Standardization of Cloud Interfaces Using the Matter Protocol for Interoperable Smart Homes

The lack of interoperability between smart home devices prevents the implementation of advanced services and use cases in home and building automation. The latest standardization attempt is the release of the Matter protocol, whose goal is to enable interoperability among devices in a local network. In this paper, we present the integration of the Matter protocol in an interoperable, open-source smart home platform capable of managing heterogeneous Matter networks and exchanging data and commands with a cloud infrastructure, standardizing a Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) device-to-cloud interface according to the Matter ontology. We evaluate the integration experience and customization level and measure the latency of different MQTT cloud brokers on cellular and fiber internet connectivity. The qualitative results confirm that Matter core features work properly, even if they are still difficult to configure at this early stage of protocol rollout. The quantitative results show the impact of MQTT broker, internet connectivity, and cloud microservices. Overall, the results demonstrate the potentialities of Matter in becoming the definitive standard for smart home communications and the feasibility of its application outside the local network boundaries, i.e., towards the standardization of the device-to-cloud communication.