example, an XML element in a business document
number. that contains only one key. The GS1 element string consists of an
Application Identifier (AI) which represents the type of GS1 identifica-
3.2. GS1 tion key to follow and the key itself [29]. The AI in GS1 is composed of
numeric prefixes used in barcodes and EPC/RFID-tags. The AI specifies
GS1 is a non-profit organization that mainly focuses on various the format and semantics of data elements. For example, the AI 8002
standards used in business communication, such as barcodes and the specifies that the GS1 AI data field holds the serial number of a cellular
RFID. GS1 was established in 1973 by Uniform Code Council, Inc. (UCC), mobile telephone. The GS1 element string syntax is used in the capturing
known now as GS1 US [29]. GS1 formulates a global language for busi- layer to carry multiple data elements in a single barcode. The use of the
ness that helps in three key areas: identifying, capturing and sharing. The EPC URI is not limited to the identification key. It can be used to describe
GS1's business language uses these key areas to provide information any Internet resource because of its URI syntax. One of the EPC URI
about products, assets, locations, shipments and others. The GS1 iden- constructs is the EPC scheme. Almost each EPC scheme has a corre-
tification standards provide GS1 identification keys that serve as unique sponding GS1 identification key. Each EPC scheme provides a namespace
identifiers to refer to the real-world entities. The GS1 data capture of identifiers that can be used to identify physical objects of a particular
standards provide ways to capture data from physical entities. The GS1 type. Collectively, the EPC URIs from all schemes are unique identifiers
sharing standards help in sharing information between applications and for any type of physical objects. The EPC URI, which is a specific Uniform
trading partners. Thus the combined GS1 system of standards plays an Resource Name (URN), has the following syntax [19]: urn:epc:id:sche-
integral role in connecting the IoT-based devices. GS1 fulfills the me:component1.component2. Table 2 shows a comparison of the iden-
requirement of identifying objects through the GS1 identification keys. tifier syntaxes of the GS1 keys.
These keys uniquely and persistently identify an object. The GS1 data
capture standards can be used to capture the data of sensors, such as the 3.3. OCF
temperature or humidity in the EPCIS through its capturing interface.
The architecture of GS1 consists of three layers (identifying, capturing OCF is an industry group that aims at providing interoperability
and sharing) as shown in Fig. 4. guidelines and specification standards for IoT devices. OCF is one of the
The main constructs of the GS1 system involve the entities, the at- biggest IoT industrial standardization organizations and has more than
tributes and the keys [30]. The information associated with each entity is 300 member companies [31]. It provides a set of specifications, a refer-
represented by its attributes. For example, in order to represent a tem- ence implementation and a certification for IoT-based devices through its
perature sensor in GS1, its attributes can be the name, the measurement framework. The focus of the OCF framework is to offer interoperability
unit and the location, etc. The keys in GS1 uniquely and unambiguously by providing a common data model for the IoT device interfacing.
identify the entity. The GS1 key is a unique attribute of the entity and is The general architecture of OCF depicts the resource-based interac-
part of the identifying layer in the GS1 architecture. The GS1 identifi- tion amongst different IoT artefacts that include the applications and
cation keys are available to distinguish a variety of products, such as the physical devices, etc. It enables semantic interoperability by providing a
documents, logistics, location, assets, shipments, coupons, etc. There are common and consistent data model for describing the environment. The
11 GS1 identification keys that are used to identify items from different architecture also proposes common communication protocols, security
categories. These identification keys are: Global Trade Item Number and identification mechanisms to enable improved connectivity, dis-
(GTIN), Global Location Number (GLN), Serial Shipping Container Code covery and identification of devices. The real world entities, such as the
(SSCC), Global Returnable Asset Identifier (GRAI), Global Individual temperature sensor, light bulb or other devices, are described in the form
Asset Identifier (GIAI), Global Service Relation Number (GSRN), Global of resources. They are interacted upon by operations that adhere to the
Document Type Identifier (GDTI), Global Identification Number for REpresentational State Transfer (REST) architectural style [32]. The OCF
Consignment (GINC), Global Shipment Identification Number (GSIN), architecture is classified into three types [33] as follows:
Global Coupon Number (GCN) and Component/Part Identifier (CPID)
[30]. The GS1 identification keys require the GS1 company prefix as the
Resource model: The resource model is responsible for defining
initial construct for its composition. The GS1 company prefix is obtained mechanisms that provide interoperability among the devices in OCF.
directly from GS1 and is different for each country. The major components in the resource model are: the entity, the re-
The GS1 keys require a concrete syntax that can be used in infor- sources, the URI, etc.
mation systems and that is called the identifier syntax. GS1 supports
RESTful operations: To perform interactions with a resource, generic
three kinds of identifier syntaxes, including the plain syntax, the GS1 CRUDN operations are specified in the OCF architecture. This also
means that the interaction is carried in a protocol and in a techno-
logically independent way.

Table 2
GS1 identifier syntax.
Syntax Example Description

Plain 0614141567891123 GRAI scheme with GS1

Company Prefix 0614141,
Asset Type 56789, Check Digit
1 and Serial 123
GS1 800300614141567891123 Application Identifier (AI)
Element 8003, 0 as the padding element
String followed by the Plain syntax.
EPC URI urn:epc:id:grai:0614141.56789.123 EPC URI GRAI represented by
urn:epc:id:grai, GS1 Company
Prefix, Asset Type and Serial
Fig. 4. GS1 architecture.

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Abstraction: This component provides the abstract primitives of the physical objects in the real world. Examples include: sensors, actuators,
resource model and the RESTful operations. table, and person, etc. Each entity contains an identifier and a type. For
example, an entity may represent a temperature sensor, a room in a
The OCF architecture is resource-based where each resource needs to building or even a person. In the case of an entity representing a person, it
be identified to perform any operation. OCF requires a unique identifi- can have an identifier, such as “Harry”, and a type as “Person”. In the case
cation as a way to identify and address various elements in its framework. of a sensor, it can have an identifier as “temperature_sensor” and a type as
The identifier should unambiguously identify a resource and should be “Temperature Sensor”. Because of this relationship between the identifier
unique within a context or domain. The most salient property of the and the type, entities are uniquely identified by a pair consisting of an
identifier is that it should not change its value over the life-cycle of the entity Id and an entity type [36,38]. Context elements also contain context
element it refers to. The identifiers in OCF can be either context-specific elements attributes and meta-data [36]. Context element attributes refer
or context-independent. Context specific identifiers are unique in the to entity attributes that are characterized by a triplet of name, type and
context or the domain they are used and easy to generate. For example, value. For example, the temperature of an entity “temperature_sensor” can
an IP address can be a unique identifier for a device that is located inside be represented by the attribute name “temperature”, the type “Celsius”
a home behind some gateway. Context-independent identifiers are and the temperature value of that sensor. Each context element optionally
required to use practically stronger schemes. An example of such a contains meta-data (also referred to as semantic-data) which is also
scheme is the UUID. characterized by the same triplet of name, type and value. The context
A resource requires some properties for its identification. There are information model consisting of the context element, the context element
some common properties available to every resource in OCF. The attributes and the meta-data with their relationships are shown in Fig. 5.
Resource Identity (RI) is such a common property that can be used to The FIWARE version of the OMA NGSI 9/10 interfaces is the RESTful
identify any resource. It uniquely identifies a specific instance of the APIs. Context information is exchanged on the FIWARE platform by these
resource. This identifier's value is dependent on the device and its interfaces. The NGSI-9 interface provides functions to make context in-
implementation. OCF provides Device ID (DID) attributes to uniquely formation accessible among different context elements [36]. It provides
identify the device that hosts the resource. The resources can also be context registration through which registered entities publish their data
identified by the URI. The resource can be addressed by the URI if it and context discovery to access or discover that data. The NGSI-10
represents a URL. The structure of the OCF URI is defined in the IETF RFC interface provides context subscription to create subscriptions for the
3986 [34] as follows: context elements and the context update function to update the context
information for the context elements [36].
<scheme>://<authority>/<path>?<query> A resource on the IoT platform represents some physical objects. For
example, an entity can be used to represent a sensor, a person, a room, etc.
Specifically, the OCF URI can be described as below: The manipulation of the context information represented by the context
element is achieved through the NGSI 9/10 RESTful APIs. To distinguish
ocf://<authority>/<path>?<query> resources in a FIWARE-based context management system, there are
various identifiers for identifying resources at different hierarchical levels.
Here, the scheme of the URI is the OCF, the authority is the DID, the Fig. 6 shows the resource structure of the FIWARE platform.
path is the string that refers to the resource on the server, and the query The context element representation of an entity is identified uniquely
string contains <name, value> pairs. The URI can be either relative or by its entity Id and entity type. Similarly, attribute name and the attribute
absolute. The URI addresses only the resource, and any parent-child type identify an attribute that is represented by the attribute's context
relationship between the resources cannot be inferred. The RI and the element attribute. The meta-data resource is identified by the meta-data
DID are used where the identifier needs not to be a URI. name and the meta-data type. There are some conditions to name these
OCF relies on the OCF scheme to make a resource instance unique identifiers in the FIWARE NGSI v2 specification [39] that are summa-
across the scope of the device. The value for the attribute that uniquely rized as below:
identifies the device, such as the RI, can be either a string or a UUID. A
UUID refers to a 128-bit number used to identify an object. The proba-
Allowed characters are the ones in the plain ASCII set except the
bility of having a duplicate UUID is close to zero and negligible. The following ones: control characters, whitespace, &, ?,/and #.
string value of the RI can be used when we are using the OCF scheme. For
The maximum field length is 256 characters.
identifiers that need to be globally unique, such as the DID, some strong
The minimum field length is 1 character.
ISs are required. OCF requires globally unique identifiers to use a UUID as
their IS. The OMA NGSI specification provides a guideline for defining the
identifier's entity Id and entity type. The identifier's entity Ids are the
3.4. FIWARE URIs, and those URIs can be represented by a UUID URN to make them
globally unique. The entity Id can also use a URN to make the URI from
The FIWARE project was initiated by the European Commission as some specific FIWARE enablers. An example of this URI can be “urn:x-
part of the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership (FIPPP), which was oma-application:dpe:” prefix, which can be added to the DPE server-ID/
launched on 3rd May, 2011 with major information and communication client-ID for connecting with the DPE enablers [40]. Because of the
technology partners and companies based in Europe. The essential similarity to the entity Id, the entity type can use any standard OMA
objective of creating FIWARE is to provide future Internet services and registered namespace URN or an existing standard namespace. The
applications by utilizing the services of generic enablers [35,36]. These attribute name and attribute type can use the OMA URN or any existing
enablers provide modular and reusable functions in various application standard namespace, which is very similar to this approach. In the same
domains. These domains include IoT services, security, data manage- example, when interacting with the DPE enablers, the attribute name can
ment, cloud hosting, and Augmented Reality (AR), etc. use the existing name “DPE-deviceprops” as its value, and the attribute
FIWARE relies on the Open Mobile Alliance Next Generation Service
Interface (OMA NGSI) specification [37] for information exchange and
data management. The context information is represented by the context
elements and a set of generic data structures [36]. A context element re-
fers to the data structure used for representing and exchanging informa-
tion about entities or things. The entities are the virtual representation of Fig. 5. FIWARE context information model.

6
H. Aftab et al. Digital Communications and Networks xxx (xxxx) xxx

Table 3
Identification schemes in different IoT Standards/Platforms.
Standard/ Globally Unique Identifiers Identification
Platform Scheme(s)

oneM2M APP-ID, M2M-Node-ID, CSE-ID and OID, IMEI or any other

AE-ID scheme
GS1 All GS1 EPC Identifiers EPC
OCF Device ID (di) UUID (any form)
FIWARE Entity ID, Entity Type, Attribute Name UUID URN
and Attribute Type

FIWARE provides flexibility to use URIs for its globally unique iden-
tifiers. The globally unique identifiers in FIWARE include the entity Id,
entity type, attribute name and attribute type. The URIs for these iden-
tifiers can be generated from the URNs of the connected FIWARE en-
ablers or from the UUID URNs.
Table 3 presents a comparison of different ISs used by the IoT plat-
forms under consideration. The table shows the main underlying features
for each IoT platform and the corresponding identification scheme. Note
that both OCF and FIWARE use the UUID as an IS. However, OCF is more
flexible compared with FIWARE because it is not limited to the UUID
URN, which is the case of FIWARE. Amongst them, oneM2M provides
more flexibility to use any kind of scheme. Because of the existence of a
variety of ISs in the IoT, interoperability is a major challenge [2]. On the
Internet, the IP addresses take care of the identification of machines.
Those IP addresses are then resolved and discovered by the Domain
Name System (DNS) [13,41]. Reasons for why the IoT does not have this
kind of infrastructure are the resource constraint and the mobile nature
of its devices [42]. The IoT devices need a common IS or such like
mechanism to perform inter-working and the discovery of the data on
other platforms.

5. Conclusion & future work

Fig. 6. FIWARE resource tree. In this paper, we have provided an initial study about the identifiers
and the need for a common IS to achieve interoperability amongst
type can use “urn:org.openmobilealliance:device:properties” as its value various IoT standards and platforms. We have discussed some of the ISs
[40]. that are adopted by different IoT platforms. Meanwhile, since numerous
applications are already using some IoT platforms, the migration to a
4. Analysis and discussion whole new IS could be difficult. However, the goal of interoperability and
inter-working can be achieved by proposing a mechanism that acts as a
This section analyses different previously mentioned ISs used by some middleware and provides unified identification that discovery services.
IoT platforms. All of the platforms treat the physical and virtual objects in As for the future work, we intend to provide an in-depth systematic
the form of resources that are operated by the REST operations. The review of the major IoT platforms. Then, we shall define a mechanism
canonical form of the identifiers is the URI in most cases. There are two through which devices from different IoT platforms can discover and
types of identifiers: globally unique identifiers and locally unique iden- interact with each other. The unified mechanism will help in achieving
tifiers. Globally unique identifiers require a strong IS. Locally unique global inter-working among applications and devices from different IoT
identifiers, however, do not require a practically strong scheme. ISs for industry standards and platforms.
globally unique identifiers vary from one platform to another.
The oneM2M standard uses a large number of identifiers in its ar- Acknowledgements
chitecture. For example, the AE-ID and the CSE-ID need to be globally
unique when used outside the domain of the M2M service provider. The This work is supported by the Institute for Information & communi-
APP-ID and the M2M-Node-ID are globally unique identifiers that cations Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Korean gov-
represent the oneM2M application and device, respectively. OneM2M ernment Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) (No. B0184-15-1001,
uses the URI to represent its identifiers. The IS is flexible in oneM2M, and Federated Interoperable Semantic IoT Testbeds and Applications).
any scheme that guarantees uniqueness can be used, such as IMEI and
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