Introduction to the Internet of Things: IOT Part 1

The 21st century began with the increased use of the Internet. In the year 2000, the Internet accounted for 51 percent of information transfer in telecommunications, which soon increased to 97 percent in 2007. Although the Internet began its humble journey by interconnecting computers across the world and increasing the dominance of the telecommunications sector , the idea of ​​the Internet is now bound to go beyond computers and leap beyond telecommunications. From the internet of computers, this century will be the era of the Internet of Things (IoT).

The 'Internet of Things' seems to have been heard of before and there must be some questions in your engineering mind.

– What is the Internet of Things (IOT)?

– Why is it a trend?

– What will be the impact of IOT in the future?

– Which organizations are developing IOT technologies and what are their interests?

– What does IOT mean for a developer?

– What hardware, software and services fall under IOT?

– What are the main challenges on the path to IOT?

To further increase your appetite, it is worth mentioning that IOT, Cloud Services, Big Data, etc.

This tutorial is a modest attempt to answer some of these questions. Through this tutorial, IOT will be seen from different perspectives, such as from the point of view of users, companies, developers and service providers. The hardware and software involved in IOT will be examined. The importance and impact of IOT will be illustrated with real-life examples and challenges in developing IOT will be examined. So, get ready for a ride. Let's go.

What is IOT?

The Internet is now omnipresent and ever-present. By 2016, 47% of the world's population was connected to the Internet. Smartphones and smart gadgets have a greater contribution to this. In the form of smartphones, everyone now has a portable computer connected to the Internet in their pocket. With thousands of applications in use, the internet has become an everyday phenomenon and a must-have in modern life. With the rise of “Internet of Things”, now not just computers and smartphones, every possible thing we use will be IT-enabled.

The term “Internet of Things” has been defined by different organizations in many different ways. There are many organizations that are working on developing standards and technologies for IOT. Let's look at the definitions of IOT dictated by some of these standard organizations to get a brief insight into it.

According to the ITU-T (International Telecommunications Union), IOT is defined as: A global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services through the interconnection of things (physical and virtual) based on information technologies existing and evolving interoperable and communications systems.

According to the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), IOT is defined as: A network of items – each embedded with sensors – that are connected to the Internet.

According to ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute): Machine-to-machine communications are communication between two or more entities that do not necessarily require any direct human intervention. M2M services aim to automate the decision-making and communication process.

According to OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), IOT is defined as: The system defined where the Internet is connected to the physical world through ubiquitous sensors.

These definitions are globally accepted standard definitions. For a common man, the above definitions might be a little complicated to understand. Therefore, for a common understanding, a simple definition of IOT can be as follows –

“The Internet of Things refers to the integration of IT infrastructure with the physical world, where almost all devices and appliances, i.e. things we use, are connected to the (Internet) network.”

Thus, with this integration of information technology, everything in everyday life is interconnected and also connected to the internet. Just as household appliances can be controlled and operated by a smartphone, security cameras and locks can be accessed from anywhere in the world, an umbrella can detect weather conditions and alert you that it should be taken before leaving, covers of the medicines start to work. flashing indicating that it is time to take the dosage etc. So, basically every common article of use (such as household appliances, cars, vehicles, power grids, healthcare devices and all possible goods in daily use) is incorporated into software intelligence, is interconnected and connected to internet platforms that make these common objects smarter, better and smarter in their own way.

Figure 1: Image showing the concept of Internet of Things

The purpose of IOT is not solved just by connecting things to the internet. Things must be able to interact with the physical world. For interaction with the physical world, these things are provided with sensors and actuators. Sensors and actuators are devices that help interact with the physical environment. Sensors collect data from the environment around them, just like a temperature sensor detects the temperature of the surrounding environment. Similarly, a smartphone's GPS location receiver and accelerometer are also sensors. A washing machine has a water level sensor and a refrigerator has a thermostat to detect the temperature of the freezer. There are countless examples of sensors. Actuators are devices responsible for moving or controlling a mechanism in a system like the temperature controller in an air conditioner is an actuator.

IOT objects after detecting and collecting data through sensors, send it to the edge of a network or cloud. Objects can be connected to the cloud/network through a variety of interfaces such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, GPRS or Ethernet. On cloud servers, data is stored and then processed. Processing can be as simple as checking whether or not the temperature read is within the user-defined acceptable range.

The data is processed on the cloud server for decision making. In the same way that if the temperature read by the sensor is higher than the normal temperature, the air conditioners must turn on. The decision must be made in the physical world with the help of actuators. This can be done automatically by directly controlling the AC through the cloud server or by sending an alert to the user that they need to turn on the AC.

The sensors, network interfaces, cloud servers, and actuators all together form the core infrastructure of an IoT framework. These are the building blocks of IOT that can make the most common human-use objects IT-enabled.

Fig. 2: Image showing the Internet of Things communication model

Why is IOT on the rise?

IOT is seen as the fourth consecutive industrial revolution. The third industrial revolution came with information technology and its use to automate production. And now the fourth industrial revolution is predicted to come with Internet technology and its use in countless methods and applications. Human life will be much smarter and easier with the notion of 'Everything anywhere, always connected'.

IOT will be People IT

See a simple example. Suppose you left the station and locked your house. In his absence, his parents come to visit him, but find his house locked. Now suppose if your house is automated with IOT and you can access the locks of your house over the internet, from a distant place, you can open the locks so that your parents can stay there even in your absence. This will be the power of IOT and how it can boost people's lifestyles.

IOT is considered a people's IT, where common people can access the world of information with smart devices and meet their various personal and professional needs in the blink of an eye. This can happen with ubiquitous connectivity, intelligent digitization of everyday objects and responsive real-time information infrastructures.

Big Data at play

IOT presents a technological concept where everything that is common is integrated into the internet and has intelligent embedded electronics for better and improved functioning. Secondly, it foresees that objects used in everyday life connect to cloud services with which they can exchange data in real time.

With any cloud platform, there will be billions of connected devices and trillions of sensors collecting information from around the world. It will be massive data coming from passive, active and fog devices. This opens up another realm of big data analysis.

The data collected by IOT devices will be useful for companies to acquire business information and adapt business operation models for better Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE). IOT era products will be connected to different service platforms that will have adaptive applications to improve and personalize the user experience. There are many service architectures such as Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), Resource Oriented Architecture (ROA), Model Oriented Architecture (MDA), Event Driven Architecture (EDA) and Micro Services Architecture (MSA) in development to cover the broad scope and variety of data. and variability and scalability of IOT systems.

At the same time, the enhanced consumer experience will be well abstracted, so the implementation of services used by an IOT device will remain hidden from the end user.

Enterprise-level IoT

Any IOT platform will be integrated with all enterprise-scale applications so that production and services can be sophisticated and adapted to the highest level. For example, production lines in a factory will be integrated with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Knowledge Management (KM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications. With this integration, factory production could be better optimized to better utilize resources, increase or decrease production according to customer demand and supply feasibility, and products could be improved or customized with timely customer feedback. real.

IOT as next generation web

The early web (Web 1.0) was developed for reading information. This evolved into web 2.0 which was a social web and was not just for reading but also writing information. IOT will evolve from the web to web 3.0, where information will not only be read, written, but also linked to multiple sources, services and applications. This will be a semantic web that will provide relevant and correct information through automated searches. It will not stop here and will take the web to the next version – Web 4.0, where information can be extracted and delivered in real time with simultaneous relevance and actionable insights.

Industry expectations

The global industry has many expectations from IOT. According to a recent report, wearable technologies will be a big part of consumer IOT. Around 80 million wearable devices were sold worldwide in 2015. The count is expected to exceed 214 million by 2019, as stated by IDC. There are already many startups in the market like IOTEX Systems, Leaf Wearable, Salted Venture etc. who are working on IOT wearable technology. Like Leaf Wearable is working on developing smart jewelry for women's safety. Another startup Cicret is working on developing a touch and projection-based bracelet that will be a great alternative to traditional smartphones.

In the coming days, the price of connecting IOT devices will be very cheap – just 50 cents per month in some cases. The low cost will come from the minimal data transmission that IoT devices will need.

According to McKinsey, the IOT industry will be worth up to $11 trillion by 2025, and according to Cisco, it will be worth even more, to around $19 trillion by then. No matter what is right, companies will have plenty of opportunities to make money from this huge market. Nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IOT solutions over the next five years.

Governments around the world are focused on increasing productivity, reducing costs and improving the quality of life in their countries. The public sector will be the second largest adopter of IOT ecosystems.

IOT will be beneficial for everyone – creators, industries, companies and consumers. Everyone will benefit in one way or another.

Understanding IoT as a Developer

Developing IOT systems is a complex task. It may involve two or more aspects described below –

Smart Devices – IOT devices are smart devices that may have one or more sensors and actuators embedded in them. Sensors and actuators can be interfaced through a controller or processor. The device must have a wired or wireless communication interface to connect to other devices or the Internet.

Machine-to-machine communication – Machine-to-machine communication is the main feature of IOT devices. Any IOT device needs to interact with other devices, electronic tags, stickers, smartphones, gadgets or computers. Communication technologies are also undergoing a tremendous transformation to meet the communication requirements of IOT devices by increasing data transfer rates and enabling data communication for multiple channels simultaneously. For ubiquitous device-to-device (D2D) integration, standards bodies, government departments, telecom and IT companies, service providers, system integrators and enterprises have come together to materialize IOT ecosystems. In this ecosystem, a multitude of embedded devices will be networked and interacting through multiple channels at high data speeds.

Device to Cloud Integration – IOT devices can be service enabled only by connecting to one or more service interfaces. This requires device-to-cloud (D2C) integration. By connecting to different service interfaces, IOT devices can expose and request their functionalities. Through web and cloud enablement, devices can serve as service-providing entities, where the actual implementation of the service is hidden behind the service interface. Many devices can come together and coordinate to perform tasks efficiently and synchronously. Furthermore, through device and cloud integration, a large number of devices can be maintained, monitored, updated and operated through a common platform. For efficient device-to-cloud integration, the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) model is under development and will prove to be a transformational milestone in realizing IOT ecosystems.

There are already numerous device-specific cloud platforms and dedicated networks spread across the world, serving millions of IoT devices. Different cloud architectures are being developed for device-specific applications, big data analytics, critical operations, and smartphone services. Without a doubt, device-to-cloud integration is the most vital aspect of any IOT system, without which it would not even be classified in the IOT paradigm.

Platform as a Service – The true power of IOT can only be delivered through integrated cloud-based platforms. Typical platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions need to be optimized and enhanced for IOT so that they can manage millions of devices, collect and exchange data in real-time, manage specific interactions between a multitude of devices, and can successfully integrate with applications. business. such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Knowledge Management (KM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Cloud-to-cloud integration – Cloud service providers (CSP) have their cloud centers located in geographically diverse locations. Typical data centers are evolving into cloud centers through the implementation of cloud-centric platforms and practices. New emerging cloud centers can provide cloud infrastructure, platform, and applications all together, or they can simply provide cloud infrastructure alone. Some of the popular cloud management platforms include VMware solutions, OpenStack distributions, Apache Cloudstack, BMC software, Citrix Cloud, Rackware, IBM Bluemix Cloud, Microsoft Cloud, Cisco Systems, Oracle Enterprise Manager etc. -cloud services. The platforms are responsible for integrating the on-premises cloud with private hosted clouds, public cloud services (such as Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, etc.), enterprise management systems, and service automation applications. In the emerging trend, the same cloud services are being provided by multiple CSPs with different service level agreements and operational level agreements. Therefore, this requires the need for cloud orchestration, where multiple clouds and services could be explored and aggregated to generate composite data, processes, services or applications. To enable cloud orchestration, dedicated software solutions called Cloud Service Brokers (CSBs) are being developed.

There are many prominent technologies that will play a greater role in the development of future IOT systems. Some of these technologies are –

Electronic Miniaturization – The development of electronic components and circuits on a micro and nano scale will allow the incorporation of electronics into more and more objects. Thus, future integrated circuits will play a key role in the development of IOT systems.

Digitization – Digitization of as many objects as possible with the help of tags, stickers, beacons, chips, controllers, wearables, implants and sensors will go a long way in realizing true IOT ecosystems.

Communication Technologies – Future communication technologies like 5G, Low Power Bluetooth, Near Field Communication (NFC), RFID, LoRa WAN, etc. will make device-to-device and device-to-cloud communication much faster and more efficient.

Clouds and Big Data – IOT ecosystems will handle a huge scale of data and conduct real-time knowledge engineering. Thus, big data analysis and data mining practices will play a vital role in the functioning of IOT systems.

IoT ecosystems

IOT will emerge in the form of global ecosystems due to its scalability and versatility. IOT will add a multitude of sensors and actuators to the existing connected world of computers and communication devices. IOT systems are evolving with purpose and can obviously be simplified by application domains alone. By application, there could be the following IOT ecosystems –

– Industrial Internet of Things

– Consumer Internet of Things

– Social Internet of Things

– Semantic Internet of Things

– Cognitive Internet of Things

Industrial Internet of Things – Manufacturing companies are rapidly adopting IOT. IOT is enabling manufacturing equipment to communicate in real time to detect manufacturing faults, improving efficiency and increasing production. Data collected from equipment can be used to improve and enhance products, improve automation, and improve resource planning. IOT allows you to incorporate cutting-edge technologies into products such as natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will greatly improve the customer experience in the future. Some of the emerging industrial IOT systems include AWS IOT and AutoDesk SeeControl.

Consumer Internet of Things – In this IOT ecosystem, products manufactured by companies are seen as digital assets. Products offered to consumers will have advanced human interface electronics and applications to interact and receive feedback with customers. Next-generation products will be able to monitor customer behavior and adapt services and applications accordingly. The devices will come with biometric identification systems, so they will only be used by authenticated users. Data collected from consumer devices will not only enable the adaptation of services and applications, but also improve revenue models, supply chain and product quality.

Social Internet of Things – With the help of IOT, next-generation gadgets and smartphones will be more context-aware, adaptable and reliable, enabling better social networking across different applications.

Semantic Internet of Things – Device-to-device integration is an essential feature of IOT. The greater the number of devices and the more ways they can communicate with each other, the better IOT systems can be developed. Likewise, if cars, people and parking spaces could have some kind of communication, transport resources and people's time could be managed more efficiently. Furthermore, transportation resources will become easily accessible and traceable. For such context-aware communication between people and devices, semantic technology is needed. This semantic technology would include semantic annotations, ontologies, resource description structures, etc. In a semantic IoT ecosystem, heterogeneous devices are able to communicate with each other and their users with a high degree of interoperability, resulting in an integrated experience from a variety of devices.

Cognitive Internet of Things – With the integration of natural language processing, image analysis, video analysis, text analysis and machine learning, an IOT ecosystem where devices will be equipped with great sensing capabilities and artificial intelligence can be developed.

Real Life IOT Applications –

IOT will become highly important because it will help people drastically improve the way they live, work and learn. IOT arrived with a highly credible promise of giving individuals a few more hours by automating tasks and increasing business productivity by making better use of data. In short, IOT is allowing us to become more proactive and less reactive.

The Internet of Things has found application in all industries and sectors such as smart homes, smart buildings, travel and transportation, healthcare, retail, poultry and agriculture, etc. The Industrial Internet of Things is also changing automation and logistics.

Fig. 3: Image showing the Internet of Things ecosystem

Some of the popular IOT applications are as follows –

1) Smart Home – Home Networks (HAN) and Smart Homes are becoming the new trend. Almost everyone wants their home to be fully automated, with most household operations carried out without any human intervention. There are many companies and startups that are working on smart home IOT products. The goal of these companies is to provide low-cost products that are capable of intelligently managing time and energy resources. Another dimension in which smart home products are in development pertains to home security and access control systems. Companies such as Philips, Haier, Nest, Ecobee, Ring, August are considered household brands that provide smart home IOT products and solutions.

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2) Wearable devices – After smartphones, the new trend is smart wearables. Smart jewelry, bracelets, smart watches, bracelets and even clothes will be the new fashion. These wearable devices are installed with sensors and software that collect data and information about users. This data is later pre-processed to extract essential insights about the user. These devices in the wearable category broadly cover fitness, health, telecommunications and entertainment requirements. The prerequisite of Internet of Things technology for wearable applications is to have ultra-low power consumption and small size. Wearables have seen explosive demand in recent years. Companies like Apple, Fitbit, Samsung, Huawei, Blend Style & function, IOTEX, Leaf wearable, Salted venture etc. are developing IOT-based wearable products.

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3) Smart City – Smart City is the new concept of modern cities developed through IOT. Intelligent surveillance, automated transport, intelligent energy management systems, water distribution, urban security and environmental conservation through electronic monitoring are examples of internet of things applications for smart cities. The concept of smart cities has been quickly adopted by governments and several public sector organizations are now working with IOT providers and IT companies to make cities smarter.

Smart Cities aims to solve the main problems faced by people living in cities, such as pollution, traffic control, water and energy shortages, etc. Sensors and web applications will play an important role in smart city solutions. Evreka, Bigbelly etc. There are some companies that provide solutions and services for smart cities.

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4) Smart Grids – The concept of smart grid is becoming very popular across the world. The power grids of the future will not only be smart enough, but also highly reliable. Suppose, if someone manages to save 20% of their money by saving on their home electricity bill, it will be a huge saving in a year. Consumers can also adjust energy consumption through prepaid energy top-ups. The IOT concept of Smart Grids includes smart metering, use of efficient smart appliances, renewable energy resources and energy efficient resources. The basic concept behind smart grids is to automatically collect data remotely and analyze the behavior of electricity consumers and suppliers to improve the efficiency, reliability and economics of electricity use.

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5) Industrial Internet – The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or Industrial Internet will revolutionize the manufacturing process. It will include applications for tracking goods, exchanging real-time merchandise directory information between suppliers and retailers, and automated delivery to increase the efficiency of the industry's supply chain. According to GE, improving industrial productivity through IOT will generate between 10 billion and 15 billion dollars in GDP worldwide over the next 15 years.

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6) Connected Cars – With connected car technology, vehicles will be able to optimize their operation in an automated way through sensor technology. Cars will be able to communicate with each other to avoid accidents. Cars could also communicate with parking sensors to find availability and assistance for correct parking. Most major automakers, as well as some startups, are working on connected car solutions. Big brands like Tesla, BMW, Apple, Google etc. are currently working in this area.

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7) IoT in Agriculture – As the world population increases day by day, the demand for food supply also increases. Governments are helping farmers use advanced techniques and research to increase food production. Smart agriculture is one of the fastest growing fields in IOT. IOT sensors will provide information on crop yield, rainfall, pest infestation and soil nutrition to farmers to improve farming techniques and achieve productive production.

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8) Smart Retail – In the current scenario, smart retail is playing a key role in the retail sector of the IOT market. Smart retail systems will provide a healthy opportunity for retailers to connect with consumers to provide goods as per customer needs. Retailers could interact with customers through smartphones. Beacon technology will play an important role in smart retail IOT. Using Beacon technology, retailers can get to know their customers better and serve them according to their specific needs. They can also track the customer's path through the store and improve the store's architecture.

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Why is IoT so challenging?

1) Device Management – ​​Gartner estimates that in addition to smartphones, tablets and PCs, more than 25 billion “things” will be connected to the Internet by 2020. The number of sensors, devices and gateways will be extremely large and they will be spread across large, dispersed geographic locations. Ensuring devices are completely automated and manageable remotely is challenging.

Managing all the devices and keeping an eye on faults, configurations and monitoring the performance and security of such a huge number of devices is definitely an IOT challenge. Service providers will need to manage failures, configurations, performance and security of their interconnected devices, and accountability for each aspect will be their primary responsibility.

2) Hardware Challenge – Today, the main challenge in terms of hardware is the price and availability of the required hardware. This is one of the main reasons that prevent most companies and end users from having more “connected objects”. Some of the main hardware concerns are:

– Battery life : Most IOT devices run on battery power. Additionally, these devices will require them to remain connected to the internet at all times. Therefore, they will constantly consume energy. Developing better batteries and managing battery power is a major hardware challenge in IOT product development.

– Equipment size : It is important that IOT devices are compact and small. Therefore, its size needs to be optimized with currently available integrated electronics to suit its purpose, use and application.

3) Interoperability – Interoperability means that heterogeneous devices and protocols need to be able to interoperate with each other. This is a challenge due to the large number of different platforms used in IOT systems. Interoperability must be addressed by both application developers and device manufacturers in order to provide the services regardless of the platform or hardware specifications of the IoT device.

4) Data security and privacy – Data sent from the sensor to the network may be the user's personal data and needs to be protected from unauthorized access. Users must have all authorized rights and policies to access their data personally, which must not be shared with third parties. Although the user himself must have the right to share the data wherever he wants. As the market adapts IOT day by day, security and privacy are becoming a major concern for users. Users obviously want to share the data privately because there are also several hackers and snoopers who would like to access their private data unethically. There must be authentication, authorization and security at the transport layer to access data personally, otherwise the data will be directly exposed to various types of attackers.

5) Addressing and identification – Since millions of smart things will be connected to the Internet, they will have to be identified using a unique address, based on which they will communicate with each other. This requires a large address space and unique addresses for each smart object.

In the next tutorial, we will take a look at the IOT infrastructure.