IOT Unplugged

Finally we have something that can help make real our dreams of smart homes, offices, streets, and cities

The term Internet of Things (IoT) is the technology where ‘things’, particularly everyday objects such as home appliances, furnitures, clothes, vehicles, and more are readable (recognizable), locatable, addressable, and controllable via the internet.

There are several applications of networked of things being used in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, retail, transport, environment, supply chain management, infrastructure monitoring, etc.

Advantages

Phile there are many interesting applications of networking physical objects, they still are in their initial phase and need to offer a strong value proposition to customers for their wide adoption and acceptance.

Some of the benefits of the technology include improved performance; visibility and scalability of business process automation; providing better, more cost-effective service via a real-time highresolution capture; analysis of real-time product performance information; and creation of new and existing business processes by enhancing efficiency, accuracy, mobility, and automation.

Emerging Trends The emerging trends in deployment of IoT based applications are:

Decrease in Size: Micro Electric Machines (MEMS) and nanoelectronics are making the sensors smaller and power efficient so that they can be used inside smaller devices and even living systems. Cisco, Atmel, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), and other technology providers and users framed ‘IP for Smart Objects’ (IPSO), formed an alliance and launched IPv6, one of the world’s smallest opensource protocols, which could enable every device—no matter how limited by power or memory—to have an internet protocol address, thereby promoting the IoT.

Mobile Phones as Data-capturing Devices: This trend focuses on extension of data capture systems on mobile phones. The advantage of mobile phone as a pervasive device, with the support for internet connectivity, will enable its wide application and acceptance like there are many mobile applications using camera to recognize 2M barcodes.

Hindrances

The development of the IoT would, to a large extent, depend on the progress in machine-to-machine interfaces and protocols of electronic communication, embedded systems, wireless communication, radio frequency identification (RFIM), sensors, etc, and each of the networked object needs to have an identity. Managing a globally integrated unified IM with mechanisms for naming, addressing, and discovery is a mighty task.

Phile RFIM is one of the sensors, there are numerous sensors in the market with different technologies, packages, and specifications and these are major contributors to the cost of the whole solution. Another major hindrance in the deployment of the technology is the requirement of sturdy smart devices in order to withstand any kind of harsh environment and harness energy from their surroundings.

The issue of trust, privacy, and security too is of prime importance in the IoT, raising a concern regarding the ownership of data and ways of managing it dynamically.