The Internet of things enabling technologies, platforms, and use cases

  The Internet of things enabling technologies, platforms, and use cases

The recent announcements and articulations clearly show that there is a greater awareness and overwhelming acceptance that the future undoubtedly belongs to the Internet of Things (IoT). Hence university professors and IT industry professionals are in unison in unearthing pioneering technologies and toolsets to set everything right for the dreamed IoT era. A variety of concerted endeavors by different stakeholders is to substantially speed up the establishment and sustenance of the IoT-inspired smarter planet vision in a systematic and streamlined manner. In worldwide academic institutions and research labs, IoT has become the subject of deeper study and intensive research to explore and experiment any IoT-associated concerns and challenges and to expound viable and venerable solutions to boost the confidence of end users. There are conferences and confluences aplenty across the globe in order to accentuate and articulate the grandiose distinctions of the fast blossoming concept of the IoT.

This book has been consciously crafted with the sincere intention of telling all about the proven, promising, and potential IoT realization technologies and tools. A couple of chapters have been specially incorporated for clearly decoding and describing some of the prominent and dominant use cases across different industry verticals. Security, being brandished as the most inhibiting factor for IoT, is given extra thrust in this book in order to explain the nitty-gritty of security risks and vulnerabilities and to detail the path-breaking solution approaches, algorithms, and accomplishments.

Chapter 1 is exclusively written to decisively decipher the IoT conundrum. The IoT journey has been enumerated with finer details in order to empower prospective readers with the right and relevant knowledge so that they can easily understand the subsequent chapters without much difficulty. All the trends and transitions happening in the IoT space are illustrated in this chapter to showcase how the disruptive and transformative IoT notion is to significantly enhance the care, choice, comfort, convenience, and connectivity of people in the days to unfurl.

Chapter 2 is titled “Realization of IoT Ecosystem Using Wireless Technologies.” In the first half of this chapter, we have discussed some of the key wireless technologies that have evolved or are evolving in order to support the requirements that are specific to an IoT system. Some of the protocols and technologies that we have discussed in this section are 5G, NFC, UWB, and ISO 18000 7 DASH7. In the second half of the chapter, we have tried to focus on low power wide area networking (LPWAN) technologies that are prominently used for interconnection of devices and applications in the IoT ecosystem. Some of the prominent ones discussed in this chapter are Sigfox, Weightless, Nwave, Ingenu, and LoRa.

Chapter 3 is titled “Infrastructure and Service Discovery Protocols for the IoT Ecosystem.” In this chapter, we have elucidated reference architecture for the IoT ecosystem. Based on this reference architecture, we have explained the various IoT infrastructure protocols, including RPL, IEEE 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, Bluetooth Low Energy, EPCglobal, LTE-A,Z-Wave, and ZigBee.
In the second half of the chapter, we have explained the various service discovery protocols, including DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD), multicast Domain Name System (mDNS), and Simple Service Discovery Protocol (part of UPnP).

Integration and orchestration (Chapter 4) are the key tasks for the attainment of originally envisaged benefits of the IoT idea. There are innumerable innovations, disruptions, and transformations in the information and communication technologies (ICT) space these days. The prominent ones include digitization, distribution, industrialization, consumerization, and compartmentalization (virtualization and containerization). The result is that there are trillions of miniaturized sensors, billions of connected devices, and millions of software applications and services. Further, with the number of data sources climbing and device ecosystem growing rapidly, there are highly synchronized and integrated platforms for design, development, debugging, deployment, delivery, and even for decommissioning. The cloud movement has brought in a bevy of advancements in order to have highly optimized and organized IT environments. In such a highly distributed and decentralized environment, integration middleware standards and solutions become handy in seamlessly and spontaneously integrating all kinds of sensors, actuators, instruments, appliances, machines, equipment, utensils, tools, and so on along with remotely held software applications and data sources.

Chapter 5 is for the erudition of the freshly crafted and intelligent platforms for quickly and easily implementing IoT services and applications. All kinds of integration, orchestration, access, security, governance, enrichment, intermediation, and connectivity services are being given a part of the platform in order to lessen the developers’ workloads. A single click then takes any implemented application to be executed to the deployment environment. Thus, IoT application enablement platforms (AEPs) are an essential thing for the forthcoming IoT-induced knowledge era. Similarly, IoT data analytics platforms help extract hidden patterns, pragmatic tips, useful associations, fresh possibilities and viable opportunities, actionable insights, possible risks, and so on out of accumulated IoT data.
There is no doubt that cloud environments emerge as the one-stop IT infrastructures for hosting, managing, and delivering business and IT workloads. For anytime anywhere any device any network any media access of IoT applications, services, and data, clouds are being positioned as the best environment. In this chapter, we have explained the uniqueness of cloud infrastructures for the ensuing era of IoT. The cloud journey is discussed in detail with all the appropriate information in order to enhance the understanding of the key contributions of the cloud paradigm for the intended success of the IoT to our readers.
Data analytics is the most important aspect of any industry vertical to be steered in the right direction to the desired destination. Data are a strategic asset. Any organization has to take data capture seriously and on subjecting the collected data into a variety of investigations in order to squeeze out usable and useful information that in turn enable decision makers and business executives to make correct decisions in time. IoT data originating from sensors and actuators have to be gathered, cleansed, processed, queried, analyzed, and mined in order to retrieve beneficial knowledge that can be given to IT and business entities to take appropriate decisions to automate most of the manual tasks. This chapter is specially crafted to express and expose all that can be accomplished through analytics platforms that can be cloud-hosted.

Chapter 8 introduces the fog or edge computing model. With the realization that faster response and real-time insights are two essential things for realizing highly competent and cognitive environments, the idea of edge computing is flourishing and is being continuously nourished by various product vendors, including IBM. There are different techniques and edge platforms for accentuating the new concept of fog computing. We have illustrated how edge clouds are being formed out of reasonably powerful edge devices in order to do service integration and orchestration. Further, how a large amount of IoT device data can be partitioned into smaller and easily manageable data modules to be allocated to those devices participating and contributing for the device cluster/cloud is discussed.

Chapter 9 is titled “Envisioning Futuristic Smart Airports Using IoT Integration.” In this chapter, we have focused on the usage of the IoT concept to build futuristic intelligent airports. Various components of the IoT ecosystem that form the core pillars of the intelligent airport are the following: mobile devices, mobile technology, wearables, RFID/sensors, and beacons. The integration of each of these components into the airport ecosystem is examined in detail in this chapter.
Ample use cases and real-life examples are provided in this chapter in order to provide an interesting reading experience for the readers.

Chapter 10 is titled “Envisioning Smart Health Care Systems in a Connected World.” In this chapter, we have focused on the IoT use cases for the health care industry. The foundation technologies that are required for using IoT in the health care sector, challenges posed by the use of IoT for the health care sector, and the future promises of IoT for the health care sector are also discussed in detail in this chapter. In the second half of the chapter, we have focused on how the IoT supporting technologies, that is, cloud computing and big data analytics, are used in the health care industry.

Chapter 11 is titled “Smart Use Cases of IoT.” In this chapter, we have uncovered three broad categories of use cases pertaining to the IoT ecosystem: industrial use cases, consumer use cases, and governance use cases. Under industrial use cases, we have mainly focused on two broad use cases: smart energy and smart transportation systems. Under consumer use cases, we have mainly focused on the following: smart homes, smart buildings, and smart education systems. Under governance use case, we have mainly considered smart cities.

Chapter 12 is titled “Security Management of an IoT Ecosystem.” In this chapter, we have examined the various security requirements of the IOT infrastructure. We have also discussed the security threats that exist in each IoT component. Starting with the cloud platform, the threats that exist for each of the underlying platforms such as big data and mobile devices are examined in detail. The various ways and means to tackle the security challenges are also discussed elaborately in the chapter. The different types of use cases that form a part of an IOT ecosystem are smart buildings, intelligent transportation systems, smart water systems, smart grids, and so on. The security threats for some of these applications and the techniques to safeguard them are also discussed in this chapter. This chapter concludes with a framework that can be adopted in order to build and maintain a safe and secure IT framework.

Hopefully, this book is an informative and inspiring one for our readers.