Internet of Things (IoT)

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Internet of Things (IoT) is the connection of physical devices, vehicles (also known as “smart devices” and “connected devices”), buildings and other components embedded with actuators, sensors, software, electronics, and network connectivity that enables these objects to exchange and collect data. 

The Internet of things (IoT) distantly managed or performs an intelligent task on objects through the present network infrastructure, providing opportunities for more direct incorporation of the physical world into computer-based systems, and resulting in greater accuracy, efficiency, and economic advantage and also to minimize human intervention. 

When IoT is amplified with actuators and sensors, the technology turns into an example of a more general category of cyber-physical systems, which also includes technologies such as intelligent transportation, smart grids, smart cities, virtual power plants, and smart homes. 

Everything is uniquely recognizable via its integrated computer system, although is able to inter-operate in the current Internet infrastructure. Professionals have conducted their research and estimated that IOT will be around 30 billion objects by 2020.

 

Generally, the IOT is required to provide sophisticated connectivity of services, systems, and devices which goes far above machine to machine (M2M) communications and depends on a lot of applications, domains, and protocols. 

The connectivity of these integrated devices (including smart objects) should lead to automation in almost all areas, while as well allowing advanced applications such as smart grid and extending to places like smart cities.

 

When referring to “Things” in the sense of IOT, it can be referred to broad range of devices including cars equipped with built-in sensors, heart monitoring implants,

Whether it's devices for DNA analysis of pathogens, food or environmental monitoring, biochip transponders for pets, or devices used in the field to support firefighters in rescue and search operations, legal experts believe a "thing" should be defined as "an inseparable mixture of data, software, data hardware and services."

These devices use a variety of existing technologies to collect valuable data and automatically exchange data between other devices. 

Existing market examples include smart home devices which could also be referred to as home automation such as lighting control and automation, heating such as thermostat, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) appliances and system including air purifiers, ovens or freezers /refrigerators which use Wi-Fi for remote monitoring.

However, IoT is as well expected to produce huge amounts of data from different places, with the resultant requirement for rapid accumulation of the data, and an increase in the demand to process, index and store such data more efficiently. IoT is one of the platforms of today’s Smart Energy Management Systems and Smart City.

The term "Internet Things" was invented in 1999 by Kevin Ashton at Procter & Gamble (later the Automatic Identification Center at MIT).

Currently, computers and hence the Internet are completely dependent on people for information. Nearly all of the approximately 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet was originally created and captured by humans by pressing capture buttons, typing, taking digital pictures, and scanning barcodes.

The issue is that human being has limited attention, time and precision, which indicates they are not very good at capturing real-world data. 

If we had computers that knew everything we needed using the data they collected without any assistance from us, we can count and track the whole process and drastically minimize wastages, costs and losses We would know when to replace, fix or recalling of things and whether they were fresh or exceeded the best. “

IPv6’s enormous increase in address space is an essential issue in the enhancement of the IoT.  

The address space expansion indicates that we can “allocate an IPV6 address to each atom on the surface of the planet, and yet have adequate addresses left to do other 100+ earths.” Similarly, people can simply allocate an IP address to all “thing” on the earth. 

An increase in the amount of upstream data the nodes generate and also the number of smart nodes is required to raise new concerns about data security, data sovereignty, and privacy. 

Practical applications of IoT technology may be seen in several organization and industries today, including transportation, precision agriculture, energy, building management, and healthcare. 

Connectivity alternatives for application developers and electronics engineers working on systems and products for the Internet of Things include: