Introduction
You learned a great deal about IoT until now. The next thing to know from IoT is autonomous systems and various technological concepts.
This chapter lets you grasp how IoT is correlated with system forms and technological terminology.
IoT Devices
When it comes to devices of the IoT, most of us wonder, are smartphones and tablets IoT devices? Well:
- Smartphones and tablets have sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes and so on
- Are embedded devices with displays and keypad
- Can be connected to the internet
- Has an IP address
Therefore they fit every requirement of IoT devices!
Can we call smartphones or tablets IoT devices?
This doubt was clarified at a keynote event during Sept 2011’s Mobile
World Congress in Barcelona by Qualcomm Chairman and CEO Dr. Paul
Jacobs.
Paul Jacobs talked about how mobile technology could be used to connect
non-phone and non-tablet devices called IoT devices and objects to the
internet. In the future where everything will be connected on the web
and mobile phones will serve as the hub, or the remote control, for the
Internet of Things.
So IoT is internet connectivity of smart objects and embedded systems other than mobile phones that can be connected to external hardware.
Mobiles, Tablets, Laptops, and PCs are a remote control/access center of
IoT.
Let’s have a look.
Today, smartphones or tablets are equipped with sensors of data from anything from location to the device orientation to light conditions.
Altogether, these sensors produce a huge amount of data, both in an unstructured form (picture or videos) as well as structured, such as GPS
or acceleration data. With the rise of the wearables, smartphones increasingly have an additional role.
This new role can be considered as the "brain" of your Body Area Network (BAN), given the storage and communication capabilities of the smartphone. Last but not least with technologies such as Near Field Communications (NFC)? smartphones can function not only as sensors but also as actuators. That is, trigger actions (such as payments) or control other things, including home,
parking slots, cars, and many more.
Smart Devices
With IoT, we also get to hear a lot about Smart Devices. What are these Smart Devices? Let's look into the definition.
“A Smart Object is an object that can describe its possible interactions.”
OR
According to Wikipedia, "A smart device is an electronic device,
generally connected to other devices or networks via various wireless
protocols such as Bluetooth, NFC, WiFi, 3G and so on that can operate to
some extent interactively and autonomously.".
Any device that not only has a state but also has certain data associated with that state and can also determine the nature of connectivity, duration of connectivity, and connectivity protocol are called smart objects. Some of the smart devices are smartphones,
tablets, smartwatches, smart bands, and smart key chains. The term smart device can also refer to a ubiquitous computing device, a device that exhibits some properties of ubiquitous computing.
Characteristics of smart devices - Aset of system hardware and software Information and CommunicationTechnology (ICT) resources. This set is usually statically fixed at design time.
- Dynamic component-oriented resource extensions and plug-ins (Plug and Play) of some hardware resources.
- Remote external service access, and execution.
- Local, internal autonomous service execution.
- Accessto specific external environments: human interaction, physical worldinteraction, and distributed ICT / virtual computing interaction.
- Ubiquitous computing properties.
Ubiquitous Computing Properties
IoT TECHNOLOGIES
Now, let's have an understanding of various technologies of IoT.
- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
- An RFID chip holds information about the "thing"
- An RFID chip is attached and transfers data to the reader.
- Theantenna on the RFID module is used to receive energy that is used tooperate the RFID device and transmit information back to the reader.
- RFID enables efficient management, tracking and monitoring processes, and logistics and supply chain applications.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN)
- Efficient, low-cost, low-power devices for use in remote sensing applications.
- Low-power integrated circuits and wireless communications.
- Alarge number of intelligent sensors collect raw data and createvaluable services by processing, analyzing, and spreading data.
- Challengesare related to limited processing capability and storage, and sensordata sharing for multiple device/system cooperation.
IoT Cloud Computing Support
- ForAdvanced IoT services, IoT networks may need to collect, analyze, andprocess segments of raw data and turn it in into operational controlinformation.
- Advanced IoT services will need support for cloud computing.
- Numerous IoT connections will be made to various devices and sensors.
- ManyIoT devices will not have a PC or smartphone level of sufficient dataprocessing capability or interoperability functionality.
Cloud Computing
- IoT applications will need support from a reliable, fast, and agile computing platform.
- IoTdevices can overcome a lack of software, firmware, memory storage,hardware, and data processing capability using cloud computing.
- The following are cloud service models:
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
That's all from this chapter, hope you enjoyed it.