A-Z survey of Internet of Things: Architectures, protocols, applications, recent advances, future directions and recommendations

Abstract Ubiquitous sensing, provided via wireless sensor networks technologies, disseminates across many domains of contemporary day living. This provides the ability to sense, process, analyze and infer environmental parameters from natural resources and delicate ecologies to urban environments. The explosion in the number of devices that are connected to the internet has led to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) technological revolution. In these technologies, actuators and sensors incorporate smoothly with the IoT environment. Furthermore, the sensed data is shared through platforms to innovate a common operating picture. This cutting-edge technology is fueled by a diversity of IoT devices that enables technologies such as near field communication, embedded actuator, sensor nodes, radio frequency identification tags, and readers. IoT has emerged from its infancy and has established a fully integrated future internet. Different visions of IoT technologies have been reviewed, however, what emerges currently in this field should be faced and displayed via the research community. In this paper, we are keen to discuss the recent worldwide implementation of IoT, where the prime enabling technologies, recent and future communication protocols and application areas that drive IoT research in the near future are explored. Furthermore, the original, recent, future enhancements of all IoT stack's protocols are extensively discussed. Middleware's definition, usages, types and open research challenges are further illustrated. Not only to this extent but rather, this survey details the simulation tools of IoT networks, IoT sensors along with their recent application areas, broad IoT research challenges, as well as in-depth analysis of IoT research history and recommendations that attract current IoT researchers' attention.