Performance Evaluation of an Internet-of-Things Platform Based on Open-Source

This paper presents the performance evaluation of an open-source IoT platform. The platform has a three-layer architecture. The physical layer comprises the elements for data acquisition and process automation. The communication layer consists of a set of equipment that facilitates the exchange of information between the control devices and the application layer. The application layer is based on a container architecture and facilitates the interaction between the user and the processes. A ThingsBoard service is executed on a container and data is transmitted using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol. Additionally, a database service was implemented in PostgreSQL using another container. The evaluation of the implemented platform was performed through two virtual processes created in Tecnomatix Plant Simulation software. Each process was automated with a virtualized version of a SIEMENS S7-1500 PLC available through the SIMATIC S7-PLCSIM Advanced software tool. A set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) generated in both processes are visualized and managed in the Things-Board application. The performance of the platform has been evaluated based on the bandwidth present at the network layer and the resources consumed by the services running on the containers.