INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERNET OF THINGS

In the broadest sense, the Internet of Things (IoT) is the concept of basically connecting any
device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything
from cellphones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, lamps, wearable devices and
almost anything else you can think of. This also applies to components of machines, for example
a jet engine of an airplane or the drill of an oil rig.

The analyst firm Gartner says that by 2020 there will be over 26 billion connected devices. The
IoT is a giant network of connected "things" (which also includes people). The relationship will
be between people-people, people-things, and things-things.

Definition:
The Internet of things describes the network of physical objects—“things”—that are embedded
with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data
with other devices and systems over the Internet.

Another way of looking at IoT is that, IoT is a network of connected devices with 1) unique
identifiers in the form of an IP address which 2) have embedded technologies or are equipped
with technologies that enable them to sense, gather data and communicate about the environment
in which they reside and/or themselves.

Characteristics:
There are 7 crucial IoT characteristics:

1. Connectivity. This doesn’t need too much further explanation. With everything going
on in IoT devices and hardware, with sensors and other electronics and connected
hardware and control systems there needs to be a connection between various levels.
2. Things. Anything that can be tagged or connected as such as it’s designed to be
connected. From sensors and household appliances to tagged livestock. Devices can
contain sensors or sensing materials can be attached to devices and items.
3. Data. Data is the glue of the Internet of Things, the first step towards action and
intelligence.
4. Communication. Devices get connected so they can communicate data and this data
can be analyzed. Communication can occur over short distances or over a long range
to very long range. Examples: Wi-Fi, LPWA network technologies such as LoRa or
NB-IoT.
5. Intelligence. The aspect of intelligence as in the sensing capabilities in IoT devices
and the intelligence gathered from big data analytics (also artificial intelligence).
 6. Action.. The consequence of intelligence. This can be manual action, action based
upon debates regarding phenomena (for instance in smart factory decisions) and
automation, often the most important piece.
7. Ecosystem.. The place of th thee Internet of Things from a perspective of other
technologies, communities, goals and the picture in which the Internet of Things fits.
The Internet of Everything dimension, the platform dimension and the need for solid
partnerships.

Applications of IoT:

 Smart homes and buildings

 Wearables
 Smart City
 Smart grids and utilities
 Industrial internet
 Transport and Logistics
 Connected Health (Digital health/Telehealth/Telemedicine)
 Smart retail
 Smart supply chain
 Smart farming
IoT Architecture:

IoT architecture varies from solution to solution, based on the type of solution which we
intend to build. IoT as a technology majorly consists of four main components, over
which an architecture is framed.
1) Sensors
2) Devices
3) Gateway
4) Cloud

4 Stages of IoT Architecture:

Stage 1 - Sensors/actuators:

A better term for a sensor is a transducer. A transducer is any physical device that converts one
form of energy into another. So, in the case of a sensor, the transducer converts some physical
phenomenon into an electrical impulse that can then be interpreted to determine a reading. A
microphone is a sensor that takes vibrational energy (sound waves) and converts it to electrical
energy in a useful way for other components in the system to correlate back to the original
sound.

Another type of transducer that you will encounter in many IoT systems is an actuator. In
simple terms, an actuator operates in the reverse direction of a sensor. It takes an electrical input
and turns it into physical action. For instance, an electric motor, a hydraulic system, and a
pneumatic system are all different types of actuators. In typical IoT systems, a sensor may
collect information and route to a control center where a decision is made and a corresponding
command is sent back to an actuator in response to that sensed input.

There are many different types of sensors. Flow sensors, temperature sensors, voltage sensors,
humidity sensors, and the list goes on. In addition, there are multiple ways to measure the same
thing. For instance, airflow might be measured by using a small propeller like the one you
would see on a weather station. Alternatively, as in a vehicle measuring the air through the
engine, airflow is measured by heating a small element and measuring the rate at which the
element is cooling. Different applications call for different ways of measuring the same thing.

Stage 2: The Internet gateway:

The data from the sensors starts in analog form. That data needs to be aggregated and converted
into digital streams for further processing downstream. Data acquisition systems (DAS) perform
these data aggregation and conversion functions. The DAS connects to the sensor network,
aggregates outputs, and performs the analog-to-digital conversion. The Internet gateway
receives the aggregated and digitized data and routes it to Stage 3 systems for further
processing. The gateway creates a bridge between the IoT sensors/actuators and the Internet.
The IoT gateway aggregates all data, translates sensor’s protocols, and pre-process the data
before sending it.

The IoT devices connect to the IoT Gateway using short-range wireless transmission modes
such as Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, Z-wave, or long-range like LTE, LTE-M, WiFi, and then it links
them to the Internet (Public Cloud) through Ethernet LAN or Fiber Optics WAN (HDLC/PPP).

How IoT Gateway works: The IoT gateway understands these transmission modes and data
(MQTT, CoAP, AMQP, DDS, Websocket) protocols and can translate them to other protocols
that the data systems need.

IoT Gateway Key Features

 Communication bridging and M2M communication.
 Serves as a data cache, buffer, and streaming device.
 Offline services and real-time control of devices.
 Aggregates data.
 Pre-processes, cleans, and filters data before sending it.
 Additional intelligence for some IoT devices.
 It provides additional security.
  Device configuration and change management.

Stage 3: Edge IT:

Once IoT data has been digitized and aggregated, it's ready to cross into the realm of IT.
However, the data may require further processing before it enters the data center. This is where
edge IT systems, which perform more analysis, come into play. Edge IT processing systems
may be located in remote offices or other edge locations, but generally these sit in the facility or
location where the sensors reside closer to the sensors, such as in a wiring closet.

IoT edge devices solve a fundamental problem associated with the centralization of cloud
architecture. While clouds are powerful for storage and processing, they create delays for IoT
devices sending data back and forth. By bringing cloud computing capabilities to local devices,
IoT edge computing can process data faster, preventing delays, security breaches and other
concerns.

Local processing supports real-time business systems and alerts, and it manages the data sent
back to the cloud. Consider an autonomous vehicle traveling down a busy road. If the car needs
to stop immediately to prevent an accident, sending data to the cloud will likely take too long.
Instead, the thousands of sensors that assess the status of every piece of equipment, need to be
able to manage the data locally and respond in fractions of a second. Similarly, a machine
failure in a manufacturing plant could result in defective products, delays in processing, or even
loss of life.

In these scenarios, an IoT edge device meets the needs of the larger IoT platform while also
bringing decision-processing local by eliminating the roundtrip time required for cloud
processing.

Core IoT edge architecture: Five components

 Complex event processing

 Machine learning and artificial intelligence models
 Applications
 Offline support
 Data management

In addition, all edge devices offer numerous types of networking that support options for
Ethernet, wireless, and, soon, 5G—the next-generation connectivity for wireless networks.
Further, the edge devices may come in hardened and durable cases designed for harsh
environments or may appear like a small consumer electronic. Regardless of the physical casing
and the specific network options offered, the software and services supplied on the edge device
are often the most important factors in deciding what is needed to support the business.

Stage 4: The Data Centre and Cloud:

Data that needs more in-depth processing, and where feedback doesn't have to be immediate,
gets forwarded to physical data center or cloud-based systems, where more powerful IT systems
can analyze, manage, and securely store the data. It takes longer to get results when you wait
until data reaches Stage 4, but you can execute a more in-depth analysis, as well as combine
your sensor data with data from other sources for deeper insights. Stage 4 processing may take
place on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid cloud system, but the type of processing executed
in this stage remains the same, regardless of the platform.

Logical Design of IoT:

Shown below, is an abstract representation of entities and processes without going into
the low level specifies of implementation.

1. IoT Functional Blocks:

 Device: An IoT system comprises of devices that provide sensing, actuation, and
monitoring and control functions.
 Communication: handles the communication for IoT system.
 Services: for device monitoring, device control services, data
publishing services and services for device discovery.
 Management: Provides various functions to govern the IoT system.
 Security: Secures IoT system and priority functions such as
authentication, authorization, message and context integrity and data
security.
 Application: IoT application provide an interface that the users can
use to control and monitor various aspects of IoT system.
 2. IoT Communication Models:

 Request-Response
 Publish-Subscribe
 Push-Pull
 Exclusive Pair

a) Request-Response Model:

In which the client sends request to the server and the server replies to requests. Is a
stateless communication model and each request-response pair is independent of
others.

b) Publish-Subscribe Model:

Involves publishers, brokers and consumers. Publishers are source of data. Publishers
send data to the topics which are managed by the broker. Publishers are not aware of the
consumers. Consumers subscribe to the topics which are managed by the broker. When
the broker receives data for a topic from the publisher, it sends the data to all the
subscribed consumers.
 c) Push-Pull Model:
In this model data producers push data to queues and consumers pull data from the
queues. Producers do not need to aware of the consumers. Queues help in decoupling the
message between the producers and consumers.

d) Exclusive Pair:
This model is bi-directional,
directional, fully duplex communication model that uses a persistent
connection between the client and server. Once connection is set up it remains open until
the client send a request
quest to close the connection. This is a stateful communication model
and server is aware of alll the open connections.

3) IoT Communication APIs:

 REST based communication APIs (Request

(Request-Response Based Model): Operations
with REST are standard, and stateless in nature, which actually makes any
system which is RESTful, fast performer, reliable and at the same time, his
ability to grow. A request would originate from the client with the HTTP verbs
 i.e. Get, Post, Put, Delete. They react to the expected set of operations, receive
the data, update the data or can delete the data depending upon the verb.
REST can be cited as one of the standard ways of designing the APIs for the
request. If the interaction from the user on any web application is less frequent,
HTTP is suitable in that scenario. During the idle time, closed port-socket can
save resources. With REST architecture, client and server can be implemented
independently, without knowing each other. This client/server paradigm has lots
of benefit with it, client-side code can be altered any time, without server getting
affected. The different client having REST interface, can hit the endpoints at the
same time, and receive the same response.
Also, one other feature is statelessness. A server does not need to know in which
state client is in and same holds true for the client as well. This statelessness
property can be attained via the usage of resources, rather than command. Hence
implementation of interfaces become irrelevant since the REST system talks to
each other through standard operation on resources.

 Web Socket based Communication APIs (Exclusive Pair Based Model):

WebSocket protocol can overcome hurdles which were put forward by HTTP
like it can provide a full-duplex communication. This protocol was standardized
in 2011 and the relevant WebSocket API is being standardized by W3C. At the
same time, WebSocket does not compromise with the security system of the
web. All the WebSocket handshakes can be scrutinized by the browser using
embedded developer tools in them.
WebSocket represents a standard when it comes to both way communication
between client and server. Using this approach, a developer can come up with a
function that works consistently across all the platforms. WebSocket represents a
single TCP socket connection, thus eliminating the problem of connection
limitation.
Communication across domains can be dealt with efficiently within the
connection handshake. Pusher like services can easily utilize this connection
when it comes to supporting real-time platform which is massively scalable in
nature and can be used on any website, web, desktop or mobile application
efficiently. The first time, it was referenced as TCP connection in HTML5
specification. All browsers implement the secure version of WebSocket protocol,
whether its Firefox, Google chrome etc.

Physical Design of IoT:

 Things in IoT:

The things in IoT refers to IoT devices which have unique identities and perform remote
sensing, actuating and monitoring capabilities. IoT devices can exchange data with other
connected devices applications. It collects data from other devices and process data
either locally or remotely.

An IoT device may consist of several interfaces for communication to other devices
both wired and wireless. These includes
(i) I/O interfaces for sensors,
(ii) Interfaces for internet connectivity
(iii) Memory and storage interfaces and
(iv) Audio/video interfaces.

 IoT Layers:
a) Link Layer: Protocols determine how data is physically sent over the
network‘s physical layer or medium. Local network connect to which host is
attached. Hosts on the same link exchange data packets over the link layer
using link layer protocols. Link layer determines how packets are coded and
signaled by the h/w device over the medium to which the host is attached.
b) Network/Internet Layer: Responsible for sending IP datagrams from source
n/w to destination n/w. Performs the host addressing and packet routing.
Datagrams contains source and destination address.
c) Transport Layer: Provides end-to-end message transfer capability
independent of the underlying n/w. Set up on connection with ACK as in TCP
and without ACK as in UDP. Provides functions such as error control,
segmentation, flow control and congestion control.
d) Application Layer: Defines how the applications interface with lower layer
protocols to send data over the n/w. Enables process-to-process
communication using ports.

IoT Enabling Technologies:

IoT is enabled by several technologies including Wireless Sensor Networks, Cloud

Computing, Big Data Analytics, Embedded Systems, Security Protocols and
architectures, Communication Protocols, Web Services, Mobile internet and semantic
search engines.

1) Wireless Sensor Network (WSN): Comprises of distributed devices with

sensors which are used to monitor the environmental and physical conditions.
Zig Bee is one of the most popular wireless technologies used byWSNs.

WSNs can be used in IoT systems like:

  Weather Monitoring System: in which nodes collect temp,
humidity and other data, which is aggregated and analyzed.
 Indoor air quality monitoring systems: to collect data on the indoor air
quality and concentration of various gases.
 Soil Moisture Monitoring Systems: to monitor soil moisture at various
locations.
 Surveillance Systems: use WSNs for collecting surveillance data
(motion data detection).
 Smart Grids: use WSNs for monitoring grids at various points.
 Structural Health Monitoring Systems: Use WSNs to monitor the
health of structures (building, bridges) by collecting vibrations from
sensor nodes deployed at various points in the structure.

2) Cloud Computing: Services are offered to users in different forms.

 Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS): provides users the ability to
provision computing and storage resources. These resources are
provided to the users as a virtual machine instances and virtual storage.
 Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): provides users the ability to develop and
deploy application in cloud using the development tools, APIs,
software libraries and services provided by the cloud service provider.
 Software-as-a-Service(SaaS): provides the user a complete software
application or the user interface to the application itself.

3) Big Data Analytics: Some examples of big data generated by IoT are
 Sensor data generated by IoT systems.
 Machine sensor data collected from sensors established in industrial
and energy systems.
 Health and fitness data generated IoT devices.
 Data generated by IoT systems for location and tracking vehicles.
 Data generated by retail inventory monitoring systems.

4) Communication Protocols: form the back-bone of IoT systems and

enable network connectivity and coupling to applications.
 Allow devices to exchange data over network.
 Define the exchange formats, data encoding addressing schemes for
device and routing of packets from source to destination.
 It includes sequence control, flow control and retransmission of lost packets.

5) Embedded Systems: is a computer system that has computer hardware and

software embedded to perform specific tasks. Embedded System range from
low cost miniaturized devices such as digital watches to devices such as digital
cameras, POS terminals, vending machines, appliances, etc.
IoT Levels and Deployment Templates
Templates:

 IoT Level 1 System has a single node that performs sensing and/or actuation,
stores data, performs analysis and host the application as shown in fig. Suitable
for modeling low cost and low complexity solutions where the dat dataa involved is
not big and analysis requirement are not computationally intensive.
An e.g., of IoT Level1 is Home automation.
 IoT Level 2: Here, there is a single node that performs sensing and/or actuating
and local analysis as shown in fig. Data is stored in cloud and application is
usually cloud based. Level2 IoT systems are suitable for solutions where data are
involved is big, however, the primary analysis requirement is not
computationally intensive and can be done locally itself. An e,g., of Level2 IoT
system for Smart Irrigation.
 IoT Level 3: system has a single node. Data is stored and analyzed in the cloud
application is cloud based
sed as shown in fig. Level3 IoT systems are suitable for
solutions where the data involved is big and analysis requirements are
computationally intensive.
An example of IoT level3 system for tracking package handling.
 IoT Level 4: System has multiple nodes that perform local analysis. Data is
stored in the cloud and application is cloud based as shown in fig. Level4
contains local and cloud based observer nodes which can subscribe to and
receive information collected in the cloud from IoT devices. An example of a
Level4 IoT system for Noise Monitoring.
 IoT Level 5: System has multiple end nodes and one coordinator node as shown in fig.
The end nodes that perform sensing and/or actuation. Coordinator node collects data from
the end nodes and sends to the cloud. Data is stored and analyzed in the cloud and
application is cloud based. Level5 IoT systems are suitable for solution based on wireless
sensor network, in which data involved is big and analysis requirements are
computationally intensive. An ex
example
ample of Level5 system for Forest Fire Detection.
 IoT Level 6: System has multiple independent end nodes that perform sensing and/or
actuation and sensed data to the cloud. Data is stored in the cloud and application is cloud
based as shown in fig. The analytics component analyses the data and stores the result in
the cloud data base. The results are visualized with cloud based application. The
centralized controller is aware of the status of all the end nodes and sends control
commands to nodes. An exa example
mple of a Level6 IoT system for Weather Monitoring
System.
Example applications:

 Airline – An equipment tracking app provides an airline’s engineers with a live

view of the locations of each piece of maintenance equipment. By increasing the
efficiency of engineers, this IoT application is not only generating significant
cost savings and process improvements, but also impacting the customer
experience in the end through more reliable, on-time flights.

 Pharmaceutical – A medication temperature monitoring app uses sensors to

detect if the medication’s temperature has gone outside of the acceptable range
and ensures medical supplies still meet quality standards upon delivery. The
handling temperatures are medications, vaccines for examples, is critical to their
effectiveness. IoT based smart applications can be used to not monitor that
medications are kept within the proper handling temperature range, but also to
remind patients when it is time to take their medication.

 Manufacturing – A lighting manufacturer for the horticultural industry built a

Smart App that leverages IoT sensors and predictive analytics to perform
predictive maintenance and optimize lighting, power consumption and plant
photosynthesis. The IoT application transformed their business from a lighting
systems manufacturer to a greenhouse optimization as-a-service business.

 Insurance – An insurance company offers policyholders discounts for wearing

Internet-connected Fitbit wristbands. The fitness tracking service is part of the
insurer’s Vitality program aimed at integrating wellness benefits with life
insurance. Through this IoT application, this insurer is creating smart life
insurance products and rewarding customers for their positive actions.

 Business Services – A facility services company uses their multi-device IoT

software to enable support personnel to receive alerts about service issues and
take immediate action. By aggregating data from thousands of sensors in devices
like coffee machines, soap dispensers, paper towel dispensers and mouse traps
rather than doing manual checks, the application has significantly cut costs and
improved service levels.

 Media & Entertainment – An entertainment design and production firm uses

sensors in turnstiles of venues to understand the foot traffic of people at events.
Their IoT application visualizes the attendee traffic patterns in real time to help
sponsors understand the best places to advertise, and to ensure the attendee count
stays within the fire code compliance of the venue.