Home automation interoperability: two decades of lessons learned and future prospects into the development of IoT ecosystems

Home Automation (HA) is one of the main applications of the Internet of Things (IoT), with the aim of improving users’ quality of life within their living spaces. Technologies are growing rapidly, moving from simple control of isolated home devices to global integration with worldwide services. With the entry of large companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple into the HA market, interoperability between different automation ecosystems has become a central challenge for research. This study defines the concept of interoperability in this context and proposes a taxonomy based on years of experience to illustrate a method for a comparative study of frameworks designed to achieve interoperability between different systems. As a result, the presented taxonomy establishes a unified language and a set of criteria for evaluating integration strategies, improving understanding of architectural choices and decision-making processes in the selection or development of solutions for heterogeneous smart home systems.