IoT Processing Topologies

and Types
2ECDE65 Internet of Things
Overview

• Data Formats

• Processing in IoT

• IoT Device Design Considerations

• IoT Offloading Types and Considerations

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

IoT Data Sources and Formats

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

Data Formats
• Huge quantities and varieties of data are generated regularly and flow
freely
• As of December 2021, there are a reported more than 5 billion
Internet users worldwide.
• Human data-generating sources + Non-human data generation sources
such as sensor nodes and automated monitoring systems further add
to the data
• Variety of data such as emails, text documents (Word docs, PDFs, and
others), social media posts, videos, audio files, and images…
• Broadly grouped into two types based on how they can be accessed and
stored
• Structured data
• Unstructured data
Structured Data

•These are text data, which have a pre-defined

structure. Structured data are associated with
relational database management systems (RDBMS).
•These are primarily created by using length-limited
data fields such as phone numbers etc..
•Even if the data is human or machine-generated,
these data are easily searchable by querying
algorithms as well as human-generated queries.

.
Structured Data
•Common usage - flight or train reservation
systems, banking systems, inventory controls,
and other such systems.
•Established languages such as Structured Query
Language (SQL) are used for accessing these
data in RDBMS.
•In the context of IoT, structured data holds a
minority share of the total generated data over
the Internet
.
Unstructured Data
• These data types have no pre-defined structure and
can vary according to applications and data-
generating sources.
• Human-generated unstructured data includes text, emails,
videos, images, phone recordings, chats, and others.
• Machine-generated unstructured data includes sensor data
from traffic, buildings, industries, satellite imagery,
surveillance videos, and others.
• It is very difficult for querying algorithms to perform a
look-up.
• Querying languages such as NoSQL are generally used for this
data types
Ref: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-structured-and-unstructured-data
Ref: https://k21academy.com/microsoft-azure/dp-900/structured-data-vs-unstructured-data-vs-semi-structured-data/
Ref: https://k21academy.com/microsoft-azure/dp-900/structured-data-vs-unstructured-data-vs-semi-structured-data/
Importance of Processing
•Need of intelligent and resourceful processing
•Given these urgencies, it is important to decide
• when to process?
• what to process?
•Data can be processed into three types based on
the urgency of processing :
•very time-critical
•time-critical
•normal

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

Processing Topologies
•IoT architecture should be designed properly
• To save network bandwidth
• To conserve significant amounts of overall energy
• To provide allowable processing latencies
•Processing solutions into two large topologies
• on-site processing
• off-site processing
•The off-site processing topology can be further
divided into
• remote processing
• collaborative processing
IoT Processing Topologies and Types
On-site Processing
•The data is processed at the source itself.
•For the applications having very low tolerance for
latencies
•These latencies may result from the processing
hardware or the network
•Applications - healthcare and flight control systems
(real-time systems) have a breakneck data generation
rate.
•These show rapid temporal changes, which can be
missed, unless the processing infrastructure is fast and
robust enough to handle such data.
IoT Processing Topologies and Types
Off-site Processing
• Allows processing latencies or network latencies
• Significantly cheaper as source is not required to process
• When the sensor nodes are not required to process data
on an urgent basis, a dedicated and expensive on-site
processing infrastructure is not required so sustainable
for large-scale deployments.
• The sensor node is responsible for the collection and
framing of data, which is to be transmitted to another
location for processing.
• Very few dedicated high-processing enabled devices required
cost is low
Off-site Remote Processing Topology
Off-site Collaborative Processing Topology
IoT Device Considerations
• The main consideration of minutely defining an IoT
solution is the selection of the processor for developing
the sensing solution (i.e., the sensor node).
• Selection depends on many parameters, which affect
the usability, design, and affordability of the designed
IoT sensing and processing solution.
Size Memory
Energy Processing Power Add-ons
Cost I/O rating

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

Consideration-1: Size
• This is one of the crucial factors for deciding the form-
factor and the energy consumption of a sensor node.
• It has been observed that larger the form factor, larger is
the energy consumption of hardware.
• Large form factors are not suitable for a many IoT
applications, which rely on minimal form factor solutions
(e.g., wearables).
Consideration-2: Energy

• Higher the energy requirements, higher is the energy

source (battery) replacement frequency.
• This principle automatically lowers the long-term
sustainability of sensing hardware, especially for IoT-
based applications.
Consideration-3: Cost
• The cost of a processor, besides the cost of sensors, is
the driving force in deciding the density of
deployment of sensor nodes for IoT-based solutions.
• Cheaper cost of the hardware enables a much
higher density of hardware deployment by users of
an IoT solution.
• For example, cheaper gas and fire detection solutions
would enable users to include much more sensing
hardware for a lesser cost.
Consideration-4: Memory

• The memory requirements (both volatile and non-

volatile memory) of IoT devices determines the
capabilities the device can be armed with.
• Features such as local data processing, data storage,
data filtering, data formatting, and a host of other
features rely heavily on the memory capabilities of
devices.
• However, devices with higher memory tend to be
costlier because of the obvious reasons.
Consideration-4: Processing Power
• Processing power is vital (comparable to memory) in
deciding what type of sensors can be accommodated
with the IoT device/node, and what processing features
can integrate on-site with the IoT device.
• The processing power also decides the type of
applications the device can be associated with.
• Applications requiring handling of video and image
data require IoT devices with higher processing
power as compared to applications requiring simple
sensing of the environment.
Consideration-5: I/O Rating
• The input-output (I/O) rating of the processor is the deciding factor
in determining the circuit complexity, energy usage, and requirements
for support of various sensing solutions and sensor types.
• Newer processors have a meager I/O voltage rating of 3.3 V, as
compared to 5V for the somewhat older processors.
• This translates to requiring additional voltage and logic conversion
circuitry to interface legacy technologies and sensors with the newer
processors.
• Despite low power consumption due to reduced I/O voltage levels,
this not only affects the complexity of the circuits but also affects the
costs.
Consideration-6: Add-ons
• The support of various add-ons, such as analog to digital
conversion (ADC) units, inbuilt clock circuits,
connections to USB and ethernet, inbuilt wireless access
capabilities, and others helps in defining the robustness
and usability of a processor or IoT device in various
application scenarios.
• Additionally, the provision for these add-ons also decides
how fast a solution can be developed, especially the
hardware part of the whole IoT application.
Processing Offloading

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

Offload Location Types
• Edge: Offloading processing to the edge implies that the
data processing is facilitated to a location at or near the
source of data generation itself.
• Offloading to the edge is done to achieve the
aggregation, manipulation, bandwidth reduction,
and other data operations directly on an IoT
device.
• Fog: Fog computing is a decentralized computing
infrastructure, which is utilized to conserve network
bandwidth, reduce latencies, restrict the amount of data
unnecessarily flowing through the Internet, and enable rapid
mobility support for IoT devices.
Offload Location Types
• Remote Server: A simple remote server with good processing power
may be used with IoT-based applications to offload the processing .
T hey may be costlier and hard to maintain in comparison to solutions
such as the cloud.
• Cloud: Cloud computing is a configurable computer system, which can
get access to configurable resources, platforms, and high-level services
through a shared pool hosted remotely. A cloud is provisioned for
processing offloading so that processing resources can be rapidly
provisioned with minimal effort over the Internet, which can be
accessed globally. Cloud enables massive scalability of solutions as they
can enable resource enhancement allocated to a user or solution in an
on-demand manner
Deciding Offload Requirements
The decision making is generally addressed from
considerations of:
• Data generation rate
• Network bandwidth
• Criticality of applications
• Processing resource
available at the offload site
• Other factors
Offload Decision Making: Naive approach
• This approach is a hard approach, without too much
decision making.
• Considered as a rule-based approach in which the data
from IoT devices are offloaded to the nearest location based
on the achievement of certain offload criteria.
• Not recommended for dense deployments, or
deployments where the data generation rate is high or the
data being offloaded in complex to handle (multimedia or
hybrid data types).
• Statistical measures are consulted for generating the rules
for offload decision-making.
Offload Decision Making: Bargaining-based approach
• Processing-intensive approach during the decision making stages,
enables the alleviation of network traffic congestion, enhances
service QoS parameters such as bandwidth, latencies, and others.
• At times, while trying to maximize multiple parameters for the
whole IoT implementation, in order to provide the most optimal
solution or QoS, not all parameters can be treated with equal
importance.
• Bargaining-based solutions try to maximize the QoS by trying to
reach a point where the qualities of certain parameters are
reduced, while the others are enhanced.
• This measure is undertaken so that the achieved QoS is
collaboratively better for the full implementation rather than a
select few devices enjoying very high QoS.
• Game-theory is a common example of bargaining based approach.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . .
Offload Decision Making: Learning-based approach

• Unlike the bargaining-based approaches, the learning-based

approaches generally rely on past behavior and trends of data flow
through the IoT architecture.
• The optimization of QoS parameters is pursued by learning from
historical trends and trying to optimize further and enhance the
collective behavior of the IoT implementation.
• The memory requirements and processing requirements are high
during the decision making stages.
• The most common example of a learning-based approach is machine
learning.
Offload Considerations: Bandwidth

• The maximum amount of data that can be

simultaneously transmitted over the network
between two points is the bandwidth of that
network.
• The bandwidth of a wired or wireless network is
also considered to be its data-carrying capacity and
often used to describe the data-rate of that
network.
Offload Considerations: Latency

• It is the time delay incurred between the start and

completion of an operation.
• In the present context, latency can be due to the
network (network latency) or the processor (processing
latency).
• In either case, latency arises due to the physical
limitations of the infrastructure, which is associated
with an operation.
• The operation can be data transfer over a network or
processing of a data at a processor.

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

Offload Considerations: Criticality

• It defines the importance of a task being pursued by an

IoT application.
• The more critical a task is, the lesser latency is expected from the
IoT solution.
• For example, detection of fires using an IoT solution has
higher criticality than detection of agricultural field
parameters.
• The former requires a response time in the tune of
milliseconds, whereas the latter can be addressed within hours
or even days.

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

Offload Considerations: Resources

• It signifies the actual capabilities of an offload location.

• These capabilities may be the processing power, the suite of
analytical algorithms, and others.
• For example, it is futile and wasteful to allocate processing
resources reserved for real-time multimedia processing (which are
highly
• energy-intensive and can process and analyze huge volumes of data
in a short duration) to scalar data (which can be addressed using
nominal resources without wasting much energy).

IoT Processing Topologies and Types

Offload Considerations: Data volume

The amount of data generated by a source or

sources that can be simultaneously handled by the
offload location is referred to as its data volume
handling capacity.
Typically for large and dense IoT deployments, the
offload location should be robust enough to address
the processing issues related to massive data
volumes.
IoT Offloading Types and Considerations

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