An Automatic Instrument Integration Scheme for Interoperable Ocean Observatories

Due to the heterogeneity, high cost, and harsh environment, ocean observatories demand a flexible, robust, and capable scheme to integrate science instruments. To deal with the challenges of automatic instrument integration and machine-to-machine interaction in ocean observatories, a systematic scheme is proposed based on Zero Configuration Networking (Zeroconf), Programmable Underwater Connector with Knowledge (PUCK), Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocols, as well as a smart interface module to achieve instrument plug-and-play and standard communication among heterogeneous ocean instruments. The scheme specifically considers the resource-constrained ocean observatories and machine-to-machine interoperability, which is of great significance to interoperable ocean observatories. The laboratory tests have verified the feasibility of the proposed scheme.