INTRODUCTION TO IoT and OVERVIEW

DEFINITION OF IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of devices that allows them to

communicate and exchange data with other smart devices over the Internet. The embedded
sensors and software make these material things “smart.”
Vermesan define “the Internet of Things as simply an interaction between the physical and
digital worlds. The digital world interacts with the physical world using a plethora of sensors
and actuators”.
Peña-López defines “the Internet of Things as a paradigm in which computing and
networking capabilities are embedded in any kind of conceivable object. We use these
capabilities to query the state of the object and to change its state if possible.”
In common parlance, the Internet of Things refers to a new kind of world where almost all
the devices and appliances that we use are connected to a network. We can use them
collaboratively to achieve complex tasks that require a high degree of intelligence.

For this intelligence and interconnection, IoT devices are equipped with embedded
sensors, actuators, processors, and transceivers. IoT is not a single technology; rather it is an
cluster .0of various technologies that work together.

OVERVIEW OF IoT

Sensors and actuators are devices, which help in interacting with the physical
environment. The data collected by the sensors has to be stored and processed intelligently in
order to derive useful inferences from it. Note that we broadly define the term sensor; a
mobile phone or even a microwave oven can count as a sensor as long as it provides inputs
about its current state (internal state + environment). An actuator is a device that is used to
effect a change in the environment such as the temperature controller of an air conditioner.
The storage and processing of data can be done on the edge of the network itself or in
a remote server. If any pre-processing of data is possible, then it is typically done at either the
sensor or some other proximate device. The processed data is then typically sent to a remote
server.

Now, after processing the received data, some action needs to be taken on the basis of
the derived inferences. The nature of actions can be diverse. We can directly modify the
physical world through actuators. Or we may do something virtually. For example, we can
send some information to other smart things.

The storage and processing capabilities of an IoT object are also restricted by the
resources available, which are often very constrained due to limitations of size, energy,
power, and computational capability. As a result the main research challenge is to ensure that
we get the right kind of data at the desired level of accuracy. Along with the challenges of
data collection, and handling, there are challenges in communication as well. The
communication between IoT devices is mainly wireless because they are generally installed
at geographically dispersed locations. The wireless channels often have high rates of
distortion and are unreliable. In this scenario reliably communicating data without too many
retransmissions is an important problem and thus communication technologies are integral to
the study of IoT devices.

The process of effecting a change in the physical world is often dependent on its state
at that point of time. This is called context awareness. Each action is taken keeping in
consideration the context because an application can behave differently in different contexts.
For example, a person may not like messages from his office to interrupt him when he is on
vacation.

Sensors, actuators, compute servers, and the communication network form the core
infrastructure of an IoT framework. However, there are many software aspects that need to be
considered. First, it is needed a middleware that can be used to connect and manage all of
these heterogeneous components. It need a lot of standardization to connect many different
devices. The methods to exchange information and prevailing standards.

The Internet of Things finds various applications in health care, fitness, education,
entertainment, social life, energy conservation, environment monitoring, home automation,
and transport systems. In all these application areas, IoT technologies have significantly been
able to reduce human effort and improve the quality of life.

The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a rapidly evolving technological field that

transforms any electronic device into a smarter one. Many industries are beginning to
incorporate this technology into their operations in order to increase productivity and
efficiency.
IoT applications aid in decision making, tracking and monitoring systems in real-
time, and automating daily tasks for convenience.
This cutting-edge technology offers the user several features, including cloud data
storage, a platform for analysing the collected data, real-time analytics, etc., in addition to
connecting the device to the internet. This technology can be integrated into almost any
industry due to its broad range of applications.
IoT applications are primarily used to build smart homes and smart cities. IoT
solutions are already in use in the following industries:
 Building and Home Automation
 IoT can automate lighting, cooling, security systems, and other building functions.
 Automation and Optimization of Industrial Production
 IoT systems reduce the need for manual labor while increasing the efficiency of
industrial production processes.
 Public Utilities Administration
 IoT systems can connect entire cities to reduce waste and improve access to public
utilities.
 Information Technology
With network data collected by embedded IoT devices, digital communication hardware and
software can be managed and optimized. Transportation and traffic management
The features of IoT
The following are major IoT features:

 Connectivity: Establishing a proper connection between all IoT devices and the
IoT platform, which could be a server or the cloud.
 Analyzing: After connecting all of the relevant things, it is time to analyze the
data collected in real-time and use it to build effective business intelligence.
 Integrating: IoT integrates various models to improve user experience.
 Artificial Intelligence: IoT makes things smart and improves people’s lives by
utilizing data.
 Sensing in IoT: In IoT technologies, sensor devices detect and measure
environmental changes and report their status.
 Active Engagement: IoT allows connected technology, products, or services to
engage in active engagement with one another.
 Endpoint Management: Endpoint management is critical for all IoT systems;
otherwise, the system will fail completely.

The four pillars of IoT

The four pillars of IoT application are as follows:
1. Connecting people in more meaningful and valuable ways
2. The Internet has become an indispensable part of most people’s lives, and this is
unlikely to change anytime soon.
3. Transforming data into intelligence in order to make better decisions
4. Sensors generate massive amounts of raw data for the purpose of analysis, but there is
no standard format for storing and reusing it.
5. Providing the appropriate information to the appropriate person
6. If we want to learn something new and benefit from it, we must deliver it to the right
person.
7. 4. Using the right machine at the right time
8. The use of smart devices in our daily lives is also becoming more common.
The challenges of IoT
The following are the various types of challenges that IoT faces:
IoT security challenges:

 Inadequate encryption
 Inadequate testing and updating
 Brute forcing and the dangers of using default passwords
 Ransomware and IoT Malware
 A cryptocurrency-focused IoT botnet.
Design challenge in IoT:

 Battery life is a limitation in IoT design

 Cost and time to market increases
 The system’s security.
IoT deployment challenges:

 Connectivity
 Platform independence
 Data collection and analysis
 Inadequate skill set.

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENT OF IoT

IoT Hardware

IoT Hardware includes a wide range of devices such as devices for routing, bridges,
sensors etc. These IoT devices manage key tasks and functions such as system activation,
security, action specifications, communication, and detection of support-specific goals and
actions.
IoT Hardware components can vary from low-power boards; single-board processors
like the Arduino Uno which are basically smaller boards that are plugged into mainboards to
improve and increase its functionality by bringing out specific functions or features (such as
GPS, light and heat sensors, or interactive displays).
A programmer specifies a board’s input and output, then creates a circuit design to
illustrate the interaction of these inputs and outputs.
Another well-known IoT platform is Raspberry Pi 2, which is a very affordable and tiny
computer that can incorporate an entire web server. Often called “RasPi,” it has enough
processing power and memory to run Windows 10 on it as well as IoT Core.

RasPi exhibits great processing capabilities, especially when using the Python

programming language.

BeagleBoard is a single-board computer with a Linux-based OS that uses an ARM

processor, capable of more powerful processing than RasPi. 
Tech giant Intel’s Galileo and Edison boards are other options, both great for larger scale
production, and Qualcomm has manufactured an array of enterprise-level IoT technology for
cars and cameras to healthcare.

a. Building Blocks of IoT Hardware

Here, we will discuss some internet of Things Hardware:

IoT Hardware  – Building Blocks
i. Thing

“Thing” in IOT is the asset that you want to control or monitor or measure, that is, observe
closely. In many IoT products, the “thing” gets fully incorporated into a smart device. For
example, think of products like a smart refrigerator or an automatic vehicle. These products
control and monitor themselves.
There are sometimes many other applications where the thing stands as an alone device, and a
separate product is connected to ensure it possesses smart capabilities.

ii. Data Acquisition Module

The data acquisition module focuses on acquiring physical signals from the thing which is
being observed or monitored and converting them into digital signals that can be manipulated
or interpreted by a computer.
This is the hardware component of an IOT system that contains all the sensors that help in
acquiring real-world signals such as temperature, pressure, density, motion, light, vibration,
etc. The type and number of sensors you need depend on your application.
This module also includes the necessary hardware to convert the incoming sensor signal into
digital information for the computer to use it. This includes conditioning of incoming signal,
removing noise, analog-to-digital conversion, interpretation, and scaling.

iii. Data Processing Module

The third building block of the IoT device is the data processing module. This is the actual
“computer” and the main unit that processes the data performs operations such as local
analytics, stores data locally, and performs some other computing operations.

iv. Communication Module

The last building block of IOT hardware is the communications module. This is the part that
enables communications with your Cloud Platform, and with 3rd party systems either locally
or in the Cloud.
b. IoT Sensors

The most important IoT hardware might be its sensors. These devices consist of a variety of
modules such as energy modules, RF modules, power management modules, and sensing
modules.
The sensing module manages sensing through assorted active and passive measurement
devices. Here is a list of some of the measurement devices used in IoT –

S.No Devices

1. Accelerometers temperature sensors

2. Magnetometers proximity sensors

3. Gyroscopes image sensors

4. acoustic sensors light sensors

5. pressure sensors gas RFID sensors

6. humidity sensors micro flow sensors

c. Wearable Electronic Devices

Wearable electronic devices are small devices that can be worn on the head, neck, arms,
torso, and feet.
Current smart wearable devices include −
 Head − Helmets, glasses,
 Neck − Jewelry, collars
 Arm − Wristwatches, wristbands, rings
 Torso – Clothing pieces, backpacks
 Feet − Shoes, Socks

d. Basic Devices

The day to day devices that we use such as desktop, cellphones, and tablets remain integral
parts of IoT system.
 The desktop provides the user with a very high level of control over the system and its
settings.
 The tablet acts as a remote and provides access to the key features of the system.
 Cellphone allows remote functionality and some essential settings modification
Other key connected devices include standard network devices like routers and switches.
IoT Software
The software and the programming languages on which IoT works uses very common
programming languages that programmers use and already know. So which language should
be chosen?
Firstly, because embedded systems have less storage and processing power, their language
needs are different. The most commonly used operating systems for such embedded systems
are Linux or UNIX-like OSs like Ubuntu Core or Android.
IoT software encompasses a wide range of software and programming languages from
general-purpose languages like C++ and Java to embedded-specific choices like Google’s Go
language or Parasail.
Here’s a quick overview of each one of IoT Software-
 C & C++: The C programming language has its roots in embedded systems—it even got
its start for programming telephone switches. It’s pretty ubiquitous, that is, it can be used
almost everywhere and many programmers already know it. C++ is the object-oriented
version of C, which is a language popular for both the Linux OS and Arduino embedded
IoT software systems. These languages were basically written for the hardware systems
which makes them so easy to use.
 Java: While C and C++ are hardware specific, the code in JAVA is more portable. It is
more like a write once and read anywhere language, where you install libraries, invests
time in writing codes once and you are good to go.
 Python: There has been a recent surge in the number of python users and has now
become one of the “go-to” languages in Web development. Its use is slowly spreading to
the embedded control and IoT world—specially the Raspberry Pi processor. Python is an
interpreted language, which is, easy to read, quick to learn and quick to write. Also, it’s a
powerhouse for serving data-heavy applications.
 B#: Unlike most of the languages mentioned so far, B# was specifically designed for
embedded systems, it’s small and compact and has less memory size.
 Data Collection: It is used for data filtering, data security, sensing, and measurement.
The protocols aid in decision making by sensing form real-time objects. It can work
both ways by collecting data from devices or distributing data to devices. All the data
transmits to a central server.
 Device Integration: This software ensures that devices bind and connect to networks
facilitating information sharing. A stable cooperation and communication ensure
between multiple devices.
 Real-Time Analytics: In this, the input from users serves as potential data for
carrying out real-time analysis, making insights, suggesting recommendations to solve
an organizations problems and improve its approach. This, as a result, allows
automation and increased productivity.
 Application and Process Extension: These applications extend the reach of existing
systems and software to allow a wider, more effective system. They integrate
predefined devices for specific purposes such as allowing certain mobile devices or
engineering instruments access. It supports improved productivity and more accurate
data collection.
 Sensors and Actuators
All IoT applications need to have one or more sensors to collect data from the
environment. Sensors are essential components of smart objects. One of the most important
aspects of the Internet of Things is context awareness, which is not possible without sensor
technology. IoT sensors are mostly small in size, have low cost, and consume less power.
They are constrained by factors such as battery capacity and ease of deployment.

5.1. Mobile Phone Based Sensors

Mobile phone is ubiquitous and has many types of sensors embedded in it. In specific,
the smartphone is a very handy and user friendly device that has a host of built in
communication and data processing features. With the increasing popularity of smartphones
among people, researchers are showing interest in building smart IoT solutions using
smartphones because of the embedded sensors. Some additional sensors can also be used
depending upon the requirements. Applications can be built on the smartphone that uses
sensor data to produce meaningful results. Some of the sensors inside a modern smartphone
are as follows.
 (1)The accelerometer senses the motion and acceleration of a mobile phone. It
typically measures changes in velocity of the smartphone in three dimensions. The
data patterns captured by the accelerometer can be used to detect physical activities of
the user such as running, walking, and bicycling.
 (2)The gyroscope detects the orientation of the phone very precisely. Orientation is
measured using capacitive changes when a seismic mass moves in a particular
direction.
 (3)The camera and microphone are very powerful sensors since they capture visual
and audio information, which can then be analysed and processed to detect various
types of contextual information.
 (4)The magnetometer detects magnetic fields. This can be used as a digital compass
and in applications to detect the presence of metals.
 (5)The GPS (Global Positioning System) detects the location of the phone, which is
one of the most important pieces of contextual information for smart applications. The
location is detected using the principle of trilateration .The distance is measured from
three or more satellites (or mobile phone towers in the case of A-GPS) and
coordinates are computed.
 (6)The light sensor detects the intensity of ambient light. It can be used for setting the
brightness of the screen and other applications in which some action is to be taken
depending on the intensity of ambient light. For example, it is possible to control the
lights in a room.
 (7)The proximity sensor uses an infrared (IR) LED, which emits IR rays. These rays
bounce back when they strike some object. Based on the difference in time, we can
calculate the distance.
 (8)Some smartphones such as Samsung’s Galaxy S4 also have a thermometer,
barometer, and humidity sensor to measure the temperature, atmospheric pressure,
and humidity, respectively.
Many smart applications that use sensor data collected from smartphones. For example,
activity detection is achieved by applying machine learning algorithms to the data collected
by smartphone sensors. It detects activities such as running, going up and down stairs,
walking, driving, and cycling. The application is trained with patterns of data using data sets
recorded by sensors when these activities are being performed.

Many health and fitness applications are being built to keep track of a person’s health
continuously using smartphones. They keep track of users’ physical activities, diet, exercises,
and lifestyle to determine the fitness level and give suggestions to the user accordingly.

For social life and conversations, audio data from a microphone is used. The application also
conducts quick questionnaires with the students to know about their mood. All this data can
be used to assess the stress levels, social life, behaviour, and exercise patterns of a student.

The sensors provide information related to the user’s movement, location, visual images, and
surrounding sounds.

5.2. Medical Sensors

The Internet of Things can be really beneficial for health care applications. It is possible to
use sensors, which can measure and monitor various medical parameters in the human body
[33]. These applications can aim at monitoring a patient’s health when they are not in hospital
or when they are alone. Subsequently, they can provide real time feedback to the doctor,
relatives, or the patient.

There are many wearable sensing devices available in the market. They are equipped with
medical sensors that are capable of measuring different parameters such as the heart rate,
pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration rate, and blood glucose levels [35].
These wearables include smart watches, wristbands, monitoring patches, and smart textiles.

Moreover, smart watches and fitness trackers are becoming fairly popular in the market as
companies such as Apple, Samsung, and Sony are coming up with very innovative features.
For example, a smart watch includes features such as connectivity with a smartphone, sensors
such as an accelerometer, and a heart rate monitor (see Figure 4).

Another novel IoT device, which has a lot of promise are monitoring patches that are
pasted on the skin. Monitoring patches are like tattoos. They are stretchable and disposable
and are very cheap. These patches are supposed to be worn by the patient for a few days to
monitor a vital health parameter continuously. All the electronic components are embedded
in these rubbery structures. They can even transmit the sensed data wirelessly. Just like a
tattoo, these patches can be applied on the skin .One of the most common applications of
such patches is to monitor blood pressure.
Embedded skin patches

The data collected by the medical sensors must be combined with contextual
information such as physical activity. For example, the heart rate depends on the context. It
increases when we exercise. In that case, we cannot infer abnormal heart rate. Therefore, we
need to combine data from different sensors for making the correct inference.

5.3. Neural Sensors

Today, it is possible to understand neural signals in the brain, infer the state of the brain, and
train it for better attention and focus. This is known as neurofeedback .The technology used
for reading brain signals is called EEG (Electroencephalography) or a brain computer
interface. The neurons inside the brain communicate electronically and create an electric
field, which can be measured from outside in terms of frequencies. Brain waves can be
categorized into alpha, beta, gamma, theta, and delta waves depending upon the frequency.

Brain sensing headband with embedded neurosensors

Based on the type of wave, it can be inferred whether the brain is calm or wandering
in thoughts. This type of neurofeedback can be obtained in real time and can be used to train
the brain to focus, pay better attention towards things, manage stress, and have better mental
well-being.
5.4. Environmental and Chemical Sensors

Environmental sensors are used to sense parameters in the physical environment such
as temperature, humidity, pressure, water pollution, and air pollution. Parameters such as the
temperature and pressure can be measured with a thermometer and barometer. Air quality can
be measured with sensors, which sense the presence of gases and other particulate matter in
the air.

Chemical sensors are used to detect chemical and biochemical substances. These
sensors consist of a recognition element and a transducer. The electronic nose (e-nose) and
electronic tongue (e-tongue) are technologies that can be used to sense chemicals on the basis
of odour and taste. The e-nose and e-tongue consist of an array of chemical sensors coupled
with advance pattern recognition software. The sensors inside the e-nose and e-tongue
produce complex data, which is then analysed through pattern recognition to identify the
stimulus.

These sensors can be used in monitoring the pollution level in smart cities, keeping a
check on food quality in smart kitchens, testing food, and agricultural products in supply
chain applications.

5.5. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

RFID is an identification technology in which an RFID tag (a small chip with an antenna)
carries data, which is read by a RFID reader. The tag transmits the data stored in it via radio
waves. It is similar to bar code technology. But unlike a traditional bar code, it does not
require line of sight communication between the tag and the reader and can identify itself
from a distance even without a human operator. The range of RFID varies with the
frequency. It can go up to hundreds of meters.

RFID tags are of two types: active and passive. Active tags have a power source and passive
tags do not have any power source. Passive tags draw power from the electromagnetic waves
emitted by the reader and are thus cheap and have a long lifetime.

There are two types of RFID technologies: near and far [40]. A near RFID reader uses
a coil through which we pass alternating current and generate a magnetic field. The tag has a
smaller coil, which generates a potential due to the ambient changes in the magnetic field.
This voltage is then coupled with a capacitor to accumulate a charge, which then powers up
the tag chip. The tag can then produce a small magnetic field that encodes the signal to be
transmitted, and this can be picked up by the reader.

In far RFID, there is a dipole antenna in the reader, which propagates EM waves. The tag also
has a dipole antenna on which an alternating potential difference appears and it is powered
up. It can then use this power to transmit messages.

RFID technology is being used in various applications such as supply chain management,
access control, identity authentication, and object tracking. The RFID tag is attached to the
object to be tracked and the reader detects and records its presence when the object passes by
it. In this manner, object movement can be tracked and RFID can serve as a search engine for
smart things.

For access control, an RFID tag is attached to the authorized object. For example,
small chips are glued to the front of vehicles. When the car reaches a barricade on which
there is a reader, it reads the tag data and decides whether it is an authorized car. If yes, it
opens automatically. RFID cards are issued to the people, who can then be identified by a
RFID reader and given access accordingly.

The low level data collected from the RFID tags can be transformed into higher level
insights in IoT applications . There are many user level tools available, in which all the data
collected by particular RFID readers and data associated with the RFID tags can be managed.
The high level data can be used to draw inferences and take further action.

5.6. Actuators
An IoT device is made up of a Physical object (“thing”) + Controller (“brain”) + Sensors +
Actuators + Networks (Internet). An actuator is a machine component or system that moves
or controls the mechanism of the system. Sensors in the device sense the environment, then
control signals are generated for the actuators according to the actions needed to perform.
A servo motor is an example of an actuator. They are linear or rotatory actuators, can move
to a given specified angular or linear position. We can use servo motors for IoT
applications and make the motor rotate to 90 degrees, 180 degrees, etc., as per our need.
The following diagram shows what actuators do, the controller directs the actuator based on
the sensor data to do the work.

The control system acts upon an environment through the actuator. It requires a source of
energy and a control signal. When it receives a control signal, it converts the source of
energy to a mechanical operation. On this basis, on which form of energy it uses, it has
different types given below.
Types of Actuators:
1. Hydraulic Actuators –
A hydraulic actuator uses hydraulic power to perform a mechanical operation. They are
actuated by a cylinder or fluid motor. The mechanical motion is converted to rotary, linear,
or oscillatory motion, according to the need of the IoT device. Ex- construction equipment
uses hydraulic actuators because hydraulic actuators can generate a large amount of force.
Advantages:
 Hydraulic actuators can produce a large magnitude of force and high speed.
  Used in welding, clamping, etc.
 Used for lowering or raising the vehicles in car transport carriers.

Disadvantages:
 Hydraulic fluid leaks can cause efficiency loss and issues of cleaning.
 It is expensive.
 It requires noise reduction equipment, heat exchangers, and high maintenance
systems.
2. Pneumatic Actuators –
A pneumatic actuator uses energy formed by vacuum or compressed air at high pressure to
convert into either linear or rotary motion. Example- Used in robotics, use sensors that
work like human fingers by using compressed air.
Advantages:
 They are a low-cost option and are used at extreme temperatures where using air is a
safer option than chemicals.
 They need low maintenance, are durable, and have a long operational life.
 It is very quick in starting and stopping the motion.
Disadvantages:
 Loss of pressure can make it less efficient.
 The air compressor should be running continuously.
 Air can be polluted, and it needs maintenance.

3. Electrical Actuators –
An electric actuator uses electrical energy, is usually actuated by a motor that converts
electrical energy into mechanical torque. An example of an electric actuator is a solenoid
based electric bell. 
Advantages:
 It has many applications in various industries as it can automate industrial valves.
 It produces less noise and is safe to use since there are no fluid leakages.
 It can be re-programmed and it provides the highest control precision positioning.
Disadvantages:
 It is expensive.
 It depends a lot on environmental conditions.

Thermal/Magnetic Actuators
These are actuated by thermal or mechanical energy. Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs)
or Magnetic Shape‐Memory Alloys (MSMAs) are used by these actuators. An example of a
thermal/magnetic actuator can be a piezo motor using SMA.

Mechanical Actuators
A mechanical actuator executes movement by converting rotary motion into linear
motion. It involves pulleys, chains, gears, rails, and other devices to operate. Example – A
crankshaft.
 Soft Actuators
 Shape Memory Polymers
 Light Activated Polymers
 With the expanding world of IoT, sensors and actuators will find more usage in
commercial and domestic applications along with the pre-existing use in industry.
 Application of IoT
1. Wearables.
Virtual glasses, fitness bands to monitor for example calorie expenditure and heart beats, or
GPS tracking belts, are just some examples of wearable devices that we have been using for
some time now. Companies such as Google, Apple, Samsung and others have developed and
introduced the Internet of Things and the application thereof into our daily lives.
These are small and energy efficient devices, which are equipped with sensors, with the
necessary hardware for measurements and readings, and with software to collect and organize
data and information about users.

2. Health.
The use of wearables or sensors connected to patients, allows doctors to monitor a patient's
condition outside the hospital and in real-time. Through continuously monitoring certain
metrics and automatic alerts on their vital signs, the Internet of Things helps to improve the
care for patients and the prevention of lethal events in high-risk patients.
Another use is the integration of IoT technology into hospital beds, giving way to smart beds,
equipped with special sensors to observe vital signs, blood pressure, and oximeter and body
temperature, among others.

3. Traffic monitoring.
The Internet of things can be very useful in the management of vehicular traffic in large
cities, contributing to the concept of smart cities.
When we use our mobile phones as sensors, which collect and share data from our vehicles
through applications such as Waze or Google Maps, we are using the Internet of Things to
inform us and at the same time contribute to traffic monitoring, showing the conditions of the
different routes, and feeding and improving the information on the different routes to the
same destination, distance, estimated time of arrival.

4. Fleet management.
The installation of sensors in fleet vehicles helps to establish an effective interconnectivity
between the vehicles and their managers as well as between the vehicles and their drivers.
Both driver and manager/ owner can know all kinds of details about the status, operation and
needs of the vehicle, just by accessing the software in charge of collecting, processing and
organizing the data. Even, receive alarms in real time of maintenance incidents without
having been detected by the driver.
The application of the Internet of Things to fleet management assists with geolocation (and
with it the monitoring of routes and identification of the most efficient routes), performance
analysis, telemetry control and fuel savings , the reduction of polluting emissions to the
environment and can even provide valuable information to improve the driving of vehicles.

5. Agriculture.
Smart farms are a fact. The quality of soil is crucial to produce good crops, and the Internet of
Things offers farmers the possibility to access detailed knowledge and valuable information
of their soil condition.
Through the implementation of IoT sensors, a significant amount of data can be obtained on
the state and stages of the soil. Information such as soil moisture, level of acidity, the
presence of certain nutrients, temperature and many other chemical characteristics, helps
farmers control irrigation, make water use more efficient, specify the best times to start
sowing, and even discover the presence of diseases in plants and soil.

6. Hospitality.
The application of the IoT to the hotel industry brings with it interesting improvements in the
quality of the service. With the implementation of electronic keys, which are sent directly to
the mobile devices of each guest, it is possible to automate various interactions.
Thus, the location of the guests, the sending of offers or information on activities of interest,
the realization of orders to the room or room service , the automatic charge of accounts to the
room or the request of personal hygiene supplies, are activities that can be easily managed
through integrated applications using the Internet of Things technology.
With the use of electronic keys, the check-out process is automated, disabling the operation of
doors, offering information about the rooms immediately available, and even assigning
housekeeping tasks to maintenance personnel.

7. Smart grid and energy saving.

The progressive use of intelligent energy meters, or meters equipped with sensors, and the
installation of sensors in different strategic points that go from the production plants to the
different distribution points, allows better monitoring and control of the electrical network.
By establishing a bidirectional communication between the service provider company and the
end user, information of enormous value can be obtained for the detection of faults, decision
making and repair thereof.
It also allows offering valuable information to the end user about their consumption patterns
and about the best ways to reduce or adjust their energy expenditure.

8. Water supply.
A sensor, either incorporated or adjusted externally to water meters, connected to the Internet
and accompanied by the necessary software , helps to collect, process and analyze data,
which allows understanding the behavior of consumers, detecting faults in the supply service,
report results and offer courses of action to the company that provides the service.
Likewise, it offers final consumers the possibility of tracking their own consumption
information, through a web page and in real time, even receiving automatic alerts in case of
detecting consumption out of range to their average consumption record, which could
indicate the presence of a leak.

9. Maintenance management.
One of the areas where the application of IoT technology is most extensive is precisely
maintenance management. Through the combination of sensors and software specialized
in CMMS/ EAM maintenance management, a multifunctional tool is obtained whose use can
be applied to a multiplicity of disciplines and practices, with the purpose of extending the
useful life of physical assets, while guaranteeing asset reliability and availability
KEY DRIVER OF IoT

TECHNOLOGICAL DRIVER OF IoT

Leading edge

IoT architecture?
IoT has four layers, which are as follows:
Sensing Layer – This layer contains sensors, devices, and actuators. They receive and
process data (physical/environmental parameters) and then transmit it over a network.
Network Layer – This layer contains Internet/Network gateways and Data Acquisition
Systems (DAS). Advanced gateways, which primarily connect sensor networks to the
Internet, also perform many basic gateway functions such as malware protection, filtering,
and decision making.
Data Processing Layer – This is the IoT ecosystem’s processing unit, where data is analyzed
and pre-processed before being sent to the data center. Edge IT, or edge analytics, enters the
picture here.
Application Layer – Data centers or the cloud are data management stages where the end-
user applications, such as health care, agriculture, farming, aerospace, etc., manage and use
data.

Architecture of IoT

There is no single consensus on architecture for IoT, which is agreed universally. Different
architectures have been proposed by different researchers.

2.1. Three- and Five-Layer Architectures

The most basic architecture is a three-layer architecture [3–5] as shown in Figure 1. It was
introduced in the early stages of research in this area. It has three layers, namely, the
perception, network, and application layers.(i)The perception layer is the physical layer,
which has sensors for sensing and gathering information about the environment. It senses
some physical parameters or identifies other smart objects in the environment.
(ii)The network layer is responsible for connecting to other smart things, network devices,
and servers. Its features are also used for transmitting and processing sensor data.
(iii)The application layer is responsible for delivering application specific services to the
user. It defines various applications in which the Internet of Things can be deployed, for
example, smart homes, smart cities, and smart health.
Figure 1 
Architecture of IoT (A: three layers) (B: five layers).

The three-layer architecture defines the main idea of the Internet of Things, but it is not
sufficient for research on IoT because research often focuses on finer aspects of the Internet
of Things. That is why, we have many more layered architectures proposed in the literature.
One is the five-layer architecture, which additionally includes the processing and business
layers [3–6]. The five layers are perception, transport, processing, application, and business
layers (see Figure 1). The role of the perception and application layers is the same as the
architecture with three layers. We outline the function of the remaining three layers.
(i)The  transport layer transfers the sensor data from the perception layer to the processing
layer and vice versa through networks such as wireless, 3G, LAN, Bluetooth, RFID, and
NFC.(ii)The processing layer is also known as the middleware layer. It stores, analyzes, and
processes huge amounts of data that comes from the transport layer. It can manage and
provide a diverse set of services to the lower layers. It employs many technologies such as
databases, cloud computing, and big data processing modules.(iii)The business
layer manages the whole IoT system, including applications, business and profit models, and
users’ privacy. The business layer is out of the scope of this paper. Hence, we do not discuss
it further.
Another architecture proposed by Ning and Wang [7] is inspired by the layers of processing
in the human brain. It is inspired by the intelligence and ability of human beings to think,
feel, remember, make decisions, and react to the physical environment. It is constituted of
three parts. First is the human brain, which is analogous to the processing and data
management unit or the data center. Second is the spinal cord, which is analogous to the
distributed network of data processing nodes and smart gateways. Third is the network of
nerves, which corresponds to the networking components and sensors.

2.2. Cloud and Fog Based Architectures

Let us now discuss two kinds of systems architectures: cloud and fog computing (see the
reference architectures in [8]). Note that this classification is different from the classification
in Section 2.1, which was done on the basis of protocols.

In particular, we have been slightly vague about the nature of data generated by IoT devices,
and the nature of data processing. In some system architectures the data processing is done in
a large centralized fashion by cloud computers. Such a cloud centric architecture keeps the
cloud at the center, applications above it, and the network of smart things below it [9]. Cloud
computing is given primacy because it provides great flexibility and scalability. It offers
services such as the core infrastructure, platform, software, and storage. Developers can
provide their storage tools, software tools, data mining, and machine learning tools, and
visualization tools through the cloud.

Lately, there is a move towards another system architecture, namely, fog computing [10–12],

where the sensors and network gateways do a part of the data processing and analytics. A fog
architecture [13] presents a layered approach as shown in Figure 2, which inserts monitoring,
preprocessing, storage, and security layers between the physical and transport layers. The
monitoring layer monitors power, resources, responses, and services. The preprocessing layer
performs filtering, processing, and analytics of sensor data. The temporary storage layer
provides storage functionalities such as data replication, distribution, and storage. Finally, the
security layer performs encryption/decryption and ensures data integrity and privacy.
Monitoring and preprocessing are done on the edge of the network before sending data to the
cloud.
Figure 2 
Fog architecture of a smart IoT gateway.

Often the terms “fog computing” and “edge computing” are used interchangeably. The latter
term predates the former and is construed to be more generic. Fog computing originally
termed by Cisco refers to smart gateways and smart sensors, whereas edge computing is
slightly more penetrative in nature. This paradigm envisions adding smart data
preprocessing capabilities to physical devices such as motors, pumps, or lights. The aim is to
do as much of preprocessing of data as possible in these devices, which are termed to be at
the edge of the network. In terms of the system architecture, the architectural diagram is not
appreciably different from Figure 2. As a result, we do not describe edge computing
separately.
Finally, the distinction between protocol architectures and system architectures is not very
crisp. Often the protocols and the system are codesigned. We shall use the generic 5-layer
IoT protocol stack (architectural diagram presented in Figure 2) for both the fog and cloud
architectures.

2.3. Social IoT

Let us now discuss a new paradigm: social IoT (SIoT). Here, we consider social relationships
between objects the same way as humans form social relationships (see [14]). Here are the
three main facets of an SIoT system:(i)The SIoT is navigable. We can start with one device
and navigate through all the devices that are connected to it. It is easy to discover new
devices and services using such a social network of IoT devices.(ii)A need of trustworthiness
(strength of the relationship) is present between devices (similar to friends on Facebook).
(iii)We can use models similar to studying human social networks to also study the social
networks of IoT devices.

2.3.1. Basic Components

In a typical social IoT setting, we treat the devices and services as bots where they can set up
relationships between them and modify them over time. This will allow us to seamlessly let
the devices cooperate among each other and achieve a complex task.

To make such a model work, we need to have many interoperating components. Let us look
at some of the major components in such a system.(1)ID: we need a unique method of object
identification. An ID can be assigned to an object based on traditional parameters such as the
MAC ID, IPv6 ID, a universal product code, or some other custom method.
(2)Metainformation: along with an ID, we need some metainformation about the device that
describes its form and operation. This is required to establish appropriate relationships with
the device and also appropriately place it in the universe of IoT devices.(3)Security controls:
this is similar to “friend list” settings on Facebook. An owner of a device might place
restrictions on the kinds of devices that can connect to it. These are typically referred to
as  owner controls.(4)Service discovery: such kind of a system is like a service cloud, where
we need to have dedicated directories that store details of devices providing certain kinds of
services. It becomes very important to keep these directories up to date such that devices can
learn about other devices.(5)Relationship management: this module manages relationships
with other devices. It also stores the types of devices that a given device should try to connect
with based on the type of services provided. For example, it makes sense for a light controller
to make a relationship with a light sensor.(6)Service composition: this module takes the
social IoT model to a new level. The ultimate goal of having such a system is to provide
better integrated services to users. For example, if a person has a power sensor with her air
conditioner and this device establishes a relationship with an analytics engine, then it is
possible for the ensemble to yield a lot of data about the usage patterns of the air conditioner.
If the social model is more expansive, and there are many more devices, then it is possible to
compare the data with the usage patterns of other users and come up with even more
meaningful data. For example, users can be told that they are the largest energy consumers in
their community or among their Facebook friends.
2.3.2. Representative Architecture

Most architectures proposed for the SIoT have a server side architecture as well. The server
connects to all the interconnected components, aggregates (composes) the services, and acts
as a single point of service for users.

The server side architecture typically has three layers. The first is the base layer that contains
a database that stores details of all the devices, their attributes, metainformation, and their
relationships. The second layer (Component layer) contains code to interact with the devices,
query their status, and use a subset of them to effect a service. The topmost layer is
the application layer, which provides services to the users.

On the device (object) side, we broadly have two layers. The first is the object layer, which
allows a device to connect to other devices, talk to them (via standardized protocols), and
exchange information. The object layer passes information to the social layer. The social
layer manages the execution of users’ applications, executes queries, and interacts with the
application layer on the server.

3. Taxonomy

Let us now propose taxonomy for research in IoT technologies (see Figure 3). Our taxonomy
is based on the architectural elements of IoT as presented in Section 2.
Figure 3 
Taxonomy of research in IoT technologies.

The first architectural component of IoT is the perception layer. It collects data using sensors,
which are the most important drivers of the Internet of Things [15]. There are various types
of sensors used in diverse IoT applications. The most generic sensor available today is the
smartphone. The smartphone itself has many types of sensors embedded in it [16] such as the
location sensor (GPS), movement sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope), camera, light sensor,
microphone, proximity sensor, and magnetometer. These are being heavily used in different
IoT applications. Many other types of sensors are beginning to be used such as sensors for
measuring temperature, pressure, humidity, medical parameters of the body, chemical and
biochemical substances, and neural signals. A class of sensors that stand out is infrared
sensors that predate smartphones. They are now being used widely in many IoT applications:
IR cameras, motion detectors, measuring the distance to nearby objects, presence of smoke
and gases, and as moisture sensors. We shall discuss the different types of sensors used in IoT
applications in Section 5.

Subsequently, we shall discuss related work in data preprocessing. Such applications (also
known as fog computing applications) mainly filter and summarize data before sending it on
the network. Such units typically have a little amount of temporary storage, a small
processing unit, and some security features.
The next architectural component that we shall discuss is communication. We shall discuss
related work (in Section 7) on different communication technologies used for the Internet of
Things. Different entities communicate over the network [17–19] using a diverse set of
protocols and standards. The most common communication technologies for short range low
power communication protocols are RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and NFC (Near
Field Communication). For the medium range, they are Bluetooth, Zigbee, and WiFi.
Communication in the IoT world requires special networking protocols and mechanisms.
Therefore, new mechanisms and protocols have been proposed and implemented for each
layer of the networking stack, according to the requirements imposed by IoT devices.

We shall subsequently look at two kinds of software components: middleware and

applications. The middleware creates an abstraction for the programmer such that the details
of the hardware can be hidden. This enhances interoperability of smart things and makes it
easy to offer different kinds of services [20]. There are many commercial and open source
offerings for providing middleware services to IoT devices. Some examples are OpenIoT
[21], MiddleWhere [22], Hydra [23], FiWare [24], and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Finally,
we discuss the applications of IoT in Section 9. We primarily focus on home automation,
ambient assisted living, health and fitness, smart vehicular systems, smart cities, smart
environments, smart grids, social life, and entertainment.

4. Related Survey Papers

Our taxonomy describes the technologies in the IoT domain and is classified on the basis of
architectural layers. We have tried to cover all subareas and recent technologies in our
taxonomy. There have been many survey papers on the Internet of Things in the past.
Table 1 shows how our survey is different from other highly cited surveys in the literature.
Table 1 
Comparison with other surveys on the basis of topics covered.

Let us first consider our novel contributions. Our paper looks at each and every layer in the
IoT stack, and as a result the presentation is also far more balanced. A novel addition in our
survey is that we have discussed different IoT architectures. This has not been discussed in
prior surveys on the Internet of Things. The architecture section also considers newer
paradigms such as fog computing, which have also hitherto not been considered. Moreover,
our survey nicely categorizes technologies based on the architectural layer that they belong
to. We have also thoroughly categorized the network layer and tried to consolidate almost all
the technologies that are used in IoT systems. Such kind of a thorough categorization and
presentation of technologies is novel to the best of our knowledge.

Along with these novel contributions our survey is far more comprehensive, detailed, and
exhaustive as compared to other surveys in the area. Most of the other surveys look at only
one or two types of sensors, whereas we describe 9 types of sensors with many examples.
Other surveys are also fairly restricted when they discuss communication technologies and
applications. We have discussed many types of middleware technologies as well. Prior works
have not given middleware technologies this level of attention. We cover 10 communication
technologies in detail and consider a large variety of applications encompassing smart homes,
health care, logistics, transport, agriculture, environment, smart cities, and green energy. No
other survey in this area profiles so many technologies, applications, and use cases.
6. Preprocessing
As smart things collect huge amount of sensor data, compute and storage resources are
required to analyze, store, and process this data. The most common compute and storage
resources are cloud based because the cloud offers massive data handling, scalability, and
flexibility. But this will not be sufficient to meet the requirements of many IoT applications
because of the following reasons [43].(1)Mobility: most of the smart devices are mobile.
Their changing location makes it difficult to communicate with the cloud data center because
of changing network conditions across different locations.(2)Reliable and real time actuation:
communicating with the cloud and getting back responses takes time. Latency sensitive
applications, which need real time responses, may not be feasible with this model. Also, the
communication may be lossy due to wireless links, which can lead to unreliable data.
(3)Scalability: more devices means more requests to the cloud, thereby increasing the latency.
(4)Power constraints: communication consumes a lot of power, and IoT devices are battery
powered. They thus cannot afford to communicate all the time.

To solve the problem of mobility, researchers have proposed mobile cloud computing (MCC)
[44]. But there are still problems associated with latency and power. MCC also suffers from
mobility problems such as frequently changing network conditions due to which problems
such as signal fading and service degradation arise.

As a solution to these problems, we can bring some compute and storage resources to the
edge of the network instead of relying on the cloud for everything. This concept is known
as  fog computing [11, 45] (also see Section 2.2). The fog can be viewed as a cloud, which is
close to the ground. Data can be stored, processed, filtered, and analyzed on the edge of the
network before sending it to the cloud through expensive communication media. The fog and
cloud paradigms go together. Both of them are required for the optimal performance of IoT
applications. A smart gateway [13] can be employed between underlying networks and the
cloud to realize fog computing as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7 
Smart gateway for preprocessing.

The features of fog computing [11] are as follows:(1)Low latency: less time is required to
access computing and storage resources on fog nodes (smart gateways).(2)Location
awareness: as the fog is located on the edge of the network, it is aware of the location of the
applications and their context. This is beneficial as context awareness is an important feature
of IoT applications.(3)Distributed nodes: fog nodes are distributed unlike centralized cloud
nodes. Multiple fog nodes need to be deployed in distributed geographical areas in order to
provide services to mobile devices in those areas. For example, in vehicular networks,
deploying fog nodes at highways can provide low latency data/video streaming to vehicles.
(4)Mobility: the fog supports mobility as smart devices can directly communicate with smart
gateways present in their proximity.(5)Real time response: fog nodes can give an immediate
response unlike the cloud, which has a much greater latency.(6)Interaction with the cloud:
fog nodes can further interact with the cloud and communicate only that data, which is
required to be sent to the cloud.
The tasks performed by a smart gateway [46] are collecting sensor data, preprocessing and
filtering collected data, providing compute, storage and networking services to IoT devices,
communicating with the cloud and sending only necessary data, monitoring power
consumption of IoT devices, monitoring activities and services of IoT devices, and ensuring
security and privacy of data. Some applications of fog computing are as follows [10, 11]:
(1)Smart vehicular networks: smart traffic lights are deployed as smart gateways to locally
detect pedestrians and vehicles through sensors, calculate their distance and speed, and finally
infer traffic conditions. This is used to warn oncoming vehicles. These sensors also interact
with neighboring smart traffic lights to perform traffic management tasks. For example, if
sensors detect an approaching ambulance, they can change the traffic lights to let the
ambulance pass first and also inform other lights to do so. The data collected by these smart
traffic lights are locally analyzed in real time to serve real time needs of traffic management.
Further, data from multiple gateways is combined and sent to the cloud for further global
analysis of traffic in the city.(2)Smart grid: the smart electrical grid facilitates load balancing
of energy on the basis of usage and availability. This is done in order to switch automatically
to alternative sources of energy such as solar and wind power. This balancing can be done at
the edge of the network using smart meters or microgrids connected by smart gateways.
These gateways can analyze and process data. They can then project future energy demand,
calculate the availability and price of power, and supply power from both conventional and
alternative sources to consumers.

7. Communication
As the Internet of Things is growing very rapidly, there are a large number of heterogeneous
smart devices connecting to the Internet. IoT devices are battery powered, with minimal
compute and storage resources. Because of their constrained nature, there are various
communication challenges involved, which are as follows [19]:(1)Addressing and
identification: since millions of smart things will be connected to the Internet, they will have
to be identified through a unique address, on the basis of which they communicate with each
other. For this, we need a large addressing space, and a unique address for each smart object.
(2)Low power communication: communication of data between devices is a power
consuming task, specially, wireless communication. Therefore, we need a solution that
facilitates communication with low power consumption.(3)Routing protocols with low
memory requirement and efficient communication patterns.(4)High speed and nonlossy
communication.(5)Mobility of smart things.

IoT devices typically connect to the Internet through the IP (Internet Protocol) stack. This
stack is very complex and demands a large amount of power and memory from the
connecting devices. The IoT devices can also connect locally through non-IP networks,
which consume less power, and connect to the Internet via a smart gateway. Non-IP
communication channels such as Bluetooth, RFID, and NFC are fairly popular but are limited
in their range (up to a few meters). Therefore, their applications are limited to small personal
area networks. Personal area networks (PAN) are being widely used in IoT applications such
as wearables connected to smartphones. For increasing the range of such local networks,
there was a need to modify the IP stack so as to facilitate low power communication using the
IP stack. One of the solutions is 6LoWPAN, which incorporates IPv6 with low power
personal area networks. The range of a PAN with 6LoWPAN is similar to local area
networks, and the power consumption is much lower.

The leading communication technologies used in the IoT world are IEEE 802.15.4, low
power WiFi, 6LoWPAN, RFID, NFC, Sigfox, LoraWAN, and other proprietary protocols for
wireless networks.

7.1. Near Field Communication (NFC)

Near Field Communication [47–49] is a very short range wireless communication

technology, through which mobile devices can interact with each other over a distance of few
centimeters only. All types of data can be transferred between two NFC enabled devices in
seconds by bringing them close to each other. This technology is based on RFID. It uses
variations in the magnetic field to communicate data between two NFC enabled devices. NFC
operates over a frequency band of 13.56 MHz, which is the same as high frequency RFID.
There are two modes of operation: active and passive. In the active mode, both the devices
generate magnetic fields, while in the passive mode, only one device generates the field and
the other uses load modulation to transfer the data. The passive mode is useful in battery
powered devices to optimize energy use. One benefit of the requirement of close proximity
between devices is that it is useful for secure transactions such as payments. Finally, note that
NFC can be used for two-way communication unlike RFID. Consequently, almost all
smartphones in the market today are NFC enabled.

7.2. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) Based on IP for Smart Objects

Many times, data from a single sensor is not useful in monitoring large areas and complex
activities. Different sensor nodes need to interact with each other wirelessly. The
disadvantage of non-IP technologies such as RFID, NFC, and Bluetooth is that their range is
very small. So, they cannot be used in many applications, where a large area needs to be
monitored through many sensor nodes deployed in diverse locations. A wireless sensor
network (WSN) consists of tens to thousands of sensor nodes connected using wireless
technologies. They collect data about the environment and communicate it to gateway
devices that relay the information to the cloud over the Internet. The communication between
nodes in a WSN may be direct or multihop. The sensor nodes are of a constrained nature, but
gateway nodes have sufficient power and processing resources. The popular network
topologies used in a WSN are a star, a mesh, and a hybrid network. Most of the
communication in WSN is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard (discussed in Section 7.3).
There are clearly a lot of protocols that can be used in IoT scenarios. Let us discuss the
design of a typical IoT network protocol stack with the most popular alternatives.
7.3. IoT Network Protocol Stack

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has developed alternative protocols for
communication between IoT devices using IP because IP is a flexible and reliable standard
[50, 51]. The Internet Protocol for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance has published various
white papers describing alternative protocols and standards for the layers of the IP stack and
an additional adaptation layer, which is used for communication [51–54] between smart
objects.

(1) Physical and MAC Layer (IEEE 802.15.4). The IEEE 802.15.4 protocol is designed for
enabling communication between compact and inexpensive low power embedded devices
that need a long battery life. It defines standards and protocols for the physical and link
(MAC) layer of the IP stack. It supports low power communication along with low cost and
short range communication. In the case of such resource constrained environments, we need a
small frame size, low bandwidth, and low transmit power.

Transmission requires very little power (maximum one milliwatt), which is only one percent
of that used in WiFi or cellular networks. This limits the range of communication. Because of
the limited range, the devices have to operate cooperatively in order to enable multihop
routing over longer distances. As a result, the packet size is limited to 127 bytes only, and the
rate of communication is limited to 250 kbps. The coding scheme in IEEE 802.15.4 has built
in redundancy, which makes the communication robust, allows us to detect losses, and
enables the retransmission of lost packets. The protocol also supports short 16-bit link
addresses to decrease the size of the header, communication overheads, and memory
requirements [55].

Readers can refer to the survey by Vasseur et al. [54] for more information on different
physical and link layer technologies for communication between smart objects.

(2) Adaptation Layer. IPv6 is considered the best protocol for communication in the IoT
domain because of its scalability and stability. Such bulky IP protocols were initially not
thought to be suitable for communication in scenarios with low power wireless links such as
IEEE 802.15.4.

6LoWPAN, an acronym for IPv6 over low power wireless personal area networks, is a very
popular standard for wireless communication. It enables communication using IPv6 over the
IEEE 802.15.4 [52] protocol. This standard defines an adaptation layer between the 802.15.4
link layer and the transport layer. 6LoWPAN devices can communicate with all other IP
based devices on the Internet. The choice of IPv6 is because of the large addressing space
available in IPv6. 6LoWPAN networks connect to the Internet via a gateway (WiFi or
Ethernet), which also has protocol support for conversion between IPv4 and IPv6 as today’s
deployed Internet is mostly IPv4. IPv6 headers are not small enough to fit within the small
127 byte MTU of the 802.15.4 standard. Hence, squeezing and fragmenting the packets to
carry only the essential information is an optimization that the adaptation layer performs.

Specifically, the adaptation layer performs the following three optimizations in order to
reduce communication overhead [55]:(i)Header compression 6loWPAN defines header
compression of IPv6 packets for decreasing the overhead of IPv6. Some of the fields are
deleted because they can be derived from link level information or can be shared across
packets.(ii)Fragmentation: the minimum MTU size (maximum transmission unit) of IPv6 is
1280 bytes. On the other hand, the maximum size of a frame in IEEE 802.15.4 is 127 bytes.
Therefore, we need to fragment the IPv6 packet. This is done by the adaptation layer.(iii)Link
layer forwarding 6LoWPAN also supports mesh under routing, which is done at the link
layer using link level short addresses instead of in the network layer. This feature can be used
to communicate within a 6LoWPAN network.

(3) Network Layer. The network layer is responsible for routing the packets received from the
transport layer. The IETF Routing over Low Power and Lossy Networks (ROLL) working
group has developed a routing protocol (RPL) for Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs)
[53].

For such networks, RPL is an open routing protocol, based on distance vectors. It describes
how a destination oriented directed acyclic graph (DODAG) is built with the nodes after they
exchange distance vectors. A set of constraints and an objective function is used to build the
graph with the best path [53]. The objective function and constraints may differ with respect
to their requirements. For example, constraints can be to avoid battery powered nodes or to
prefer encrypted links. The objective function can aim to minimize the latency or the
expected number of packets that need to be sent.

The making of this graph starts from the root node. The root starts sending messages to
neighboring nodes, which then process the message and decide whether to join or not
depending upon the constraints and the objective function. Subsequently, they forward the
message to their neighbors. In this manner, the message travels till the leaf nodes and a graph
is formed. Now all the nodes in the graph can send packets upwards hop by hop to the root.
We can realize a point to point routing algorithm as follows. We send packets to a common
ancestor, from which it travels downwards (towards leaves) to reach the destination.

To manage the memory requirements of nodes, nodes are classified into storing and
nonstoring nodes depending upon their ability to store routing information. When nodes are
in a nonstoring mode and a downward path is being constructed, the route information is
attached to the incoming message and forwarded further till the root. The root receives the
whole path in the message and sends a data packet along with the path message to the
destination hop by hop. But there is a trade-off here because nonstoring nodes need more
power and bandwidth to send additional route information as they do not have the memory to
store routing tables.

(4) Transport Layer. TCP is not a good option for communication in low power
environments as it has a large overhead owing to the fact that it is a connection oriented
protocol. Therefore, UDP is preferred because it is a connectionless protocol and has low
overhead.

(5) Application Layer. The application layer is responsible for data formatting and
presentation. The application layer in the Internet is typically based on HTTP. However,
HTTP is not suitable in resource constrained environments because it is fairly verbose in
nature and thus incurs a large parsing overhead. Many alternate protocols have been
developed for IoT environments such as CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) and
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport).(a)Constrained Application Protocol: CoAP
can be thought of as an alternative to HTTP. It is used in most IoT applications [56, 57].
Unlike HTTP, it incorporates optimizations for constrained application environments [50]. It
uses the EXI (Efficient XML Interchanges) data format, which is a binary data format and is
far more efficient in terms of space as compared to plain text HTML/XML. Other supported
features are built in header compression, resource discovery, autoconfiguration, asynchronous
message exchange, congestion control, and support for multicast messages. There are four
types of messages in CoAP: nonconfirmable, confirmable, reset (nack), and
acknowledgement. For reliable transmission over UDP, confirmable messages are used [58].
The response can be piggybacked in the acknowledgement itself. Furthermore, it uses DTLS
(Datagram Transport Layer Security) for security purposes.(b)Message Queue Telemetry
Transport: MQTT is a publish/subscribe protocol that runs over TCP. It was developed by
IBM [59] primarily as a client/server protocol. The clients are publishers/subscribers and the
server acts as a broker to which clients connect through TCP. Clients can publish or subscribe
to a topic. This communication takes place through the broker whose job is to coordinate
subscriptions and also authenticate the client for security. MQTT is a lightweight protocol,
which makes it suitable for IoT applications. But because of the fact that it runs over TCP, it
cannot be used with all types of IoT applications. Moreover, it uses text for topic names,
which increases its overhead.

MQTT-S/MQTT-SN is an extension of MQTT [60], which is designed for low power and
low cost devices. It is based on MQTT but has some optimizations for WSNs as follows [61].
The topic names are replaced by topic IDs, which reduce the overheads of transmission.
Topics do not need registration as they are preregistered. Messages are also split so that only
the necessary information is sent. Further, for power conservation, there is an offline
procedure for clients who are in a sleep state. Messages can be buffered and later read by
clients when they wake up. Clients connect to the broker through a gateway device, which
resides within the sensor network and connects to the broker.

7.4. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

Bluetooth Low Energy, also known as “Bluetooth Smart,” was developed by the Bluetooth
Special Interest Group. It has a relatively shorter range and consumes lower energy as
compared to competing protocols. The BLE protocol stack is similar to the stack used in
classic Bluetooth technology. It has two parts: controller and host. The physical and link layer
are implemented in the controller. The controller is typically a SOC (System on Chip) with a
radio. The functionalities of upper layers are included in the host [62]. BLE is not compatible
with classic Bluetooth. Let us look at the differences between classic Bluetooth and BLE
[63, 64].

The main difference is that BLE does not support data streaming. Instead, it supports quick
transfer of small packets of data (packet size is small) with a data rate of 1 Mbps.

There are two types of devices in BLE: master and slave. The master acts as a central device
that can connect to various slaves. Let us consider an IoT scenario where a phone or PC serve
as the master and mobile devices such as a thermostat, fitness tracker, smart watch, or any
monitoring device act as slaves. In such cases, slaves must be very power efficient.
Therefore, to save energy, slaves are by default in sleep mode and wake up periodically to
receive packets from the master.

In classic Bluetooth, the connection is on all the time even if no data transfer is going on.
Additionally, it supports 79 data channels (1 MHz channel bandwidth) and a data rate of 1
million symbols/s, whereas, BLE supports 40 channels with 2 MHz channel bandwidth
(double of classic Bluetooth) and 1 million symbols/s data rate. BLE supports low duty cycle
requirements as its packet size is small and the time taken to transmit the smallest packet is as
small as 80 s. The BLE protocol stack supports IP based communication also. An experiment
conducted by Siekkinen et al. [65] recorded the number of bytes transferred per Joule to show
that BLE consumes far less energy as compared to competing protocols such as Zigbee. The
energy efficiency of BLE is 2.5 times better than Zigbee.

7.5. Low Power WiFi

The WiFi alliance has recently developed “WiFi HaLow,” which is based on the IEEE
802.11ah standard. It consumes lower power than a traditional WiFi device and also has a
longer range. This is why this protocol is suitable for Internet of Things applications. The
range of WiFi HaLow is nearly twice that of traditional WiFi.

Like other WiFi devices, devices supporting WiFi HaLow also support IP connectivity,
which is important for IoT applications. Let us look at the specifications of the IEEE
802.11ah standard [66, 67]. This standard was developed to deal with wireless sensor
network scenarios, where devices are energy constrained and require relatively long range
communication. IEEE 802.11ah operates in the sub-gigahertz band (900 MHz). Because of
the relatively lower frequency, the range is longer since higher frequency waves suffer from
higher attenuation. We can extend the range (currently 1 km) by lowering the frequency
further; however, the data rate will also be lower and thus the tradeoff is not justified. IEEE
802.11ah is also designed to support large star shaped networks, where a lot of stations are
connected to a single access point.

7.6. Zigbee

It is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 communication protocol standard and is used for personal
area networks or PANs [68]. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard has low power MAC and physical
layers and has already been explained in Section 7.3. Zigbee was developed by the Zigbee
alliance, which works for reliable, low energy, and cheap communication solutions. The
range of Zigbee device communication is very small (10–100 meters). The details of the
network and application layers are also specified by the Zigbee standard. Unlike BLE, the
network layer here provides for multihop routing.

There are three types of devices in a Zigbee network: FFD (Fully Functional Device), RFD
(Reduced Functional Device), and one Zigbee coordinator. A FFD node can additionally act
as a router. Zigbee supports star, tree, and mesh topologies. The routing scheme depends on
the topology. Other features of Zigbee are discovery and maintenance of routes, support for
nodes joining/leaving the network, short 16-bit addresses, and multihop routing.
The framework for communication and distributed application development is provided by
the application layer. The application layer consists of Application Objects (APO),
Application Sublayer (APS), and a Zigbee Device Object (ZDO). APOs are spread over the
network nodes. These are pieces of software, which control some underlying device hardware
(examples: switch and transducer). The device and network management services are
provided by the ZDO, which are then used by the APOs. Data transfer services are provided
by the Application Sublayer to the APOs and ZDO. It is responsible for secure
communication between the Application Objects. These features can be used to create a large
distributed application.

7.7. Integration of RFID and WSN

RFID and wireless sensor networks (WSN) are both important technologies in the IoT
domain. RFID can only be used for object identification, but WSNs serve a far greater
purpose. The two are very different but merging them has many advantages. The following
components can be added to RFID to enhance its usability:(a)Sensing capabilities(b)Multihop
communication(c)Intelligence
RFID is inexpensive and uses very little power. That is why its integration with WSN is very
useful. The integration is possible in the following ways [69, 70]:(a)Integration of RFID tags
with sensors: RFID tags with sensing capabilities are called sensor tags. These sensor tags
sense data from the environment and then the RFID reader can read this sensed data from the
tag. In such cases, simple RFID protocols are used, where there is only single hop
communication. RFID sensing technologies can be further classified on the basis of the
power requirement of sensor tags as explained earlier in the section on RFIDs (active and
passive) (see Section 5.5).(b)Integration of RFID tags with WSN nodes: the communication
capabilities of sensor tags are limited to a single hop. To extend its capabilities, the sensor tag
is equipped with a wireless transceiver, little bit of Flash memory, and computational
capabilities such that it can initiate communication with other nodes and wireless devices.
The nodes can in this fashion be used to form a wireless mesh network. In such networks,
sensor tags can communicate with each other over a large range (via intermediate hops). With
additional processing capabilities at a node, we can reduce the net amount of data
communicated and thus increase the power efficiency of the WSN.(c)Integration of RFID
readers with WSN nodes: this type of integration is also done to increase the range of RFID
tag readers. The readers are equipped with wireless transceivers and microcontrollers so that
they can communicate with each other and therefore, the tag data can reach a reader, which is
not in the range of that tag. It takes advantage of multihop communication of wireless sensor
network devices. The data from all the RFID readers in the network ultimately reaches a
central gateway or base station that processes the data or sends it to a remote server.

These kinds of integrated solutions have many applications in a diverse set of domains such
as security, healthcare, and manufacturing.
7.8. Low Power Wide-Area-Networks (LPWAN)

Let us now discuss a protocol for long range communication in power constrained devices.
The LPWAN class of protocols is low bit-rate communication technologies for such IoT
scenarios.

Let us now discuss some of the most common technologies in this area. Narrow band IoT: it
is a technology made for a large number of devices that are energy constrained. It is thus
necessary to reduce the bit rate. This protocol can be deployed with both the cellular phone
GSM and LTE spectra. The downlink speeds vary between 40 kbps (LTE M2) and 10 Mbps
(LTE category 1). Sigfox: it is one more protocol that uses narrow band communication (10 
MHz). It uses free sections of the radio spectrum (ISM band) to transmit its data. Instead of
4G networks, Sigfox focuses on using very long waves. Thus, the range can increase to a
1000 kms. Because of this the energy for transmission is significantly lower (0.1%) than
contemporary cell phones. Again the cost is bandwidth. It can only transmit 12 bytes per
message, and a device is limited to 140 messages per day. This is reasonable for many kinds
of applications: submarine applications, sending control (emergency) codes, geolocation,
monitoring remote locations, and medical applications. Weightless: it uses a differential
binary phase shift keying based method to transmit narrow band signals. To avoid
interference, the protocol hops across frequency bands (instead of using CSMA). It supports
cryptographic encryption and mobility. Along with frequency hopping, two additional
mechanisms are used to reduce collisions. The downlink service uses time division multiple
access (TDMA) and the uplink service uses multiple subchannels that are first allocated to
transmitting nodes by contacting a central server. Some applications include smart meters,
vehicle tracking, health monitoring, and industrial machine monitoring. Neul: this protocol
operates in the sub-1 GHz band. It uses small chunks of the TV whitespace spectrum to
create low cost and low power networks with very high scalability. It has a 10 km range and
uses the Weightless protocol for communication. LoRaWAN: this protocol is similar to
Sigfox. It targets wide area network applications and is designed to be a low power protocol.
Its data rates can vary from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps, and it can be used within an urban or a
suburban environment (2–5 kms range in a crowded urban area). It was designed to serve as a
standard for long range IoT protocols. It thus has features to support multitenancy, enable
multiple applications, and include several different network domains.

7.9. Lightweight Application Layer Protocols

Along with physical and MAC layer protocols, we also need application layer protocols for
IoT networks. These lightweight protocols need to be able to carry application messages,
while simultaneously reducing power as far as possible.

OMA Lightweight M2M (LWM2M) is one such protocol. It defines the communication
protocol between a server and a device. The devices often have limited capabilities and are
thus referred to as constrained devices. The main aims of the OMA protocol are as follows:
(1)Remote device management.(2)Transferring service data/information between different
nodes in the LWM2M network.
All the protocols in this class treat all the network resources as objects. Such resources can be
created, deleted, and remotely configured. These devices have their unique limitations and
can use different kinds of protocols for internally representing information. The LWM2M
protocol abstracts all of this away and provides a convenient interface to send messages
between a generic LWM2M server and a distributed set of LWM2M clients.

This protocol is often used along with CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol). It is an
application layer protocol that allows constrained nodes such as sensor motes or small
embedded devices to communicate across the Internet. CoAP seamlessly integrates with
HTTP, yet it provides additional facilities such as support for multicast operations. It is
ideally suited for small devices because of its low overhead and parsing complexity and
reliance on UDP rather than TCP.

8. Middleware

Ubiquitous computing is the core of the Internet of Things, which means incorporating
computing and connectivity in all the things around us. Interoperability of such
heterogeneous devices needs well-defined standards. But standardization is difficult because
of the varied requirements of different applications and devices. For such heterogeneous
applications, the solution is to have a middleware platform, which will abstract the details of
the things for applications. That is, it will hide the details of the smart things. It should act as
a software bridge between the things and the applications. It needs to provide the required
services to the application developers [20] so that they can focus more on the requirements of
applications rather than on interacting with the baseline hardware. To summarize, the
middleware abstracts the hardware and provides an Application Programming Interface (API)
for communication, data management, computation, security, and privacy.

The challenges, which are addressed by any IoT middleware, are as follows: [20, 71, 72].
(1)Interoperability and programming abstractions: for facilitating collaboration and
information exchange between heterogeneous devices, different types of things can interact
with each other easily with the help of middleware services. Interoperability is of three types:
network, semantic, and syntactic. Network interoperability deals with heterogeneous interface
protocols for communication between devices. It insulates the applications from the
intricacies of different protocols. Syntactic interoperability ensures that applications are
oblivious of different formats, structures, and encoding of data. Semantic interoperability
deals with abstracting the meaning of data within a particular domain. It is loosely inspired by
the semantic web.(2)Device discovery and management: this feature enables the devices to be
aware of all other devices in the neighborhood and the services provided by them. In the
Internet of Things, the infrastructure is mostly dynamic. The devices have to announce their
presence and the services they provide. The solution needs to be scalable because the devices
in an IoT network can increase. Most solutions in this domain are loosely inspired by
semantic web technologies. The middleware provides APIs to list the IoT devices, their
services, and capabilities. In addition, typically APIs are provided to discover devices based
on their capabilities. Finally, any IoT middleware needs to perform load balancing, manage
devices based on their levels of battery power, and report problems in devices to the users.
(3)Scalability: a large number of devices are expected to communicate in an IoT setup.
Moreover, IoT applications need to scale due to ever increasing requirements. This should be
managed by the middleware by making required changes when the infrastructure scales.
(4)Big data and analytics: IoT sensors typically collect a huge amount of data. It is necessary
to analyze all of this data in great detail. As a result a lot of big data algorithms are used to
analyze IoT data. Moreover, it is possible that due to the flimsy nature of the network some
of the data collected might be incomplete. It is necessary to take this into account and
extrapolate data by using sophisticated machine learning algorithms.(5)Security and privacy:
IoT applications are mostly related to someone’s personal life or an industry. Security and
privacy issues need to be addressed in all such environments. The middleware should have
built in mechanisms to address such issues, along with user authentication, and the
implementation of access control.(6)Cloud services: the cloud is an important part of an IoT
deployment. Most of the sensor data is analyzed and stored in a centralized cloud. It is
necessary for IoT middleware to seamlessly run on different types of clouds and to enable
users to leverage the cloud to get better insights from the data collected by the sensors.
(7)Context detection: the data collected from the sensors needs to be used to extract the
context by applying various types of algorithms. The context can subsequently be used for
providing sophisticated services to users.
There are many middleware solutions available for the Internet of Things, which address one
or more of the aforementioned issues. All of them support interoperability and abstraction,
which is the foremost requirement of middleware. Some examples are Oracle’s Fusion
Middleware, OpenIoT [21], MiddleWhere [22], and Hydra [23]. Middlewares can be
classified as follows on the basis of their design [72]:(1)Event based: here, all the
components interact with each other through events. Each event has a type and some
parameters. Events are generated by producers and received by the consumers. This can be
viewed as a publish/subscribe architecture, where entities can subscribe for some event types
and get notified for those events.(2)Service oriented: service oriented middlewares are based
on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), in which we have independent modules that
provide services through accessible interfaces. A service oriented middleware views
resources as service providers. It abstracts the underlying resources through a set of services
that are used by applications. There is a service repository, where services are published by
providers. The consumers can discover services from the repository and then bind with the
provider to access the service. Service oriented middleware must have runtime support for
advertising services by providers and support for discovering and using services by
consumers. HYDRA [23] is a service oriented middleware. It incorporates many software
components, which are used in handling various tasks required for the development of
intelligent applications. Hydra also provides semantic interoperability using semantic web
technologies. It supports dynamic reconfiguration and self-management.(3)Database
oriented: in this approach, the network of IoT devices is considered as a virtual relational
database system. The database can then be queried by the applications using a query
language. There are easy to use interfaces for extracting data from the database. This
approach has issues with scaling because of its centralized model.(4)Semantic: semantic
middleware focuses on the interoperation of different types of devices, which communicate
using different formats of data. It incorporates devices with different data formats and
ontologies and ties all of them together in a common framework. The framework is used for
exchanging data between diverse types of devices. For a common semantic format, we need
to have  adapters for communication between  devices because; for each device, we need
adapters to map  standards to one abstract standard [73]. In such a semantic middleware [74],
a semantic layer is introduced, in which there is a mapping from each resource to a software
layer for that resource. The software layers then communicate with each other using a
mutually intelligible language (based on the semantic web). This technique allows multiple
physical resources to communicate even though they do not implement or understand the
same protocols.(5)Application specific: this type of middleware is used specifically for an
application domain for which it is developed because the whole architecture of this
middleware software is fine-tuned on the basis of requirements of the application. The
application and middleware are tightly coupled. These are not general purpose solutions.

8.1. Popular IoT Middleware

8.1.1. FiWare

FiWare is a very popular IoT middleware framework that is promoted by the EU. It has been
designed keeping smart cities, logistics, and shop floor analytics in mind. FiWare contains a
large body of code, reusable modules, and APIs that have been contributed by thousands of
FiWare developers. Any application developer can take a subset of these components and
build his/her IoT application.

A typical IoT application has many producers of data (sensors), a set of servers to process the
data, and a set of actuators. FiWare refers to the information collected by sensors as context
information. It defines generic REST APIs to capture the context from different scenarios.
All the context information is sent to a dedicated service called a context broker. FiWare
provides APIs to store the context and also query it. Moreover, any application can register
itself as a context consumer, and it can request the context broker for information. It also
supports the publish-subscribe paradigm. Subsequently, the context can be supplied to
systems using context adapters whose main role is to transform the data (the context) based
on the requirements of the destination nodes. Moreover, FiWare defines a set of SNMP APIs
via which we can control the behavior of IoT devices and also configure them.

The target applications are provided APIs to analyze, query, and mine the information that is
collected from the context broker. Additionally, with advanced visualization APIs, it is
possible to create and deploy feature rich applications very quickly.

8.1.2. OpenIoT

OpenIoT is another popular open source initiative. It has 7 different components. At the
lowest level, we have a physical plane. It collects data from IoT devices and also does some
preprocessing of data. It has different APIs to interface with different types of physical nodes
and get information from them.

The next plane is the virtualized plane, which has 3 components. We first have the scheduler,
which manages the streams of data generated by devices. It primarily assigns them to
resources and takes care of their QoS requirements. The data storage component manages the
storage and archival of data streams. Finally, the service delivery component processes the
streams. It has several roles. It combines data streams, preprocesses them, and tracks some
statistics associated with these streams such as the number of unique requests or the size of
each request.

The uppermost layer, that is, the application layer, also has 3 components: request definition,
request presentation, and configuration. The request definition component helps us create
requests to be sent to the IoT sensors and storage layers. It can be used to fetch and query
data. The request presentation component creates mashups of data by issuing different
queries to the storage layer, and finally the configuration component helps us configure the
IoT devices.

Applications of IoT

There are a diverse set of areas in which intelligent applications have been developed. All of
these applications are not yet readily available; however, preliminary research indicates the
potential of IoT in improving the quality of life in our society. Some uses of IoT applications
are in home automation, fitness tracking, health monitoring, environment protection, smart
cities, and industrial settings.

9.1. Home Automation

Smart homes are becoming more popular today because of two reasons. First, the sensor and
actuation technologies along with wireless sensor networks have significantly matured.
Second, people today trust technology to address their concerns about their quality of life and
security of their homes (see Figure 8).
Figure 8 
Block diagram of a smart home system.

In smart homes, various sensors are deployed, which provide intelligent and automated
services to the user. They help in automating daily tasks and help in maintaining a routine for
individuals who tend to be forgetful. They help in energy conservation by turning off lights
and electronic gadgets automatically. We typically use motion sensors for this purpose.
Motion sensors can be additionally used for security also.

For example, the project, MavHome [75], provides an intelligent agent, which uses various
prediction algorithms for doing automated tasks in response to user triggered events and
adapts itself to the routines of the inhabitants. Prediction algorithms are used to predict the
sequence of events [76] in a home. A sequence matching algorithm maintains sequences of
events in a queue and also stores their frequency. Then a prediction is made using the match
length and frequency. Other algorithms used by similar applications use compression based
prediction and Markov models.

Energy conservation in smart homes [77] is typically achieved through sensors and context
awareness. The sensors collect data from the environment (light, temperature, humidity, gas,
and fire events). This data from heterogeneous sensors is fed to a context aggregator, which
forwards the collected data to the context aware service engine. This engine selects services
based on the context. For example, an application can automatically turn on the AC when the
humidity rises. Or, when there is a gas leak, it can turn all the lights off.

Smart home applications are really beneficial for the elderly and differently abled. Their
health is monitored and relatives are informed immediately in case of emergencies. Floors are
equipped with pressure sensors, which track the movement of an individual across the smart
home and also help in detecting if a person has fallen down. In smart homes, CCTV cameras
can be used to record events of interest. These can then be used for feature extraction to find
out what is going on.

In specific, fall detection applications in smart environments [78–80] are useful for detecting
if elderly people have fallen down. Yu et al. [80] use computer vision based techniques for
analyzing postures of the human body. Sixsmith et al. [79] used low cost infrared sensor
array technology, which can provide information such as the location, size, and velocity of a
target object. It detects dynamics of a fall by analyzing the motion patterns and also detects
inactivity and compares it with activity in the past. Neural networks are employed and sample
data is provided to the system for various types of falls. Many smartphone based applications
are also available, which detect a fall on the basis of readings from the accelerometer and
gyroscope data.

There are many challenges and issues with regard to smart home applications [81]. The most
important is security and privacy [82] since all the data about the events taking place in the
home is being recorded. If the security and trustworthiness of the system are not guaranteed,
an intruder may attack the system and may make the system behave maliciously. Smart home
systems are supposed to notify the owners in case they detect such abnormalities. This is
possible using AI and machine learning algorithms, and researchers have already started
working in this direction [83]. Reliability is also an issue since there is no system
administrator to monitor the system.

9.2. Smart Cities

9.2.1. Smart Transport

Smart transport applications can manage daily traffic in cities using sensors and intelligent
information processing systems. The main aim of intelligent transport systems is to minimize
traffic congestion, ensure easy and hassle-free parking, and avoid accidents by properly
routing traffic and spotting drunk drivers. The sensor technologies governing these types of
applications are GPS sensors for location, accelerometers for speed, gyroscopes for direction,
RFIDs for vehicle identification, infrared sensors for counting passengers and vehicles, and
cameras for recording vehicle movement and traffic. There are many types of applications in
this area (refer to [84]):(1)Traffic surveillance and management applications: vehicles are
connected by a network to each other, the cloud, and to a host of IoT devices such as GPS
sensors, RFID devices, and cameras. These devices can estimate traffic conditions in
different parts of the city. Custom applications can analyze traffic patterns so that future
traffic conditions can be estimated. Yu et al. [85] implement a vehicle tracking system for
traffic surveillance using video sequences captured on the roads. Traffic congestion detection
can also be implemented using smartphone sensors such as accelerometers [86] and GPS
sensors. These applications can detect movement patterns of the vehicle while the user is
driving. Such kind of information is already being collected by Google maps and users are
using it to route around potentially congested areas of the city.(2)Applications to ensure
safety: smart transport does not only imply managing traffic conditions. It also includes
safety of people travelling in their vehicles, which up till now was mainly in the hands of
drivers. There are many IoT applications developed to help drivers become safer drivers.
Such applications monitor driving behavior of drivers and help them drive safely by detecting
when they are feeling drowsy or tired and helping them to cope with it or suggesting rest
[87, 88]. Technologies used in such applications are face detection, eye movement detection,
and pressure detection on the steering (to measure the grip of the driver’s hands on the
steering). A smartphone application, which estimates the driver’s driving behavior using
smartphone sensors such as the accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, and camera, has been
proposed by Eren et al. [89]. It can decide whether the driving is safe or rash by analyzing the
sensor data.(3)Intelligent parking management (see Figure 9): in a smart transportation
system, parking is completely hassle free as one can easily check on the Internet to find out
which parking lot has free spaces. Such lots use sensors to detect if the slots are free or
occupied by vehicles. This data is then uploaded to a central server.(4)Smart traffic lights:
traffic lights equipped with sensing, processing, and communication capabilities are called
smart traffic lights. These lights sense the traffic congestion at the intersection and the
amount of traffic going each way. This information can be analyzed and then sent to
neighboring traffic lights or a central controller. It is possible to use this information
creatively. For example, in an emergency situation the traffic lights can preferentially give
way to an ambulance. When the smart traffic light senses an ambulance coming, it clears the
path for it and also informs neighboring lights about it. Technologies used in these lights are
cameras, communication technologies, and data analysis modules. Such systems have already
been deployed in Rio De Janeiro.(5)Accident detection applications: a smartphone
application designed by White et al. [90] detects the occurrence of an accident with the help
of an accelerometer and acoustic data. It immediately sends this information along with the
location to the nearest hospital. Some additional situational information such as on-site
photographs is also sent so that the first responders know about the whole scenario and the
degree of medical help that is required.
Figure 9 
Block diagram of a smart parking system.

9.2.2. Smart Water Systems

Given the prevailing amount of water scarcity in most parts of the world, it is very important
to manage our water resources efficiently. As a result most cities are opting for smart
solutions that place a lot of meters on water supply lines and storm drains. A good reference
in this area is the paper by Hauber-Davidson and Idris [91]. They describe various designs for
smart water meters. These meters can be used to measure the degree of water inflow and
outflow and to identify possible leaks. Smart water metering systems are also used in
conjunction with data from weather satellites and river water sensors. They can also help us
predict flooding.

9.2.3. Examples of Smart Cities

Barcelona and Stockholm stand out in the list of smart cities. Barcelona has a CityOS project,
where it aims to create a single virtualized OS for all the smart devices and services offered
within the city. Barcelona has mainly focused on smart transportation (as discussed in
Section 9.2.1) and smart water. Smart transportation is implemented using a network of
sensors, centralized analysis, and smart traffic lights. On similar lines Barcelona has sensors
on most of its storm drains, water storage tanks, and water supply lines. This information is
integrated with weather and usage information. The result of all of this is a centralized water
planning strategy. The city is able to estimate the water requirements in terms of domestic
usage and industrial usage and for activities such as landscaping and gardening.

Stockholm started way back in 1994, and its first step in this direction was to install an
extensive fiber optic system. Subsequently, the city added thousands of sensors for smart
traffic and smart water management applications. Stockholm was one of the first cities to
implement congestion charging. Users were charged money, when they drove into congested
areas. This was enabled by smart traffic technologies. Since the city has a solid network
backbone, it is very easy to deploy sensors and applications. For example, recently the city
created a smart parking system, where it is possible to easily locate parking spots nearby.
Parking lots have sensors, which let a server know about their usage. Once a driver queries
the server with her/his GPS location, she/he is guided to the nearest parking lot with free
slots. Similar innovations have taken place in the city’s smart buildings, snow clearance, and
political announcement systems.

9.3. Social Life and Entertainment

Social life and entertainment play an important role in an individual’s life. Many applications
have been developed, which keep track of such human activities. The term “opportunistic
IoT” [92] refers to information sharing among opportunistic devices (devices that seek to
make contact with other devices) based on movement and availability of contacts in the
vicinity. Personal devices such as tablets, wearables, and mobile phones have sensing and
short range communication capabilities. People can find and interact with each other when
there is a common purpose.

Circle Sense [93] is an application, which detects social activities of a person with the help of
various types of sensor data. It identifies the social circle of a person by analyzing the
patterns of social activities and the people present in those activities. Various types of social
activities and the set of people participating in those activities are identified. It uses location
sensors to find out where the person is and uses Bluetooth for searching people around her.
The system has built in machine learning algorithms, and it gradually improves its behavior
with learning.

Affective computing [94] is a technology, which recognizes, understands, stimulates, and

responds to the emotions of human beings. There are many parameters, which are considered
while dealing with human affects such as facial expressions, speech, body gestures, hand
movements, and sleep patterns. These are analyzed to figure out how a person is feeling. The
utterance of emotional keywords is identified by voice recognition and the quality of voice by
looking at acoustic features of speech.

One of the applications of affective computing is Camy, an artificial pet dog [95], which is
designed to interact with human beings and show affection and emotions. Many sensors and
actuators are embedded in it. It provides emotional support to the owner, encourages playful
and active behavior, recognizes its owner, and shows love for her and increases the owner’s
communication with other people. Based on the owner’s mood, Camy interacts with the
owner and gives her suggestions.
Logmusic [96] is an entertainment application, which recommends music on the basis of the
context, such as the weather, temperature, time, and location.

9.4. Health and Fitness

IoT appliances have proven really beneficial in the health and wellness domains. Many
wearable devices are being developed, which monitor a person’s health condition (see
Figure 10).

Figure 10 
Block diagram of a smart healthcare system.
Health applications make independent living possible for the elderly and patients with serious
health conditions. Currently, IoT sensors are being used to continuously monitor and record
their health conditions and transmit warnings in case any abnormal indicators are found. If
there is a minor problem, the IoT application itself may suggest a prescription to the patient.

IoT applications can be used in creating an Electronic Health Record (EHR), which is a
record of all the medical details of a person. It is maintained by the health system. An EHR
can be used to record allergies, surges in blood sugar and blood pressure.

Stress recognition applications are also fairly popular [97]. They can be realized using
smartphone sensors. Wang et al. describe an application [30], which measures the stress level
of a college student and is installed on the student’s smartphone. It senses the locations the
student visits during the whole day, the amount of physical activity, amount of sleep and rest,
and her/his interaction and relationships with other people (audio data and calls). In addition,
it also conducts surveys with the student by randomly popping up a question in the
smartphone. Using all of this data and analyzing it intelligently, the level of stress and
academic performance can be measured.

In the fitness sector, we have applications that monitor how fit we are based on our daily
activity level. Smartphone accelerometer data can be used for activity detection by applying
complex algorithms. For example, we can measure the number of steps taken and the amount
of exercise done by using fitness trackers. Fitness trackers are available in the market as
wearables to monitor the fitness level of an individual. In addition, gym apparatus can be
fitted with sensors to count the number of times an exercise is performed. For example, a
smart mat [98] can count the number of exercise steps performed on it. This is implemented
using pressure sensors on the mat and then by analyzing the patterns of pressure, and the
shape of the contact area.

9.5. Smart Environment and Agriculture

Environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity are important for agricultural
production. Sensors are used by farmers in the field to measure such parameters and this data
can be used for efficient production. One application is automated irrigation according to
weather conditions.

Production using greenhouses [99] is one of the main applications of IoT in agriculture.
Environmental parameters measured in terms of temperature, soil information, and humidity
are measured in real time and sent to a server for analysis. The results are then used to
improve crop quality and yield.

Pesticide residues in crop production are detected using an Acetylcholinesterase biosensor

[100]. This data is saved and analyzed for extracting useful information such as the sample
size, time, location, and amount of residues. We can thus maintain the quality of the crop.
Moreover, a QR code can be used to uniquely identify a carton of farm produce. Consumers
can scan the QR code and check the amount of pesticides in it (via a centralized database)
online before buying.
Air pollution is an important concern today because it is changing the climate of the earth and
degrading air quality. Vehicles cause a lot of air pollution. An IoT application proposed by
Manna et al. [39] monitors air pollution on the roads. It also tracks vehicles that cause an
undue amount of pollution. Electrochemical toxic gas sensors can also be used to measure air
pollution. Vehicles are identified by RFID tags. RFID readers are placed on both sides of the
road along with the gas sensors. With this approach it is possible to identify and take action
against polluting vehicles.

9.6. Supply Chain and Logistics

IoT tries to simplify real world processes in business and information systems [101]. The
goods in the supply chain can be tracked easily from the place of manufacture to the final
places of distribution using sensor technologies such as RFID and NFC. Real time
information is recorded and analyzed for tracking. Information about the quality and usability
of the product can also be saved in RFID tags attached with the shipments.

Bo and Guangwen [102] explain an information transmission system for supply chain
management, which is based on the Internet of Things. RFID tags uniquely identify a product
automatically and a product information network is created to transmit this information in
real time along with location information. This system helps in automatic collection and
analysis of all the information related to supply chain management, which may help examine
past demand and come up with a forecast of future demand. Supply chain components can get
access to real time data and all of this information can be analyzed to get useful insights. This
will in the long run improve the performance of supply chain systems.

9.7. Energy Conservation

The smart grid is information and communication technology enabled modern electricity
generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption system [103].
To make electric power generation, transmission, and distribution smart, the concept of smart
grids adds intelligence at each step and also allows the two-way flow of power (back from the
consumer to the supplier). This can save a lot of energy and help consumers better understand
the flow of power and dynamic pricing. In a smart grid, power generation is distributed.
There are sensors deployed throughout the system to monitor everything. It is actually a
distributed network of microgrids [104]. Microgrids generate power to meet demands of local
sites and transmit back the surplus energy to the central grid. Microgrids can also demand
energy from the central grid in case of a shortfall.

Two-way flow of power also benefits consumers, who are also using their own generated
energy occasionally (say, solar, or wind power); the surplus power can be transmitted back so
that it is not wasted. The user will also get paid for that power.

Some of the IoT applications in a smart grid are online monitoring of transmission lines for
disaster prevention and efficient use of power in smart homes by having a smart meter for
monitoring energy consumption [105].
Smart meters read and analyze consumption patterns of power at regular and peak load times.
This information is then sent to the server and also made available to the user. The generation
is then set according to the consumption patterns. In addition, the user can adjust her/his use
so as to reduce costs. Smart power appliances can leverage this information and operate when
the prices are low.