Chapter 02

IoT Architecture
Outcomes:
• Understand the system design of IoT technology at the component
level
• Understand the enterprise and security architecture of IoT technology
• Gain an insight on edge or fog computing
• Understand the system architecture of the Industrial IoT (IIoT)
• Understand the relevance of middleware architecture in IoT
• Gain an insight on cyber physical systems (CPS).
Introduction
• The architecture of a system is defined as "fundamental
concepts or properties of a system in its environment
embodied in its elements, relationships, and in the
principles of its design and evolution" (ISO/IEC/IEEE
42010:2011)
• An Internet of Things architecture strategy is crucial to realize
the potential of this emerging technology.
Introduction (Cont.)
• An event-driven architecture for IoT implementation with
security features is necessary to build confidence in IoT
services, considering the scale and complexity of such
implementation, the volume of contextual data generated
from the environment, and the multiple stakeholders of the
IoT ecosystem.
• Security for IoT is a fundamental architectural building
block, so emerging IoT security scenarios should be
adapted in the IoT architecture (Gartner)
Key Components of IoT Architecture
• The key components of IoT architecture are sensors,
actuators, data storage, control systems, a digital
communication medium and an application for
information-based action (Kolah, A. 2019).
Sensors and Actuators
• A sensor has been defined as "an electronic device that
produces electrical, optical, or digital data derived from a
physical condition or event. Data produced from sensors is
then electronically transferred, by another device, into
information (output) that is useful in decision making done
by ‘intelligent’ devices or individuals (people)." (IEEE)
• An actuator is defined as "a mechanical device that accepts
a data signal and performs an action based on that signal."
(IEEE)
Sensors and Actuators (Cont.)
• Sensors are precisely designed as per the requirement of
their sensing function, like temperature sensors, pressure
sensors, proximity sensors, infrared sensors, water quality
sensors, smoke sensors, chemical sensors and so on.
Libelium
• Libelium, the leader in wireless sensing, has developed a variety of
sensors for IoT applications and smart city functions.
• They have published a compilation of 50 cutting edge IoT sensor
applications for a smarter world that is grouped in 12 different
verticals, showing how the Internet of Things is becoming the next
technological revolution.
• It includes the most trendy scenarios, like Smart Cities where sensors
can offer us services like Smart Parking—to find free parking spots in
the streets—or managing the intensity of the luminosity in street
lights to save energy. Climate change, environmental protection,
water quality or CO2 emissions are also addressed by sensor
networks.
Sensors for Smart City Applications
Waggle—An Open
Platform for Intelligent Attentive Sensors
• Waggle "is a research project at Argonne National Laboratory
to design, develop, and deploy a novel wireless sensor
platform with advanced edge computing capa_x0002_bilities
to enable a new breed of sensor-driven environmental
science and smart city research."
• The project derived its name from "nature’s wireless sensors—
honeybees. Bees search far and wide for pollen, and report
their findings back to the hive using a sophisticated dance
called a ‘waggle dance’. The dance encodes the distance and
angle to the food source."
Waggle—An Open Platform for Intelligent
Attentive Sensors (Cont.)
• Waggle has a modular and scalable architecture developed with open-
source software and allows adding sensors, computing pipelines and
data analytics as needed.
• The software and hardware designs of the Waggle project are being
used by the Array of Things project for building a smart city in Chicago
with urban sensors and open data.
• The Waggle architecture leverages low-power processors, sensors and
cloud computing to build powerful and reliable sensor nodes to actively
analyze and respond to data.
• The key design features of Waggle are security, privacy, extensibility
and survivability.
Digital Communication Media for IoT
• Internet
• 6LoWPAN
• Zigbee
• Bluetooth Low Energy
• LoRaWAN
• Modbus
• MQTT
Internet
• The Internet is the most popular digital communication
medium.
• The Internet Protocol (IP) is "a set of technical rules that
defines how computers communicate over a network."
• Two versions of IP that are currently in use are IP version 4
(IPV4) and IP version 6 (IPV6).
Internet (Cont.)
• IPV4 was deployed in 1981. It can provide for about four
billion Internet addresses.
• These are 32 bits long. IPV4 addresses consist of a network
portion and a host portion that depends on five different
address classes: A, B, C, D and E.
• IPV6 was deployed in 1999. It can provide for about 2128
Internet addresses.
• IPV6 addresses are 128 bits long, with 64 bits for the
network and 64 bits for the host
Internet (Cont.)
• Due to global demand for Internet addresses over last two decades, IPV4-
based Internet addresses are being consumed at a fast rate. As a result, the
inventory of available IPV4 addresses will eventually be exhausted.
• The projected growth of ‘Things’ will require more Internet addresses to
connect these ‘Things’ over the Internet.
• To meet this demand, we have to utilize IPV6-based Internet addresses that
allow for a much larger address pool that IPV4.
• As a result, we will have a mix of IoT devices that are either IPV4-based or
IPV6-based, or have an option for either.
• This might lead to interoperability issues for IoT devices. Standardization in
the design of IoT devices can address this issue.
6LoWPAN
• The Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Network (LoWPAN)
is a low-cost network that "allows wireless connectivity in
applications with limited power and relaxed throughput
requirements."
• 6LoWPAN is an acronym for “IPV6 over Low-Power Wireless
Personal Area Network”.
6LoWPAN (Cont.)
• This networking technology allows IPV6 packets to be carried
efficiently by devices conforming to IEEE 802.15.4 standards.
• 6LoWPAN network devices are characterized by their short
range, low bit rate and low power consumption.
• An example of such devices are wireless sensors that can
work together to create large mesh networks and connect
the physical environment to real-world applications
Zigbee
• Zigbee is a standard for low-power mesh networks based on IEEE 802.15.4
standards. It can be used in indoor as well as outdoor IoT solutions.
• The first Zigbee specification was made available by the Zigbee Alliance in 2005.
• Zigbee 3.0 allows wireless interoperability of products from different
manufacturers who are approved through a certification scheme.
• Zigbee operates in the 2.4 GHz radio band, which is available for use globally
without a license, so applications using Zigbee are portable to any global location.
Non-routing devices using the Zigbee standard can run on power supplies like
batteries or solar cells, or can utilize Zigbee Green Power.
• For secured, over-the-air transfer of information, Zigbee utilizes AES128
encryption.
Bluetooth Low Energy
• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a wireless personal area network designed by the
Bluetooth Special Interest Group.
• It can enable short-burst wireless connections in various network topologies, like
the point-to-point (P2P) topology for one-to-one device communication, the
broadcast topology for one-to-many device communication or the mesh topology
for many to many device communications.
• BLE supports major mobile-computing platforms like iOS, Android, Windows,
Linux.
• The BLE broadcast topology can be utilized for localized information sharing, such
as item-finding beacons in smart retail solutions.
• BLE P2P is ideal for connected devices like fitness trackers and health monitors.
The BLE mesh can be used in smart solutions like asset tracking and building
automation.
LoRaWAN
• It is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) for battery
operated wireless
• devices with features like bi-directional communication,
localization services and mobility. It can be used in regional,
national or global networks.
• Long Range Low Power Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN)
uses gateways to relay messages between end devices and
a central network server.
LoRaWAN (Cont.)
• On LoRaWAN, the end devices use single-hop wireless
communication, while gateways connect using standard IP
connections.
• LoRaWAn utilizes an unlicensed radio spectrum for
communication and AES128 encryption for the security of
transmitted data.
• This network can be used in smart city applications such as
low-power tracking applications that are GPS-free and cloud-
based data delivery to mobile devices and smart systems.
Modbus
• Modbus is a serial communication protocol* for industrial
devices and an enabler for the Industrial IoT (IIoT).
• It is an open protocol and follows a master-slave model
whereby the ‘master’ device requests information and the
‘slave’ device supplies the information.
• Modbus can be used in supervisory control and data
acquisition systems
MQTT
• Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is an open,
machine-to-machine connectivity protocol for IoT
communication.
• It is a lightweight protocol, having MQTT broker as mediator
for interacting MQTT agents.
• MQTT follows a publication-subscription model whereby the
MQTT agents publish information that are consumed by the
subscribers.
• This is implemented through the MQTT methods—connect,
disconnect, publish, subscribe and unsubscribe.
Cloud, Fog and Data Analytics
• As sensors collect contextual data, based on their design and
architecture, this data can be processed locally on a smart device to a
certain extent or can be flushed intermittently to a gateway device for
zonal processing.
• This computing at the edge of a network is termed as ‘edge’ or ‘fog’
computing.
• The data from sensors can also be sent to a cloud-based storage and
processing location.
• Cloud services can be public, private, or a communal hybrid or the two
or community, based on the smart service’s architecture and design.
Cloud, Fog and Data Analytics
(Cont.)
• Depending on the need of the smart service rendered, the IoT application
may be integrated with a data analytics engine for fine tuning and
customization of the application output.
• For example, domain-based IoT applications can be enabled with various
infrastructure and functional components, such as sensors that capture
contextual data based on predefined parameters, gateway devices that
gather data from a bunch of sensors, data storage that can be at the edge
or hosted in the cloud where the gate_x0002_way devices flush the
gathered data intermittently, analytical processing functions, application
programming interface (API)-based business functions, command and
control functions for the actuators in sensors, and wired or wireless
network communications connecting these components.
Infrastructure and functional
components for the Internet of
Things.
Big Data generated from the
interaction of IoT, machines and
persons
System design of an IoT application
with a wireless sensor
IoT System Design
• The data collected by the sensor is sent wirelessly to an operations
center that has a control system to monitor the relevance of collected
data as per the contextual requirement.
• If the data are within the required range as desired for the business or
service, then the control system allows the data to be stored for further
application-based analytical processing and action.
• However, if the range for contextual data gathering requires a change,
then the change instruction is passed on wirelessly to the actuator on
the edge device from the control system and the sensors start collecting
data as per the redefined range.
• The sensors can be remotely tracked, monitored and controlled.
IoT World Forum Reference Model
• The Internet of Things World Forum has developed a
multilevel reference model for the IoT.
• It aims to standardize the concept and terminology used in
IoT and provides the functionalities necessary to realize the
benefits of IoT.
• The model has seven levels and is based on ‘information
flow’.
7 Level of IoT World Forum
Reference Model CISCO
• Level 1: Physical Devices and Controllers
• Level 2: Connectivity
• Level 3: Edge (Fog) Computing
• Level 4: Data Accumulation
• Level 5: Data Abstraction
• Level 6: Application
• Level 7: Collaboration and Processes
IoT World Forum Reference Model
Level 1: Physical Devices and
Controllers
• Physical devices and controllers are the endpoint devices that
send and receive information, and are the ‘Things’ in the IoT.
• The devices can be queried or con_x0002_trolled over the
Internet and are capable of analog-to-digital conversion of
signals as needed and contextual data generation. Due to low
computing and storage power, the devices will flush out captured
data intermittently in small units to the networking equipment in
Level 2.
• The controller will control the data parameters based on
authorized instructions.
Level 2: Connectivity
• The communication and connectivity of the ‘Things’ is maintained
at this level for reliable and timely information transmission.
• Information can flow between reliable devices in Level 1 and the
network, across networks (east-west traffic), and between
networks (Level 2) and low-level information processing that
occurs at Level 3.
• Communication gateways can be introduced to connect legacy
devices that are not IP enabled.
• Some computation activities like applying network security
policies or protocol translation can occur at Level 2.
Level 3: Edge (Fog) Computing
• There might be requirements for localized conversion of network data
flows into information to cater to specific IoT service needs.
• In such situations, it can be an operational overhead as well as being
time-consuming to send contextual data from sensor devices to a
centralized ‘cloud’ for processing and further action.
• This leads to the concept of ‘edge’ or ‘fog’ computing for information
processing as close to the edge of the network as possible, with
minimum latency from data capture.
• It is a decentralized computing approach with specific data
aggregation points. Level 3 focus on such activities.
Level 3: Edge (Fog) Computing
(Cont.)
• Computation tasks like packet inspection can be performed at this
level.
• The information processing is limited and done on a packet-by-packet
basis. Higher level processing of this information is performed at Level
4.
• Examples include data evaluation for specific criteria, reformatting
data for higher level processing, expanding/decoding cryptic data,
distillation/reduction of data, data assessment for threshold
attainment or alert generation, and so on.
Level 4: Data Accumulation
• This is the storage level where in-motion, event-based data
from a network is converted to data at rest for query-based
processing by applications when necessary, on a
non_x0002_real-time basis.
• Some of the activities performed at this level include event
filtering/sampling, event comparison, event aggregation and
northbound/southbound alerting.
Level 5: Data Abstraction
• This level helps in data aggregation from multiple devices
and simplifies access of data to the application by creating
schemas and views of data.
• The key processes at this level are filtering, selecting,
projecting and reconciliation of data in different formats,
semantics consistency of data from different sources,
normalizing/de-normalizing and indexing of data
Level 6: Application
• All kinds of applications reside at this level, which provides
the designed output by interpretation of available
information.
• These may be critical business applications, mobile
applications, business intelligence reports, analytics, control
applications and so on.
Level 7: Collaboration and Processes
• This level deals with the people and business processes for
communication and collaboration that are necessary to make
the IoT application useful.
The Industrial Internet of Things and
System Architecture
• The ‘Industrial IoT’ (IIoT) refers to the convergence of the
industrial ecosystem, contextual sensing, computing and
ubiquitous network connectivity.
• The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) refers to the IIoT as
“the Internet of things, machines, computers and people,
enabling intelligent industrial operations using advanced
data analytics for transformational business outcomes.”
The Industrial Internet of Things and
System Architecture
The Industrial Internet of Things and
System Architecture (Cont.)
• The IIoT creates Industrial Internet Systems (IISs) by connecting the
industrial control systems (ICS) online with enterprise systems,
business processes, analytics solutions and humans.
• Examples include industrial systems for healthcare, energy, the public
sector, transportation, manufacturing and so on.
• Safety, security and resilience are the primary characteristics of the
IIoT and IISs.
• The IIC has developed a system architecture for IIoT applications.
• It is a threetiered architecture, with edge, platform and enterprise
tiers that are connected by three networks—a proximity network, an
access network and a service network respectively
The Industrial Internet of Things and
System Architecture (Cont.)
• The edge comprises the edge nodes.
• Data is collected from the edge nodes and communicated using the
proximity network.
• The proximity network connects the edge nodes to an edge gateway
that connects to other networks.
• Depending on the storage and computation capacity, some data
aggregation, processing and analytics may be performed at the edge
gateway, and it can be used as a management point for the devices
and assets.
The Industrial Internet of Things and
System Architecture (Cont.)
• The platform tier is the middle tier of the three-tiered
architecture, and uses the access network and service network
to communicate with the edge tier and enterprise tier
respectively.
• The access network can be a corporate network or a private
network overlaid on the public Internet or a 4G/5G network.
• Apart from proving data-query and analytics services for the
edge tier and the enterprise tier, the platform tier also manages
devices and assets by receiving, processing and forwarding
control commands from the enterprise tier to the edge tier.
The Industrial Internet of Things and
System Architecture (Cont.)
• The enterprise tier maintains the domain-specific
applications and decision support systems with data input
from the edge and platform tiers. It also sends control data
to the edge tier and the platform tier.
• A service network is used for communication between the
enterprise tier and platform tier.
• It can be a private network overlaid on the public Internet or
a secured Internet connection.
IoT Middleware Architecture
• The IoT middleware provides the software platform that
abstracts applications from devices and provides
interoperability of heterogeneous devices through syntactic
and semantic associations.
• This functional layer is also responsible for device
authentication, security and privacy of the contextual data
and data collection and exchange in volumes with
applications to render the designed IoT service.
LinkSmart Middleware Architecture
for IoT
• LinkSmart middleware architecture for IoT to provide an
insight about the necessary components for building a robust
middleware.
• It is an output from two integrated European research
projects: Hydra and EBBITS.
• LinkSmart is an open-source middleware platform for
networked-embedded systems and IoT applications.
LinkSmart Middleware Architecture
for IoT (Cont.)
• The LinkSmart middleware constitutes a software layer between the
operating system of software-enabled devices and user applications
that communicate with those devices.
• It provides protocols that execute on top of the transport layer and
provide services to the application layer.
The nine technical components in
the LinkSmart architecture
1. Service-oriented architecture
2. Model-driven approach
3. Three-layered discovery architecture
4. P2P-based network architecture
5. Dynamic runtime architecture
6. Context management
7. Self-management features comprising of goal management, change
management and component control
8. Security and trust
9. storage management
Structural overview of the LinkSmart
middleware layers
LinkSmart Middleware Architecture
for IoT (Cont.)
• The middleware, devices and services are integrated in a
service-oriented architecture, which effectively turns all
devices into web services and provides extensive syntactic
interoperability so that the components can talk to each
other regardless of their physical locations and the interface
technology.
• The LinkSmart middleware architecture has four layers—a
semantic layer, a service layer, a network layer and a
security layer—which are designed separately for application
elements and devices.
LinkSmart Middleware Architecture
for IoT (Cont.)
• The semantic layer provides service descriptions, context and policy.
• The service layer is responsible for the scheduling of jobs, diagnostics
and the orchestration of application elements and the resource
optimization of device elements for a seamless integration of services.
• The network layer manages the network and sessions, while the
security of application elements and devices is managed through the
security layer.
• The modular architecture of LinkSmart provides the flexibility to
create any network of devices necessary to build an IoT application.
IoT Security Architecture
• Security is a prime necessity for IoT devices and services.
• All components in IoT architecture should be secured to
provide trustworthy services.
• To achieve this, IoT-A, the European Lighthouse Integrated
Project on IoT architecture, has recommended a layered
security approach for IoT architecture.
• As per IoT-A terminology, physical entities are represented in
the digital world as virtual entities (VE).
IoT Security Architecture (Cont.)
• The security architecture is layered into three key areas: deployment
security, communication security and service security.
• Devices (sensor, actuator), resources (network resource, on-device
resource) and services should be deployed considering all kinds of
threat scenarios and security needs.
• The communication security layer considers all aspects of threats in
communication among devices, resources and services, with
emphasis on communication channel security, network security and
management and key exchange and management.
IoT Security Architecture (Cont.)
• Gateways can play a critical role in secured communication
between an unconstrained device network and a constrained
device network through communication-protocol adaptation
and security-configuration management in peripheral
networks of constrained devices.
• The service security layer ensures authentication,
authorization and identity management for virtual entities,
including auto-ID devices, and for secured access to
resolution-service components.
General layering of security features
in IoT architecture
Cyber-Physical Systems and IoT
• Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are smart systems that include
engineered interacting networks of physical and
computational components.
• These highly interconnected and integrated systems provide
new functionalities to improve quality of life and enable
technological advances in critical areas, such as personalized
health care, emergency response, traffic flow management,
smart manufacturing, defense and homeland security, and
energy supply and use.
Cyber-Physical Systems and IoT
(Cont.)
• In addition to CPS, there are many words and phrases
(Industrial Internet, Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-
machine (M2M), smart cities, and others) that describe
similar or related systems and concepts.
• There is significant overlap between these concepts, in
particular CPS and IoT, such that CPS and IoT are sometimes
used interchangeably.
Cyber-Physical Systems and IoT
(Cont.)
• A CPS generally involves sensing, computation and actuation.
• CPS involve traditional information technology (IT) as in the
passage of data from sensors to the processing of those data
in computation.
• CPS also involve traditional operational technology (OT) for
control aspects and actuation.
• The combination of these IT and OT worlds along with
associated timing constraints is a particularly new feature of
CPS.
Cyber-Physical Systems and IoT
(Cont.)
• However, IoT and CPS have some conceptual distinction
according to some.
• One such distinction mentions CPS as a tight human-machine
interaction that provides control of combined organizational and
physical processes.
• An example of this is a networked, distributed traffic-
management system.
• On the other hand, IoT is an enabler for sensing the physical
world through Internet connectivity, like in a smart-city
transportation system
References
• Muntjir, M., Rahul, M., & Alhumyani, H. A. (2017). An analysis of
Internet of Things (IoT): novel architectures, modern
applications, security aspects and future scope with latest case
studies. Int. J. Eng. Res. Technol, 6(6), 422-447.
• Kolah, A. (2019). Internet of things, for things and by things.
CRC Press. Taylor & Francis