A Starter Guide to the Internet of Things: Part 1

IoT or Internet of Things is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life at home, in businesses and public infrastructure

Make way for IoT, the abbreviated form of “Internet of Things” that everyone is talking about in 2016. The IoT is a twenty year old idea whose time, say experts, has come. With the explosive growth of smart technology into embedded devices, connected devices and, advances in broadband mobile and wireless communications, a big part of the world is getting ready to be part of an “always on”, intelligent, smart network.

As efforts to explore the possibilities and outcomes of IoT evolution gain momentum worldwide, it seems fitting to kick-off this topic with a quick, though somewhat lengthy overview.

Defining the ‘Internet of Things’

The term “Internet of Things” can be best explained by taking it at its literal meaning.  Beyond this generic sounding and deceptively simple expression, lies is a complex global infrastructure that unites billions of micro-devices, aggregates massive data streams and integrates hundreds of hardware, software and communications technologies and standards.

Although the concept of ubiquitous computing was introduced in the early nineties, and the term coined by Kevin Aston in 1999, efforts to create a formal definition have started recently, including that from IEEE in 2015. IoT has been variously described as a vision, a concept, a plan and a technology through its evolution.

The general description that is conveyed in almost every definition is: "The Internet of Things is a global information network consisting of physical pervasive objects which can uniquely identify themselves and interact of the Internet."

The Internet backbone of IoT 

The twenty five year old Internet which originally connected computers for information processing by humans has grown to accommodate mobile devices, consumer electronics such as watches, TVs and industrial devices. Device capabilities have become “smarter” i.e. they can communicate with one another, share data, analyse information in real time and take actions without human intervention, through machine to machine or M2M communication. 

A device on the Internet has a unique identifier and an address which is used by the Internet Protocol (IP) to route traffic across the net. The original IP v4 version handled 32 bit addresses which could provide up to 4.2 billion addresses. With 1.5 billion smart phones shipped in 2015 and 6.4 billion connected devices by 2020, IP addressing obviously falls short. IP v6 is designed to handle 128 bit addresses which scales up to a very large 3.403 x 1038 and believed to be more than anyone will ever need (on this planet).

Things that make up the IoT 

Apart from the original computers, the things in common terminology refer to physical, mechanical, electronic, electro-mechanical objects etc. The major appeal of IoT stems from the transformation of everyday wear such as glasses, watches to even clothes into "smart wearables" with an embedded IoT solution.

The broad spectrum of IoT applications are now classified by analysts into three customer categories - consumer, business or enterprise and government.

• Apple Watch, Nest Thermostat and Philips Hue Lighting,  are examples of consumer solutions.
• AT&T's smart metering solution for Maersk container shipping is an example of an industrial solution. 
• Large scale transportation connectivity and smart city solutions are examples of a government or public solution. 

IoT is more than just the wiring and novelty of intelligent devices. The real value lies in aggregation of data, development of semantic web and machine to machine interaction with built-in context. Many other simultaneously occurring developments such as big data, analytics, artificial intelligence and location aware technologies have transformed the way fast moving, real time information can be interpreted and acted upon. With advances in mobile broadband and cloud computing, the smallest of sensors can interaction in real time and apply complex decisions by evaluating factors ranging from local to a global context.

To summarize, an IoT application

• Is event driven and can respond to events in real time.
• Is able to communicate and process based on situational context such as its environment, geo-location in addition to an Internet identifier.
• Has semantic-interoperability - a home identifying itself and connected sensors within, all of which can communicate with and be controlled by a common app on a tablet or mobile phone.
• Is able to interact on a larger scale in the connected ecosystem i.e. a small sensor, connected to a domotics or home automation, which connects to the smart city grid, all via the Internet.
• Leverage data and analytics to respond to events in a large scale environment.

The second post in this series looks at IoT technologies and current risks and challenges in IoT development.