A Survey of Identity Modeling and Identity Addressing in Internet of Things

With the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the physical space we are living in is experiencing unprecedented digitalization and virtualization. It is an overwhelming trend to achieve the convergence between the physical space and cyberspace, where the fundamental problem is to realize the accurate mapping between the two spaces. Therefore, identity modeling and identity addressing, which serve as the main bridge between the physical space and cyberspace, are regarded as important research areas. This article summarizes the related works regarding identity modeling and identity addressing in IoT, and makes a general comparison and analysis based on their respective features. Following that a flexible and low coupling framework, with strong independence between different modules is proposed, where both identity modeling and identity addressing are integrated. Meanwhile, we discuss and analyze the future development and challenges of identity modeling and addressing. It is proved that identity modeling and identity addressing are extremely significant topics in the era of IoT.