Smews: Smart and Mobile Embedded Web Server

Abstract

In this paper, we show that Web protocols and technologies are good candidates to design the Internet of Things, through a user-centric architecture (the user simply has to use a standard Web browser). We detail how this Web of Things can handle typical embedded devices interaction needs. We discuss the technical feasibility of embedded Web servers, and, thanks to an analysis of the Web protocols, we propose new cross-layer solutions for efficient tiny embedded Web servers design. The problem of event notification for Web applications is also discussed. We finally present a prototype - named Smews - as a proof of concept of the Web of Things. Smews implements our proposals and has been embedded in tiny devices (smart cards, sensors and other embedded devices), with a requirement of only 200 bytes of volatile memory and 7 kilo-bytes of code. We show that it is significantly faster than other state of the art solutions. We made Smews source code publically available under an open-source license.