1.1 Primer
Internet of Things is considered by many as the most disruptive revolution, primarily driven by the need of organizations and people to be able to follow objects and make them communicate (Lianos & Douglas 2000) in the field of pervasive and omnipresent computing, the biggest technological change the world has ever seen after the advent of the internet. First coined by the British technologist Kevin Ashton in the 1990s, the demand and potential for IoT-connected devices and objects (Ferguson, 2002) and genesis of associated business models has increased multifold. IoT has two distinct yet overlapping connotations, the first being Consumer IoT for which numerous literature exists and the second being Industrial IoT. In this chapter, we will understand what exactly Internet of Things (both IIoT and domestic) is as defined by authentic literature. The Internet of Things blends the physical and digital world, which offers unlimited opportunities, but also faces a lot of challenges in terms of interoperability, limited compute power, power consumption, and ethical aspects of privacy and security. In short, the IoT can be defined as a well-defined network (Nunberg, 2012) comprising of physical objects or real-world devices, moving vehicles that may be autonomous or human driven, architectural places and other daily use objects incorporating electronic sensors, embedded software, and provision for data network connectâallowing them to collect and interchange data (Kosmatos et al., 2011). This arrangement allows objects and devices to be sensed and also controlled remotely using digital networks. The recent years have seen increasing interest and adoption in the field of IoT, powered by technological advances in embedded systems hardware, software, and connectivity. As more and more tiny, cheap, power-efficient microcontrollers and peripherals are becoming available, there is an increased proliferation of a new category of computers: the IoT low-end devices. Most of the IoT low-end devices have enough resources to run newer operating systems and cross-platform application code.
The Internet of Things has shown rapid evolution with widespread technical, social, and economic impact. This has resulted in a paradigm shift, machines taking over the role of human beings when it comes to data generation and usage. It is projected that by 2020, 100 billion connected IoT devices could be in existence (Biddlecombe, 2009).
The concept itself is quite old and has existed from the late 1970s or earlier when telecom networks started connecting to transmit voice data. Remote monitoring of the electrical gridâs supply of domestic power has been in commercial use since the 1950s. The 1990s ushered in an era of Machine 2 Machine (M2M) communication (Reinhardt, 2004) between industrial machines, which existed as closed and proprietary solutions. Later on, the advent of RFID-based solutions, both passive and active, were used for extending objectâs capability to transmit information, although they were not smart and could just transmit an identifier information (Kosmatos et al., 2011). RFID was widely used in logistics movement and for tracking material and inventory (Sun, 2012). Today, the world has moved on to embrace IP-based networks, which still pose challenges for migrating such solutions due to basic design differences.
It would be very relevant to define the Internet of Things and look at some standard definitions.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has defined the IoT as:
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the IoT as:
W3C addresses the IoT as a Web of Things:
IEEE has defined the IoT comprehensively as a three-layer structure comprising of Applications, Networking, and Data Communications and Sensing.
In 2013, the Global Standards Initiative on Internet of Things (IoT-GSI) defined the IoT as:
As per the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the phrase the âInternet of Thingsâ denotes:
Enterprises can benefit using the IoT from aspects of asset tracking, manufacturing automation, product innovation based on data, and the ability to physically control machine assets, which can further help in dynamic scheduling and real-time monitoring (Moeinfar et al., 2012).
With more stress on limited resources such as motor able roads, potable water, reducing forest and green cover, and an ageing society enabled by medical facilities, the IoT can prove to be the panacea required to economize the consumption, on one hand, while monitoring and prioritizing generation on the other (Butler, 2002).
At the same time, the adoption of the IoT has been fraught with a myriad of issues such as challenges in power consumption, security and privacy concerns, miniaturization yet reliable, roadmap for adoption, especially the cost of upgrades required for making assets and products compatible, and finally the human or emotional aspect of making âthingsâ accountable and giving them control in our day-to-day lives (Arampatzis et al., 2005).
Some issues are more technical such as interoperability, standardization, compute power, and rapid innovation making investments redundant. Acceptability issues driven by the need for a higher âmaturity quotientâ is another challenge making businesses shy away from an enterprise level adoption and making them focus on a piece meal approach toward implementing the IoT technology enablers.
Today, the landscape is very different from what we foresee to be in store for the IoT tomorrow. The major ICT players like Google, Apple, Cisco, Salesforce, or Oracle, have changed their business models to cater to an expected demand for IoT, while telecom players have started interconnecting their telephony equipment as a core business strategy. The majority of governments, be it Asia, Europe, Middle East, or the Americas have set up a task force and implementation committees to usher in the I...
