Customizable service level agreement (SLA) generator platform using FCAPS management to enhance Quality of Experience (QoE) on Internet of Things (IoT)

Defining an ontology to support all possible scenarios in the Internet of Things (IoT) is challenging, given the range of IoT applications, the context in which they are used, and their continued evolution. Furthermore, a desire for flexibility and ability to accommodate all scenarios using a standardized approach renders this a complex operational and management environment. An approach taken by some researchers in defining ontologies is to integrate components from different ontological schemes into a single schema. This approach is rationalized through the subsequent ability to support interoperability across IoT deployments. It also allows niche areas in individual ontologies to be merged to produce a more encompassing approach. However, this continues to be a pieced-together strategy and depends on service provider intelligence to ensure all applications are fulfilled: service level agreements (SLAs) provisioned on this basis therefore continue to require manual intervention. In response to this gap, we have proposed an ontology for the IoT. The ontology is unique in that it incorporates details associated with customers and their preferences, such as their ability to tolerate the observed dataset becoming unavailable or the data collection frequency of a dataset changing. Furthermore, it supports ability to accommodate domain-specific angles when working on a cross-domain approach; we believe that this is key in overcoming the limitations in other IoT ontologies and works toward a single standardized ontology. Through accommodating domain-specific elements, it is our objective that Quality of Service (QoS) needs of the applications are fulfilled without a customer needing significant technical knowledge. Taking these unique aspects into account, we believe the ontology will facilitate automatic SLA provision, service setup, and service management throughout the SLA lifetime. This will help to support the business objectives of the Internet service provider. The ontology has been defined in our previous work. In this document, the use of these ontology terms to generate personalized SLAs is presented.