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INTERNET OF THINGS: A REVIEW OF APPLICATIONS AND

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DOI: 10.14456/sjst.2014.38

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 Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. Vol. 21 No. 4; October - December 2014 359

INTERNET OF THINGS: A REVIEW OF APPLICATIONS AND

TECHNOLOGIES

Suwimon Vongsingthong1* and Sucha Smanchat2
Received: March 26, 2014; Revised: June 03, 2014; Accepted: June 05, 2014

Abstract
This paper presents the state-of-art of the Internet of Things (IoT), an enabler of new forms of

communication between people and things, and between things. The main strength of the IoT

concept is the high influence it has on everyday life by creating a new dimension to the world,

similar to what the Internet once did. This paper describes the definitions of IoT and summarizes

its main enabling technologies. The content includes the strengths and limitations of applications

based on the IoT in logistics, transportation, healthcare, and environment and disaster. Finally, the

open challenges of the IoT are debated to encourage more investigations into the domains.
Keywords: Internet of Things, IoT, limitations, strengths

Introduction
The term Internet of Things (IoT) (Huang and
through intelligent objects, communication,

Li, 2010; Uckelmann et al., 2011) has been

and actuation capabilities. In other words, the

around for the past few years and is gaining

paradigm of the IoT is described as “any-time,

recognition with the breakthrough of

any-place, and any-one connected” (Ryu

advanced wireless technology. Even though

et al., 2012). Its implication is based on

there are heterogeneous definitions on the

technology that makes things and people get

interpretation of the Internet of Things, it has

closer than in the old days.
a corresponding boundary related to the
In the perspective of “things”, numerous

integration of the physical world with the

devices and objects will be connected to the

virtual world of the Internet. The IoT can

Internet. Each individually provides data,

broadly be defined as a global network

information, or even services. The devices

infrastructure, linking uniquely identified

providing things can be personal objects we

physical and virtual objects, things, and devices

carry around such as smart phones, tablets,

1
Department of Information Technology, Krirk University, 3 Ram Indra Road, Anusaowaree-Laksi,

Bangkhen, Bangkok 10220, Thailand. E-mail: [email protected]

2
Faculty of Information Technology, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, 1518

Pracharat 1 Road,Wongsawang, Bangsue, Bangkok 10800, Thailand. E-mail: sucha.smanchat@

acm.org, [email protected]
* Corresponding author

Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. 21(4):359-374

360 Internet of Things: A Review of Applications and Technologies

and digital cameras. Our daily environment,

of devices and computers connected through

home, vehicle, or office connected through a

a series of intermediate technologies where

gateway device can also provide “things”

numerous technologies such as RFID,

(Coetzee and Eksteen, 2011). Although Radio-

barcodes, and wired and wireless connections

Frequency Identification (RFID) is precisely

may act as enablers of this connectivity.

the first idea that popped up, many more

Under the International Telecommunications

technologies such as sensor technologies, Union (ITU), the perception of the IoT was

smart things, and actuators have also

structured as 4 dimensions of things, as

contributed, whereas machine-to-machine

illustrated in Figure 1 (Atzori et al., 2010;

communication (M2M) and vehicle-to-vehicle

Coetzee and Eksteen, 2011).
communication (V2V) are the real applications

Tagging Things
in the market revealing the most benefits of

the IoT (Atzori et al., 2010; Uckelmann et al.,

Real-time item traceability and

2011). addressability of RFID is what makes it

The aim of this paper is to explore the

stand at the forefront in terms of the IoT

development and the deployment of the IoT

vision. RFID is gaining strong support from

in significant application domains. The

the business community due to its maturity,

organization of the paper is as follows:-

low cost, and low power. RFID acts as an

Section 2 describes the structure of the IoT;

electronic barcode to help in the automatic
Section 3 presents a review of the existing
identification of anything attached. RFID

application of the IoT categorized into the

tags are available in 2 types: active and

areas of logistics, transportation, healthcare,

passive. The active tags embedded within the

and environment and disaster; Section 4 is

battery on-board are widely used in retail,

the discussion of the IoT applications based

healthcare, and facilities management. The

on its benefits and limitations; and Section 5

passive tags, containing no batteries, are

is the challenge of the IoT in those application

powered by the reader and are more likely to

domains. be used in bank cards and road toll tags

(Aggarwal, 2012).
The Structure of the Internet of Feeling Things
Things
Sensors act as primary devices to collect

The Internet of Things can be viewed as a

data from the environment. Necessary data

gigantic network consisting of subnetworks

is provided via communications established

Figure 1. Four dimensions for the IoT (ITU)

 Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. Vol. 21 No. 4; October - December 2014 361

between the physical and the information

of the IoT will never happen (Coetzee and

worlds (Vermesan and Friess, 2013). Recent

Eksteen, 2011). Based on the concept of

advances in technologies make them consume

the IoT, information generated from daily

less power with low cost and high efficiency. enabling objects in our environment can
possibly communicate with each other.

Shrinking Things
This information can drive many possible

Miniaturization and nanotechnology has

applications. Applications directly applicable

provided the ability for smaller things to

or closer to our current living habitudes can

interact and connect within the “things” or

possibly be categorized into the 4 following

“smart devices”. A clear advantage is the

domains (Yang et al., 2012).
improvement in the quality of life. For

example, the application of nano-sensors

Logistics and Supply Chain Management
for monitoring water quality at reduced cost,
Traditionally, most of the logistics

and nano-membranes for assisting in the

enterprises require manifold report tracking,

treatment of waste water (Vermesan and

along with the specific time and location to

Friess, 2013). In healthcare, its application

control the movement of goods. However,

can be seen in the diagnosis and treatment

with the IoT society, the logistics commodity

of diseases, including the diagnosis of HIV

has changed greatly to become an autonomous

and AIDS, and in the prescription of nano-

society by a variety of applications available

drugs for other diseases (Gubbi et al., 2013). to support the needs. The systems in Li and

Luo, (2010), Wei, (2011), and El-Baz et al.,

Thinking Things
(2013) are logistics applications implemented

Embedded intelligence in devices

to track the movement of goods in real-time.

through sensors has formed the network

The data scanned from the tags of barcodes or

connection to the Internet. It can make

RFID were transmitted to the logistics center

domestic electric appliances realize intelligent

or RFID receivers. Data were then transmitted

control, for example refrigerators that can

through Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

detect the quantities of various items and the

(Li and Luo, 2010), GSM network (Wei, 2011),

freshness of perishable items. Embedded

3G network, or a new High Performance

smart sensors may provide the means to

Computing (HPC) infrastructure through a

communicate with users by sending alerts via

broker (El-Baz et al., 2013) to be processed at

the Internet connectivity. The connection can

the data center. The solutions in this domain

primarily be wireless or any other available

are very promising since they have adopted

communication, such as DSL, GPRS, WiFi,

comprehensive and diversified transmission

LAN, and 3G (Uckelmann et al., 2011). Smart

protocols. Several devices such as RFID, Near

things must not only communicate but must

Field Communication, and mobile phone can

also be able to “...process information, self-

also act as data collectors,but they do have

configure, self-maintain, self-repair, make

substantial limitations.
independent decisions, or even play an active
For example, supermarket chain mana-

role in their own disposal...” (Vermesan and

gement (Li and Luo, 2010) was developed

Friess, 2013) which will change the way

based on a standard relational database, which

information is communicated from human-

can lead to a worrisome situation when

human to human-thing and to thing-thing. dealing with a large volume of “things”. The

occurrence of incomplete information or

Applications Based on the IoT missing information propagated from the

communication distance of the mobile

Some of the most important engines of the

logistics information reader (Wei, 2011) and

innovation and development of the IoT are its the data collision during transmission may

applications; otherwise public acceptance

alsojeopardize the results.
362 Internet of Things: A Review of Applications and Technologies

Not only are the applications to support

with an ultralow-power RF-compass and a

the front-end and back-end operation

low cost RFID as a replacement for WiFi-

essential, but the abilities to control and

nodes. The RF-Compass could pinpoint the

identify the next destination of goods/raw

center position and the orientation of objects

material are also indispensable. Real-time

with 80-90% accuracy when robots were

tracking of logistics entities using the

grasping objects. Even though this study

combination capabilities of RFID, mobile

demonstrates a low computation time when

devices, and the integrated browser interface

compared with machine-learning architecture,

was conducted (Lin, 2011). The position of

it has a limited line-of-sight detection and no

objects was derived from GPS, WiFi, GSM,

proven evidence on handling small objects.
and GPRSThe overall detection accuracy of
The review of the IoT applications in

the geographical location was over 97% for

logistics (Table 1) indicates that, in order to

moving entities and roughly 100% for the

maintain the effectiveness of the IoT, the

action-less entities. However, its hindrances

system should at least comprise the following

are i) the detection of the geographical

basic capabilities:
position function needed to support a variety
Autonomous control: Mechanisms to

of browsers, since different logistics users

overcome limitations in the management and

may use different mobile devices, and ii) the

exploitation of millions of unreliable, non-

browsers themselves should have the ability

autonomous things and of the corresponding

to automatically detect and confirm on what

data and information flows should be

positioning devices should be launched. implemented. Instead of having a central

To increase the accuracy of the logistics

control unit for decision making responsibilities,

process, not only the ability to detect the

decentralized control of a multiplicity of

location of goods is desired, but the reliability

smaller self-organizing units will be more

of RFID signals is also essential, particularly

efficient. The capability and possibility to
in the environment where there is limited
render decisions independently will, as well,

accessibility to the IoT infrastructure. The

improve the robustness and increase the

launch of AspireRFID (Soldatos et al., 2010),

scalability of the process control.
an RFID middleware with a range of tools to
Smart logistics entities: Each commodity

facilitate RFID deployment (Soldatos, 2009)

in the logistics network is embedded with

was a breakthrough. The integration of the

sensors to record information of items for fast

Electronic Product Code (EPC) global based

updating of transactions of specific goods.

RFID architecture with Session Initiation

Protection from thieves, andfast tracking and

Protocol (SIP) (Anggorojati et al., 2013) to

tracing of goods can alsobe autonomously

simultaneously detect locations and mobility

triggered as alarm mechanisms by these

management of RFID tags revealed the

sensors.
outstanding performance in cost consumption
Unique addressability: Right product,

of tags registration and tracking. right quantity, right time, right place, right

In large logistics enterprises, the efficacy

condition, and right price are what are

to automatically locate and move assembly

expected in logistics. Right product relates to

parts has led to the adoption of robots. The

accurate and appropriate information on a

infrared motion capture system or computer

product which can be deduced from auto-ID,

vision system with complex machine learning

sensor information, or any other kind of

algorithms was basically used to control the

linked information. Right time means that a

navigation and object manipulation of robots.

product can be acquired anytime when needed.

However, that feature of the proposed

Right place refers to goods located independently

robotswas handled by RF-Compass and RFID

of unreliable network connectivity. Effective

(Wang et al., 2013). Both the robots and the

data synchronization protocols and caching
objects the robots will work on are embedded
techniques are necessary to ensure the

 Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. Vol. 21 No. 4; October - December 2014 363

Table 1. Summary of the IoT in logistics and supply chain management

Application Technology/Technique Strengths/Weaknesses

Supermarket chain • Tracking of goods in real-time via WSNs Strengths

management • Use mathematical model to track • Ease of implementation
(Li and Luo, 2010) information on goods movements as Weaknesses
well as automatically control of stock. • Inefficacy of database technology when
• Technology: barcodes and RFIDs. handling big data.
• Database employed is a standard
relational database.
Aspire RFID • Integration of the EPC global based RFID Strengths
(Soldatos et al., 2010) architecture with Session Initiation • Reduces problem of limited accessibility
Protocol (SIP). of Global IP network.
• Technology: RFID, SIP. • Low cost consumption of tags registration
• Use SIP to detect location and mobility and tracking.
management of RFID tags. Weaknesses
• Accidental propagation of infested traffic
from LAN and Internet.
Logistic IoT Unified • Developed on ASP.NET. Strengths
Information System • Technology: GSM/RFID collection • Supports both Internet and mobile
(UIS) (Wei, 2011) devices and GSM modem. network.
• Data transmitted through Internet/GSM, Weaknesses
mobile network. • Incomplete or missing information from
communication distance.
• No specific handling for data collision.
Logistic Geographical • Combined capability of RFID, mobile Strengths
Information Detection devices and browser interface. • High detection accuracy of over 97% for
UIS (Lin, 2011) • Locations of goods are automatically moving entities and 100% for still
detected from mobile browser. entities.
• Technology: GPS, Wi-Fi, GSM, GPRS. • Provides several sources of location
• Supports various logistic mobile devices detection mechanism.
• Can operate without any extra positioning Weaknesses
devices, only IoT mobile terminals are • Location detection mainly depends on
sufficient. mobile browser.
• Support for variety of logistic mobile
devices is questionable.
A Logistic Mobile • Technology: smart phone, 3G, HPC. Strengths
Application (ALMA) • Supports variety of applications. • High performance.
(El-Baz et al., 2013) • Operates on P2P based computing. Weaknesses
• Large-scale server based. • Not suitable for small organization.
• Limitation of 3G connection in some
areas.
Robot navigation and • Enables robots to perform more Strengths
object manipulation complex tasks in collaboration with • Accuracy of 80-90% for grasping object.
(Wang et al., 2013) other robots. • Low computation time in comparison
• Technology: RF-compass, low-cost with standard machine learning algorithms.
RFID, infrared motion capture system or Weaknesses
computer vision. • No evidence on non-straight line of sight
• Machine learning based algorithms of robots.
• Unproven record for handling small
articles.
364 Internet of Things: A Review of Applications and Technologies

availability of information at the right place.

recognition equipment whereas sensors

The right price means the product price lies

embedded in the license plate would collect

between the cost for information provisioning

the information of the road surface. The data

and the achievable market price. was then forwarded to calculate the optimal

ERP interface: Real-time access to the

path and guiding passage for vehicles.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution

The system is not only able to invoke traffic

helps shop administrators to better inform

scheduling, vehicle positioning, and vehicle

customers about the availability of products

query for a passenger, but it also can locate

and give them more product information in

the parking spaces in a nearby location.

general. This design provides a variety of benefits to

the driver in terms of managing highway

Transportation
automatic toll collection, avoiding busy

The development in transportation is

traffic, locating parking spaces, and adding

presumed to be one of the factors to indicate

more security for the vehicle. A clear drawback,

the well-being of a country. That is why

however, is that this design struggles to

transportation problems are very challenging

support too many functions which invokesa

in the field of the IoT. A proposal on a road

high cost and difficulties of implementation.
condition monitoring and alert application
Electric vehicles, an important means to
was initiated (Ghose et al., 2012). Its main
reduce both the fuel cost and the impact of

idea was to apply the principles of crowd

global warming, have also gained considerable

sourcing and participatory sensing. The

attention from drivers. Governments in many

process began when the user identified the

countries have supported research on systems
route he wished to take and marked some
to monitor the performance of lithium-ion

points as potholes in the smart phone’s

(Li-on) batteries for electric vehicles (Haiying

application. When the vehicle ran over

et al., 2012). The system presented was

the defined route, the accelerometer which

designed to detect the functions of a Li-on

continuously captured data would send raw

power battery by deriving the driving situation

data via the mobile network. Related features

from realistic working conditions for a driver

were then extracted to generate a confidence

so that the driver was able to get an idea of the

score to indicate the abnormalities of the

route’s status. This solution was embedded

routes by showing the plot of the potholes

with many essential functions such as a

information. A distinct advantage was expressed

dynamic performance test of the Li-on

from the adoption of the user’s smart phone as

battery, remote monitoring with on-line

a connector device with no additional cost

debugging, and error correction that could

applying on the existing hardware. Albeit,

significantly reduce the maintenance cost.

there remain issues with the upload and

For as much as the underlying issue of such a

download process of the route-map which design is the battery life, the extensible

involves considerable network traffic and

functions of age-tracking and end-of-life

may induce vulnerability to the system.

predictions of the battery should be bundled

Moreover, the road condition classification is

so that a fading battery can be tracked to

performed at the phone itself, is very time-

assure the readiness, reliability, and security

consuming, and it may drain the battery of the

of electric vehicles.
mobile phone. Safety supervision in the distribution

For large cities, problems such as finding

of hazardous or valuable goods is imperative

parking spaces and waiting in line for toll-way

for shipping companies. A study to master the

payment can be cumbersome which promoted

operation of an entire fleet from a command

the idea of applying the license plate as

center in real-time was conducted (Shengguang

a unique identity of the driver (Ren et al.,

et al., 2013). Each vehicle was embedded

2012). The license plate was captured by the

with GPS to form a multi-hop network for

 Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. Vol. 21 No. 4; October - December 2014 365

the command center to share the perception

Monitor Center: The collected information

of the drivers. A combination of an RFID

is transmitted to the communication equipment

reader and 3G video surveillance was used

through the Internet. Then, the communication

to monitor the status of the goods, whereas

equipment will send the received information

temperature and humidity sensors in the

to the real-time database system to compare

vehicles were used to detect the quality of the

with the data of events. The collaboration ofreal-

transported goods. If indicators exceeded

time data in the database and GIS technology

the limit, an alarm would be raised. Other

means that the road traffic information can be

unpredicted events such as driver fatigue or

integrated for visualization.
unauthorized access were also detected and

Healthcare
forwarded to the command center. This design

has achieved effectiveness in road traffic

Improvement in human health and well-
safety and travel reliability. The limitations
being is the ultimate goal of any economic,
are that the adoption of several technologies
technological, and social development. The
in this design will increase the cost of both
rapid rise in the aging of the populations is
deployment and support. Moreover, the
one of the macro powers causing great
location of vehicles can be inaccurate when
pressure on healthcare systems. A solution to
vehicles are moving at high speed or
solve the difficulties in accessing healthcare
approaching blind spots for GPS. for people in rural areas of developing
The IoT applications in transportation
countries (Rohokale et al., 2011) was
which have been reviewed are summarized
implemented. A person registered with the
(Table 2). From those, it can be concluded that
rural healthcare center (RHC) was requested
the underlying system should at least include
to wear an active RFID sensor to detect

the following system units: any change in the normal parameters. If

Vehicle System: the main components

those parameters exceeded certain values,
of a vehicle system are: information would be cooperatively routed to
i) GPS system: This system is mainly
the RHC doctor. In an environment without
responsible for receiving comprehensive
the Internet, the mobile network facility could
information such as location, time, and
be utilized to convey the information. This
weather from satellites. It is not only amap
approach is proven to be a reliable critical
embedded with resources about major cities
healthcare application that continuously
and road information, but it also gives a fast
monitors and controls the health parameters of
and accurate GPS positioning, even if the
humans.
satellitesignal is poor; and The other approach was the integration
ii) Wireless communication system:
of clinical devices in the patient’s environment

GPS and RFID data are forwarded to a control

(Jara et al., 2012) which allowedthe user to

center through the Internet. Data will then

use a mobile phone to transmit health data to

be displayed on electronic mapsat the

medical centers. A home gateway was located

monitoring center to facilitate the management

at the patient’s house to connect to the
ofreal-time scheduling. Internet while the mobile personal health

Station System: The station subsystem

device acted as an integration of medical

generally consists of a communication module

devices from different vendors. The system

and control module. The former includes the

continuously analyzed the vital signs from the

GPRS receiver, which is responsible for

patient to detect anomalies. The noticeable

receiving and decoding the transmitted data

flaw of the system is security threats and

packets from the monitoring center. The latter

attacks in the mobile network; although GSM

is a communication interface module to

has adopted encryption as a protection

receive data and display real-time transit

mechanism, as it is wide-spread in nature,

vehicle information. interception of the information transmitted is

366 Internet of Things: A Review of Applications and Technologies

possible. as identifications to classify if the user was

A non-contact health monitoring system

in danger or had a disease. If any of these

(NCHMS) (Yang et al., 2012) was another

parameters changed, the system determines

choice of the IoT healthcare service which

the necessary treatment, reminds the user,

is more convenient for users. The system

and notifies the hospital and related persons.

monitored the user’s facial expressions,

The system demonstrated promising strength

postures, and sounds. The monitoring system

in terms of ease-of-use. But the adoption of

collected the user’s data through digital

a camera as a collector device can cause

cameras, microphones, and other equipment.

difficulties in actively synthesizing images

The feature extraction, expression recognition,

for transmission, as well as the angle of the

and classification were performed at the

images captured. As for the microphone,

server. The variations in the user’s facial

recognition of the voice could also suffer from
expressions, postures, and sounds were used
the clamor in the environment. Another

Table 2. Summary of the IoT in Transportation

Application Technology/Technique Strengths/Weaknesses

Road Condition • Crowd sourcing and participatory sensing Strengths

Monitoring and
based application. • Reduces cost by using smart phone as a
Alert system
• Technology: accelerometer, smart phone, connector device.
(Ghose et al., 2012) GPS (future). Weaknesses
• Classifier based algorithm. • Many uploads and downloads of GIS
• When a route is chosen, a confidence data can induce network traffic
score for the area marked and the • Ease of security attack.
pothole information will be plotted on • Time consuming for classification.
mobile.
License plate • Uses license plate as unique identifier. Strengths
Identification • Locates optimal path and guiding passage • Automatically suggests optimal path,
(Ren et al., 2012) for vehicles. locating of parking spaces and added
• Automatically invokes traffic scheduling, security for vehicles.
vehicle positioning, and vehicle query. Weaknesses
• Technology: RFID, recognition equipment. • High cost and difficulties in imple-
mentation.
Remote performance • Monitors the status of Lithium-ion Strengths
monitoring system and power battery of electric vehicle. • Online debugging and error correction
simulation testing • A simulation of identified route for bus can significantly reduce the maintenance
(Haiying et al., 2012) drivers. cost.
• A performance test of battery pack, Weaknesses
battery modules, and battery systems. • no support for age tracking and end-of-
• Technology: GPS, RFID. life predictions of battery
Transport vehicle • Real-time administration of the entire Strengths
monitoring system fleet from the command center. • Effective road traffic both for safety and
based on IoT • Technology: GPS, RFID, 3G. reliability.
(Shengguang
• Monitors status of goods through RFID Weaknesses
et al., 2013) tags attached to goods. • High cost implementation
• Combines various capabilities of • Weak signal when vehicles are moving
technologies: vehicle electronic sensors, at high speed or approaching blind spots
mobile communication technology, for GPS
navigation systems, smart terminal
equipment, and the information network.
 Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. Vol. 21 No. 4; October - December 2014 367

serious drawback is the machine learning

regarding health such as medication, therapy,

technique, normally involved with time-

and advice for patients should be distributed

complexity in the analysis of the large volume

through the value chain; and
of the learning data set. Cross-organization integration: The

The IoT applications in healthcare integration of hospital information systems

which have been reviewed aresummarized

should be extended to patients’ homes and

(Table 3). In a nutshell, solutions for healthcare

other hospital chains.
should at least involve the following

Environment and Disaster

capabilities:
Tracking and monitoring: All patients
At present, natural and accidental

should be tracked and monitored with any

disasters are taking place more frequently.

wearable WSN devices at all times seeing

To lessen the effects of natural disasters,

that sensors can effectively generate health

technologies in the IoT could play a crucial

signals as an enhancement with the com-

role in alerting before disasters happen, and

munication capacity; in disaster recovery after they have ended.

Remote service: Telemedicine and
A heritage site monitoring system,

remote diagnosis are necessary to provide

namely the Health Monitoring and Risk

emergency detection and first aid for patients

Evaluation of Earthen Sites (HMRE2S) model

with congenital diseases; (Xiao et al., 2013), was conducted to monitor

Information management: Information
environmental information of cultural sites.

Table 3. Summary of the IoT in healthcare

Application Technology/Technique Strengths/Weaknesses

Rural Healthcare • Based on Opportunistic Large Array Strengths

Monitoring and utilizes the cooperative transmission of • Provides options for both Internet and
Control system the ad-hoc network nodes. mobile network.
(Rohokale et al., • Technology: RFID, Internet, mobile Weaknesses
2011) network. • Interception of information transmitted.
• Data will be routed via internet to the • High computation cost for patient
gateway through RHC doctor. parameter comparison.
• Basic data of patient will be stored in
server for comparison.
A knowledge • An integration of a home gateway and a Strengths
acquisition and global connectivity to support other • Offers a function of plug and play.
management platform medical devices. Weaknesses
(Jara et al., 2012) • Technology: EPR, Pro-active monitoring • Reduction in performance of input
and alerting, Remote diagnosis and devices when compared with others
RS232 and Bluetooth Health Device such as Serial Port Profile.
Profile (HDP) etc.
• The system continuously analyses the
vital signs from the patient to detect
anomalies.
Non-contact health • Analyze the user’s facial expressions, Strengths
monitoring system postures, and sounds as input data. • Convenient to users.
(NCHMS)
• Technology: camera, microphones, and Weaknesses
(Yang et al., 2012) other equipment. • Time consuming and threshold dependable.
• Classification and recognition based • Cost complexity of input devices.
algorithm.
368 Internet of Things: A Review of Applications and Technologies

The environmental information such as

convergence of the global industrial system;
temperature, humidity, and light were collected
WSN and mobile communication: The

via an intelligent monitoring system. This

sensor nodes will be utilized for providing

experiment was claimed to provide accurate

senses without the users’ intervention. The

results but generalization for other sites may

wireless network of the sensor nodes would

not be applicable since it explored only a

help sense the environment and objects

small heritage site. For larger cultural sites,

around and communicate to other things.

the accuracy remains questionable. Essential pillars are WSN and advanced

Another contribution to global warming

mobile communication technology (3G and

is the smart environment which increasingly

4G) which can provide uninterruptable high-

has attracted interest from society. A smart

speed communication; and
heat and electricity management system Participatory sensing applications: The

(Kyriazis et al., 2013) was presented to

utilization of each person’s mobile phone,

monitor real-time electricity usage of buildings

vehicle, and associated sensors as automatic

and individual appliances where smart meters

sensory stations can help in capturing a multi-

were used as data recorders. When the power

sensor snapshot of the immediate environment.

consumption of those objects was above the

By combining these individual snapshots in

limit, users would be promptly informed of

an intelligent manner, it is possible to create a

such a deformed situation. clear picture of the physical world that can be

Considering disasters, waste from an oil

shared and, for example, used as an input to

depot can cause a terrible disaster to the

the smart environment services decision

environment because it is easy to set ablaze

processes.
and explode. A surveillance system for safety

management of an oil depot was introduced in

Discussion on IoT in Applications
China (Du et al., 2012 ). The sensing layer of

the system consisted of RFID tags and non-

Under the vision of the IoT, applications can

explosive personal digital assistants (PDAs)

be fully automated by configuring themselves

to identify and interact with the key facilities

when exposed to a new environment. The

in the oil depot. 3G was used as the commu-

intelligent behavior driven by the system can

nication layer to forward the data from the

autonomously be triggered to seamlessly cope

worksite to the Internet, where users accessed

with unforeseen situations. However, the

the safety management information via an

applications in the above domains can deliver

enterprise intranet. This IoT based safety

more analytical results if the following

management information system was proven hindrances are properly taken care of.
to be stable since it was actually deployed in 2
Apparently, the major players of collection

oil depots with 24 PDAs and 100 RFID tags. in the above application domains are RFID

The IoT applications in environment

and GPS. RFID is one of the most convenient

and disaster which have been reviewed

devices to transmit and receive data via radio

are summarized (Table 4). The conclusion can

frequency without wires and at the lowest

be drawn that the prime featuresof solutions

cost. Some RFID devices can only be used

should at least be equipped with the following

within the industry due to the range of the

features: electromagnetic spectrum (Coetzee and

Environment sensors: Intelligent sensors

Eksteen, 2011). A clear disadvantage of its

for the humidity, temperature, and pressure

technology is the reader collision which may

in the air are not calamities will serve as front-

occur when the signals from 2 or more readers

end devices togather as well as process

overlap or many tags are present in a small

contextual information from the environment.

area. Although many systems use an anti-

The built-in fault detection and diagnostic

collision protocol to enable the tags to take

capability is also actuated through the

turns in transmitting to a reader, this problem

 Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. Vol. 21 No. 4; October - December 2014 369

remains. Another strong barricade is that the

seamlessly form a network in areas without a

global standards of RFID are not yet established

pre-existing communication infrastructure

(Haiying et al., 2012). seems to be a better choice. The more

As for GPS, it is recognized as an

convenience, the more applications, and the

excellent tool for data collection in many

more network services it supports, the more

environments where users can generally see

opportunities for active attackers as well as

the sky and are able to get close to the objects malicious or misbehaving nodes to create

to be mapped. GPS requires a clear line-

hostile attacks. These types of attack can

of-sight between the receiver’s antenna and

seriously damage basic functions of security,

several orbiting satellites. Anything hiding

such as the integrity, confidentiality, and

the antenna from a satellite can potentially

privacy of the node. Currently, the security

weaken the signal to such a degree that it

goal in mobile ad-hoc networks can only be

becomes too difficult to achieve reliable

achieved through cryptographic mechanisms.

positioning. Obstructions like buildings, trees,

These mechanisms are generally more

crossways, and other obstructions that block

susceptible to physical security threats than

sunlight can effectively block the GPS signals

fixed wired networks. Besides, standardized

where the potential could be seriously communication interfaces and distributed

reduced (Guo et al., 1995; Vermesan and

control intelligence within an industry network

Friess, 2013). remain disorganized (López et al., 2012).

Since the communication infrastructure
As far as the IoT dealing with more

of the IoT can be any network available

objects, the volume of the data generated and

within the range, hence a mobile ad-hoc

the processes involved in the handling of

network which allows people and devices to

those data become critical. The ability to

Table 4. Summary of the IoT in Environment and Disaster

Application Technology/Technique Strengths/Weaknesses

Safety management • Technology: RFID, explosion-proof Strengths

information system
PDAs, 3G. • Proven record in real depot sites.
for oil depot
• IoT technology is adopted to monitor Weaknesses
(Du et al., 2012 ) the process of the routine works. • -
• Software adopted: Oracle for storing
business data, others are encapsulated as
web service for reuse.
Health Monitoring
• Evaluate healthy level of the earthen Strengths
and Risk Evaluation
sites by applying the concept of artificial • Self-detection based on immune system.
of Earthen Sites antibodies to identify unusual Weaknesses
(HMRE2S)
environmental factors. • Result is unlikely to be generalized to
(Xiao et al., 2013) • Technology: intelligent environment large heritage sites.
monitoring system which collects
temperature, humidity, light, etc.
Smart heat and • Real-time electricity usage on the Strengths
electricity energy consumption of buildings and • Weaknesses.
management individual appliances. • Not applicable yet.
transportation • Technology: smart meters for electricity
(Kyriazis et al., 2013) consumption and mobile sensors.

370 Internet of Things: A Review of Applications and Technologies

extract content from the data becomes even

Unappealinginitial investment: This is a

more crucial and complex, especially when

primary hindrance of mass volume adoption.

dealing with bigdata. A variety of technologies

For example, when suppliers want to adopt

and factors involved in the data management

RFID for tracking goods, the initial investment

of the IoT such as data collection and analysis,

cost is unacceptable for business. Besides,

data migration and integrity, sensor networks,

users do not yet trust the services provided by

and complex event processing are not yet

the IoT applications vendors, as experienced

convincing (Vermesan and Friess, 2013). from a huge failure initiated from the

deployment of the IoT Google Heath System

Advancement and Hindrances in (Wamba and Chatfield, 2010); and

the IoT Unavailable devices and service

integration: Even though there is a lot of

The realization of the advancement in the IoT

promising technology available for the IoT

indicates sustainable applications forming

applications, there are very few services which

a smart environment for humans where a

can be integrated. Users need to contact several

plurality of challenges can be raised. vendors if they want to deploy a complete

The first challenge was driven by

system. Therefore, an assimilated system

embedding intelligence into things. To enable

design framework is crucial to integrate

things and devices to learn and become smarter,

scattered subsystems and devices for more

more autonomousthings are required to share

valuable services (Lee et al., 2010).
and exchange experiences with other things.
The second challenge refers to the

Forwarding the IoT

management of heterogeneous device platforms

in a decentralized way. To make a relationship

For the IoT to achieve its vision, a number

with other devices, those platforms willarrange

of challenges need to be overcome. These

the device coordinators via their social behavior.

challenges range from standardization,

Furthermore, pertinent issues with respect to

communication, and security to data volume

end-to-end security, privacy, and trust also

(Coetzee and Eksteen, 2011; Vermesan and

need to be addressed. Friess, 2013).

Moreover, a lot of techniques are required

Standardization
within and across different levels of the IoT-

based systems; for example, hardware-coded

There are numerous efforts towards

security at the device level, and security and

standardization in several principal areas such

privacy in storage at the data level. Reputation,

as RFID, EPCglobal, M2M, as well as

trust, and privacy profiling of things and

applications, since standards are required to
providers are also techniques to prevent
allow global interoperability to change this

information inference. “Intranet of Things” into the more complete

The thirdchallenge refers to the support
“Internet of Things” (Vermesan and Friess,

for scalable data and information management

2013).
through rich metadata structures that capture
The integrated environment is the origin

the social aspectsof things. Real-time analysis

of the success to run a multiplicity of user

of data will generate potentially valuable

driven applications and connect various sensors

knowledge from the information flowsof the

and objects. Complex and interconnected IoT

exponential amount of data. applications can be supported greatly by open

However, there are other significant

Application Programming Interfaces at various

challenges which introduce a wide gap

system levels (Agrawal and Vieira, 2013). On

between the technology and applications in

one side, the vertical solutions of vendors

business in the IoT which cannot be neglected

based on their own technologies are not ready.

such as: On the other side, a dynamic global network

 Suranaree J. Sci. Technol. Vol. 21 No. 4; October - December 2014 371

infrastructure requires self-configuring

incorporated, security remains a preponderant

capabilities. Appropriate channels should

concern to lower system vulnerability and

be provided for developers to deliver new

protect essential data, sincethe communication

applications and combine information generated

channel in the IoT is not only from human to

by several IoT devices to produce new added

machine but also from machine to machine

value. Interoperable protocol is also a powerful

where the guarantee on access control,

communication tool in providing access to

authorization, privacy, and protection from

information, media, and services to synergize

malice is a prime requirement for the IoT

the open, global network connecting people,

acknowledgement.
data, and things. In regard to its wireless and ubiquitous

Communication Infrastructure infrastructure, the IoT is vulnerable to lashing

malicious attacks. The attacks generally aim

Things generated by devices can join

to control the physical environments or obtain

networks and facilitate peer-to-peer com-

munication for specialized purposes. They can

private data. Therefore, the IoT should

increase the robustness of communications

autonomously tune itself to different levels

channels and networks by forming ad-hoc

of security and privacy, while not affecting the

peer-to-peer networks in disaster situations to

quality of service and quality of experience.

keep the flow of imperative information going

The security should not only ensure the data

in case of telecommunication infrastructure

stored in the platform but should also cover

failures. Therefore, the integrity and stability

the transmission of messages from devices

of the infrastructure is crucial to provide

(sensors, actuators, etc.). Specific mechanisms

reliable services. to ensure the availability of the infrastructure

The overall cyber-physical infrastructure

should vindicate the Internet attacks such as

(e.g., hardware, connectivity, software

denial of services and compromised nodes.

development, communications, and specialized

The most eligible protective action during

processes at the intersection of control and

attacks on the IoT-based infrastructure should

sensing) are considered as the compositionality

be focusing more on assisting operators

of cyber-physical systems. The network aspects

thanon coping with automatic protection

may consist of Wi-Fi, IP networks, and mobile

(Uckelmann et al., 2011).
computing. Those can bring a stream of
Although most of the IoT has achieved

technologies such as cloud, things, and mobiles.

a security trust through Public Key

The convergence of main driven platforms

Infrastructures, decentralized and self-

with wired and wireless broadband connections

configuring systems can be considered

will strengthen the cloud to connect intelligent

as alternatives. Not only cryptographic

things that can sense and transmit huge

mechanisms are required but technologies

amounts of data to create services. Cloud

such as homomorphic and searchable

stimulates a global infrastructure for everyone

to create content and applications for global

encryption are also potential candidates for

users. Besides, networks of things are globally

developing such approaches. Besides, more

connected and maintain their identity online.

self-managed IoT is wanted to serve the

This global infrastructure allows mobile

heterogeneity and diversity of the devices/

connection to be available for services and

gateways. Self-managed IoT may employ

businesses at anytime and anywhere leading

machine learning to process and share data

to a globally accessible network of things,

without the information content being accessible

users, and consumers (Agrawal and Vieira,

to others. Technologies of decentralized

2013). computing and key management, as well as

soft identities designed for specific contexts

Security, Privacy, and Trusts

or applications, will be more essential to the

As technologies and systems are

IoT’s privacy (Vermesan and Friess, 2013).
372 Internet of Things: A Review of Applications and Technologies

Data Collection and Acquisition architecture may not be comprehensible to

support data stored indifferent sites. Yet, a

Data collection from sensors, identification,

multi-layer mining model, distributed data

and tracking systems are very crucial for

mining model, grid based mining model,

real-time processing. There remain several

as well as a data mining model from multi-

complexities of process involvement, as well

technology integration should be consideredas

as doubts in standards and filtering techniques.

alternatives (Bin et al., 2010).
Data generated by the IoT devices from

Although the IoT has to overcome huge

different vendors and different domains

barriers to gain trust from society, it has

usually have different features. In most cases,

illustrated a distinguished potential to add a

not all data are significant, thus the identification

new dimension to the application in logistics,

of smart objects is imperative. In the back-

transportation, healthcare, and environment

end, many more techniques such as new

and disaster by enabling communication

intelligent methods based on semantic

between smart objects. Therefore, the IoT

technologies and tools for processing and

should be considered as a part of the future

analyzing historical and on-site data with the

Internet in which everything can connect in a

different qualities are gaining high attraction. network where objects can interact with

The first level of the IoT data manipulation

each other. The development of several issues

is mainly dealing with decoding data noise

will make the IoT a complete solution. Hence

where specific filter mechanisms are welcome.

more research in the application of the IoT is

Even though automatic identification helps to

imperative. Once successfully implemented,

avoid mistakes from manual data entry, the

the reduction of human efforts will benefit the

corresponding data needs to provide a high

quality of life as well as business.
level of accuracy upon the data quality

standards agreed. While the new mechanisms

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