Internet of Things: It's the network, stupid!

By Dr. Sabrina Sicari

Internet-of-Things (IoT) is a deep technological  revolution that represents the future of computing and communication. As  Metcalfe's law states (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law) the "value" of a system is proportional to the square of the number of interconnected nodes, Internet of Things satisfies such rule allowing people of being connected anytime, anywhere and with anything, exponentially increasing the number of connections. Such distributed capability of networking with everything, and not only with anyone, is properly the core feature of IoT and represents the main cause that introduces a revolution in the ICT paradigm. As starting point, the technical vision that inspired this new communication scenario has been the concepts that dominant the ICT world in the last few years: ubiquitous computing -characterized by integration of information processing into everyday objects and activities- and ambient intelligence- characterized by environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people.

Internet of Things hosts the vision of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence enhancing them by requiring a fully communication  and a complete computing capability among things.  More specifically Internet--of-Things paradigm builds on three conceptual pillars: anything communications, anything identification and anything interaction. In fact things are provided with the ability to communicate among themselves, forming large--scale networks of interconnected objects. Furthermore things are identified with a digital name; relationships among things can be specified in the digital domain whenever physical interconnection cannot be established; things have a digital identity in the cyberspace. Hence, such things can interact with the local environment, through sensing and actuation capabilities.

Then it is clear that Internet of Things is more than the natural  evolution of RFID technology. The development of Internet of Things  depends on dynamic technical innovation in number of important fields from wireless sensors to nanotechnology. More specifically technologies expected to drive the development of Internet of Things are radio-frequency identification (RFID), sensor technologies, nanotechnologies and embedded systems. A combination of all of these developments creates an Internet of Things that connects the world's objects in both a sensory and an intelligent manner. Such intelligent entities act in full interoperability and are able to self organize themselves depending on the context, circumstances or environments. If all objects of daily life, from a milk bottle to a sailing boat, are equipped with radio tags, they can be identified and managed by computers in the same way humans can. In other words the Internet--of--Things vision builds on the possibility of embedding computing and communication capabilities into daily objects.

The technologies of the Internet of Things offer immense potential to consumers, manufacturers and firms. Normally a ICT change deeply influences the market trend providing business development and defining new economical path. Internet of Things, as each important technological revolution that changes people way of life, has as first consequence an economical revolution. Internet  of Things enables pervasiveness of communication technologies in many sectors, i.e. public disaster management, industrial asset management, and personal lifestyle support, with subsequent prospects of ICT based growth and wealth creation through innovation.

Applications of pervasive networking are limitless in fact the above described features ensure a wide range of applications for Internet of Things. An interesting application scenario, for example,  is offered by public administration that is an ideal context where defines and tests the capabilities of Internet of Things. The new paradigm vision allows to save money improving the quality of service level by means of the integration of different technologies. In fact inspired by Internet of Things paradigm the  technological revolution inside public office involves building automation techniques, access control system and inventory monitoring. Notice that  the amount of  involved  devices and resources are  large and characterized by different features.

Clearly, these ground-breaking innovations involve a wide array of players including standard development organizations, national research centres, service providers, network operators, industrial partner and lead users.

Based on the aforementioned considerations, for turning Internet--of--Things into reality  new technological challenges and new research issues have to be achieved. More specifically the  development  of such new global networking platform  requires  the definition  of new architectures, new protocols and new standardization activities. In fact  technical standards are essential for an open evolving platform in order to guarantee a general agreement and a good level of service; notice that standards are required for various aspects from intercommunication and interoperation, resource management, admission control to security, user interfaces and so on.

Fig.1 The taxonomy of the main research areas relevant to in Internet--of-Things

In conclusion the research challenges may be grouped in three main areas: computing/communication/identification technology, distributed intelligence and distributed systems ( see Fig.1). In order to let the Internet--of--Things become a reality, novel technologies are necessary for embedding computing/communication and identification means into everyday objects. Moreover it needs to enabling objects to network and build a distributed system. Internet--of-Things paradigm  inherits concepts and lessons learned in pervasive computing and ambient intelligence applications, but taking them one step further in terms of scale and offered features.

Important Links:

• www.itu.int/internetofthings/

• ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/ist/docs/ka4/au_conf670306_buckley_en.pdf

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