IoT Fundamentals: Definitions, Architectures, Challenges, and Promises

The Internet is everywhere and touched almost every corner of the globe affecting our lives in previously unimagined ways. As a living entity, the Internet is constantly evolving, and now, an era of widespread connectivity through various smart devices (i.e., things) that connect with the Internet has begun. This paradigm change is generally referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). Welcoming IoT will bring significant benefits to economies and businesses as it enables greater innovation and productivity. On the other hand, the rapid adoption of IoT presents new challenges regarding connectivity, security, data processing, and scalability. Because the IoT world is vast and versatile, it cannot be viewed as a single technology. IoT looks more like an umbrella covering many protocols, technologies, and concepts that depend on specific industries. In this chapter, we will seek to look at the history of IoT, more clearly define it, and review its terms and concepts. We will also review vertical IoT markets and higher-level use cases that have successfully adopted IoT solutions. We will also discuss the details of the business implications, business models, and opportunities of IoT. Finally, the complete IoT stack and reference architectures from smart objects, to the networks, to the cloud, and finally the applications where information is leveraged are explained.