Internet of Things
Abstract page
Internet of things (IOT) refers to a system of interconnected digital and mechanical machines, computing devices, objects and things which have their own unique identifiers and ability to transfer data and communicate over a network without the need of any human interaction. The term IOT was coined in 1999, but became famous after the onset of RFIDs. It is estimated that by 2020, around 30 billion devices around the world will be wirelessly connected to the internet of things. The research on IOT has been going in various fields like healthcare, home systems, retail, transportation, insurance etc. The IOT field offers numerous advantages in various spheres of life and has improved the quality of life of an individual.
The present study aims to understand the concept of internet of things, its background, benefits, physical design, IOT architecture and various protocols involved. Various OSI layers and protocols in these layers involved in working of IOT are discussed. IOT applications and concerns regarding security and privacy are also discussed. Thus, IOT offers numerous advantages for the world currently and a lot of future scope for it to be built upon.
Introduction
The world where billions of objects are interconnected over private or public Internet Protocol (IP) networks and can communicate, sense and share information is called the world of Internet of things (IOT). Data is regularly collected, analyzed and actions are initiated between these interconnected objects and thus provide intelligence for decision-making, management and planning. Thus, internet of things can also be defined as the sum of physical objects, controller, sensor and Actuator and Internet. So, it is now possible to sense and remotely access the objects across existing network infrastructure with the help of IOT which provides opportunities for integrating the physical world into the computer based systems thereby ensuring improved accuracy, efficiency, and economic benefit.
A member of the Radio Frequency Identification Development (RFID) community, coined the concept of Internet of things in 1999 and it is now more relevant to the practical world as the number of mobile devices, communication, data analytics and cloud computing have grown a lot. The things in the internet of things can be: people, condition of objects, time information of objects and location of objects. As more and more physical objects and smart devices are connected to the IOT, the IOT brings more value and impact to our daily lives.
There are numerous benefits offered by the IOT to the today's world, like choosing favorite restaurant, taking the best route to office/home, remote health monitoring, pay-as-you-use services. The convergence of data on the shared resources allows better nationwide planning for government, quicker responses to emergencies and better coordination between agencies. Assets and products can be tracked easily which provides many business profits and help in the optimization of resource and equipment usage.
An IOT device has several interfaces for connection to other devices, which are both wired and wireless. These interfaces are : for sensors, internet connectivity, for memory and storage interfaces and for audio/video. These IOT devices collect various kinds of data from the sensors like humidity, temperature etc. This sensed data is communicated to other devices. Actuators are used for connecting the IOT devices to other physical entities in the vicinity of the device. There can be different types of IOT devices like smart watches, wearable sensors, automobiles, LED lights and industrial machines.
IOT Architecture and Protocols
IOT architecture has different suites of technologies that supports IOT. Various technologies are related to each other and communicate to deploy IOT in different scenarios. Various protocol layers are:
Physical link layer: The basic networking hardware transmission technologies of any network is defined by the physical layer. It determines how the data is sent physically over the network. Various link layer protocols which are relevant in the context of IOT are 802.3-Ethernet, 802.11- Wi-Fi, 802.16- WiMax, 802.15.4- LR-WPAN, and 2G/3G/4G- mobile communication. These various protocols help in the communication of IOT devices.
Network/Internet layer: The layer responsible for sending IP datagram from the source network to the destination network is called Internet layer. The packet routing and host addressing is done by this layer. The data grams are routed from source to the destination across multiple networks with the help of destination and source addresses which are present in the data grams. IP addressing schemes like IPv4 and IPv6 are used for doing hierarchical IP Addressing schemes. IPv4 is the most deployed Internet Protocol that uses a 32-bit address scheme to identify the devices on the network. Since the address of the IPv4 scheme got exhausted in the year 2011, IPv6 has been deployed as the successor to IPv4. It uses 128-bit address scheme. 6LoWPAN is also used for IPOT devices which are low powered with limited processing capability. It operates in 2.4 GHz frequency range.
Transport Layer: The main function of the transport layer is to provide end-to-end functionality. It transfers the messages end-to-end independent of the underlying network. Either handshakes (TCP) or without handshakes/acknowledgements (UDP) can be used for setting up the message transfer capabilities. It helps in providing error control, congestion control, flow control, and segmentation. TCP is most widely used by email programs (SMTP), web browsers (HTTP, HTTPs) and file transfer (FTP). It ensures reliable transmission of packets as it is stateful and connection oriented protocol. UDP on the other hand is a connectionless protocol which is useful for time-sensitive information. It carries small data units which cannot take overhead of connection setup. Guaranteed delivering of data is not provided as it is stateless and transaction oriented protocol.
Application layer: It defines how the data is sent over the network by interfacing with the lower layer protocols. Encoding of the data is done by the application layer protocol while encapsulation is done by the transport layer protocol. This layer is used by both the source and destination devices in establishing a communication session. The application layer protocols implemented on both the source and destination must match in order for the communication to be successful. Port numbers are used by the application layer for application addressing. The application layer implement multiple protocols in order to provide various communication experiences. In a single conversation multiple protocols are used , where one protocol may specify how to establish network connection and other may specify the process for the data transfer i.e. how the message is sent to the next lower level. Some of the commonly used Application layer protocols for IOT are: Domain Name System (DNS), WebSocket, Message Query Telemetry Transport (MQTT), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Data Distribution Service (DDS), Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), Post Office Protocol (POP), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Telnet, and File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
Figure 1 Simplifies OSI model and TCP/IP protocol stack (Source: )
Technology Outlook
The convergence of the micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), Internet, wireless technologies and the micro-services led to the evolution of IOT. The silo walls between Information technology (IT) and the Operational Technology (OT) was tear down by this convergence which allowed unstructured data generated from machines to be analyzed for insights that drove improvements. Various technologies that can support IOT are divided into three groups: The first group is the one that impacts the microprocessor chips and devices like intelligent sensors in the field, wireless sensor network for sensor connectivity, chipsets in miniature size, and for maintaining power and energy sustainability, low power sensors should be available.
The other group of technologies is one that address latency and capacity issues like LTE-A and LTE and support network sharing as well like cognitive networks and software-defined radios. Management services that are supported for the IOT applications are present in the third group like maintaining the speed of technologies that support data processing such as streaming and in-memory analytics. Other are the technologies that are needed for intelligent decision-making such as predictive analytics, context-aware computing service, behavioral analytics and complex event processing.
Figure 2 Low-power Chipset designs
IOT Applications
With the evolution of the internet of things, various opportunities are provided to life-enhancing services for consumers while the productivity for enterprises has boosted. Significant adoption of IOT services has been observed in following thirteen sectors: Automotive, health, Utilities, Consumer electronics, Smart cities and transportation, Intelligent buildings, Manufacturing, Construction, Retail and Leisure, Energy services, National security, Agriculture and environment, PCs, tablets and handsets. Some of the applications of IOT are listed below:
IOT in Healthcare: One of the areas in Healthcare that has great potential for IOT is the medical body area network (MBAN) where sensors or devices are used to monitor human body's vital signs such as blood pressure, temperature and heartbeat. As the condition of patients is being monitored continuously with the help of sensors, an early warning of any emergency situation can be given to doctors which would otherwise lead to hospitalization and expensive emergency care. Elder people can also monitor their health from homes providing more comfort and less infections from hospitals.
Satellite communication for internet of things: The use of satellite communication systems can support the internet of things remotely. The data is collected from sensors and control messages are sent to the actuators. It can support IPv6 over satellite. Radio resource management devices are also used to enhance the efficiency of the IOT over satellite.
Internet of things in smart buildings: the internet of things can be incorporated in the smart buildings. It plays an important role in facilitating the tenants of an IOT-equipped smart buildings. The smart building control system can also be provided with the IOT technologies. Micro-location enabling technologies and services when thoroughly integrated with IOT- equipped smart buildings provides many benefits.
IOT in Government: The crowd control application provided by the IOT services allows government authorities to have an estimation of number of people in a gathering and to take necessary action during emergency. The 'heat maps' of the crowds can be generated using location-based technology. The intelligent lampposts that are connected together in a WAN can be monitored and controlled from a central point. It helps in collecting data for rain, visibility, traffic management etc.
IOT in Retail: Shopping Assistant applications are very helpful in retail which can be used to locate appropriate items for shoppers and consumers. This application can also provide shopping recommendations based on the current mood and profile of the shopper. It captures the data feeds from mall's websites and match the user's preferences with the available data. It can also guide the user to the destination from the current location using Wi-Fi technologies in the user's mobile phone.
IOT in Transportation: IOT applications can help in improving road safety and transport utilization with the help of real-time road traffic data. For example, in Singapore, the MRT train system helps in management of crowd and timings. Internet of things, by the means of mobile phone apps helps in having an interaction between the bus and the passenger.
Security and Privacy
Security is one of the major challenges to be addressed by the network managers or owners when any of the device is attached to the network. It needs security from physical access to a 'thing', authentication needs to be provided for data link, application and network access, and for encrypting the data on network and data link layers. Thus, access control, authentication, firewall protection and intrusion detection mechanism should be implemented from the first day for the Internet of Things. Privacy needs to be implemented by the owner for the internet of things to ensure whether the 'things' remains isolated on the intranet or fully participate in the internet network.
Conclusion
The internet of things surely provides change in productivity of the enterprises and individuals' quality of life. IOT has the great potential to provide extensions and enhancements in the fundamental services in various areas like security, transportation, education, logistics, utilities, healthcare, industrialization, manufacturing, energy services, agriculture and environment through a widely distributed smart devices' network. Application development's new ecosystem is provided by the IOT. As more and more physical objects and smart devices are being connected to the IOT, the IOT surely brings more value and impact to our daily lives and all the stakeholders should collaborate more effectively to propel the market forward for the benefit of society as a whole.
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