The Future of the Internet of Things

Abstract

The significance of the Internet of Things (IoT) in current trends is continuously rising. IoT is a concept that encompasses various objects and methods of communication to exchange information. Today IoT is more a descriptive term of a vision that everything should be connected to the internet. IoT will be fundamental in the future because the concept opens up opportunities for new services and new innovations. The applications of the IoT are varied and numerous; they range from relatively simple home automation scenarios to the much more complex scenarios of interconnected smart cities. IoT is expected to dominate the future with huge amounts of content oriented traffic that is a result of intensive interactions between the millions of devices that will be available by then. The rising popularity of IoT has been accompanied by a corresponding rise in the number of challenges. In this paper we focus on the current state of IoT, possible usage scenarios and challenges that influence the adoption of the Internet of Things.

Full text

The Future of the Internet of Things
Thamer Al-Rousan
Abstract—The significance of the Internet of Things (IoT) in
current trends is continuously rising. IoT is a concept that
encompasses various objects and methods of communication to
exchange information. Today IoT is more a descriptive term of a
vision that everything should be connected to the internet. IoT
will be fundamental in the future because the concept opens up
opportunities for new services and new innovations. The
applications of the IoT are varied and numerous; they range
from relatively simple home automation scenarios to the much
more complex scenarios of interconnected smart cities. IoT is
expected to dominate the future with huge amounts of content
oriented traffic that is a result of intensive interactions between
the millions of devices that will be available by then. The rising
popularity of IoT has been accompanied by a corresponding rise
in the number of challenges. In this paper we focus on the
current state of IoT, possible usage scenarios and challenges that
influence the adoption of the Internet of Things.
Keywords—Internet of Things, smart things.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Internet is a powerful global communication medium
that provides instantaneous information across geographical,
cultural, language, and time spheres [1]. Internet is a network
of networks that consists of millions of private, public,
academic, research, business, and government networks, of
local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of
electronic, wireless and wired networking technologies [2].
The internet brought marvelous changes into our daily life
without leaving any field like day to day personal work,
health, education, research, humanity, education, tourism,
science, entertainment, government sectors, business,
communication, service, manufacturing and so on. More than
180 countries are linked into exchanges of data, information,
news and opinions. According to Internet World statistics,
there was an estimated of 326, 72, 33, 742 Internet users at
global level. This represents almost 42.7% of the total world's
population.
The next wave in the area of Internet will be Internet of
Things. In the Internet of` Things (IoT) paradigm, many of`
the things that surround us will be on the network in one form
or another.
Faculty of Science and Information Technology
Isra University, Amman, Jordan
(E-mail: thamer.rousan@iu.edu.jo)
Thing can be defined as an entity, an idea, a quality
perceived, or thought to have its own existence in the world.
When we are talking about things, they could be both Living
Things and Non-Living Things. Things, in this context, can
be people, animals, plants, birds, servers, applications,
shampoo bottles, cars, steering wheels, coffee machines,
electronic devices, park benches or just about any other
random item that comes to our mind, even which could be
vicinity dust also. Everyday objects include not only
electronic devices we encounter but also use daily, and
technologically advanced products such as equipment and
electronic gadgets, but "things" that we do not do normally
think of as electronic at all - such as food, clothing, and
furniture, materials, parts, merchandise and specialized items,
landmarks, monuments and works of art and all the
miscellany of commerce, culture and sophistication [3]. Once
something has a unique identifier, it can be tagged, assigned a
Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and monitored over a
network, automated other things and even talk too.
II. INTERNET OF THINGS
The Internet of Things is an important topic in technology
industry, policy, and engineering circles and has become
headline news in both the specialty press and the popular
media. This technology is embodied in a wide spectrum of
networked products, systems, and sensors, which take
advantage of advancements in computing power, electronics
miniaturization, and network interconnections to offer new
capabilities not previously possible [2]. An abundance of
conferences, reports, and news articles discuss and debate the
prospective impact of the ―IoT revolution‖—from new market
opportunities and business models to concerns about security,
privacy, and technical interoperability [4].
The large-scale implementation of IoT devices promises to
transform many aspects of the way we live. For consumers,
new IoT products like Internet-enabled appliances, home
automation components, and energy management devices are
moving us toward a vision of the ―smart home’’, offering
more security and energy- efficiency [5]. Other personal IoT
devices like wearable fitness and health monitoring devices
and network- enabled medical devices are transforming the
way healthcare services are delivered. This technology
promises to be beneficial for people with disabilities and the
elderly, enabling improved levels of independence and quality
of life at a reasonable cost [2]. IoT systems like networked
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vehicles, intelligent traffic systems, and sensors embedded in
roads and bridges move us closer to the idea of ―smart cities’’,
which help minimize congestion and energy consumption[6].
IoT technology offers the possibility to transform agriculture,
industry, and energy production and distribution by increasing
the availability of information along the value chain of
production using networked sensors. However, IoT raises
many issues and challenges that need to be considered and
addressed in order for potential benefits to be realized [7].
A number of companies and research organizations have
offered a wide range of projections about the potential impact
of IoT on the Internet and the economy during the next five to
ten years. Cisco, for example, projects more than 24 billion
Internet–connected objects by 2019 [9]; Morgan Stanley,
however, projects 75 billion networked devices by 2020.
Looking out further and raising the stakes higher, Huawei
forecasts 100 billion IoT connections by 2025[10]. McKinsey
Global Institute suggests that the financial impact of IoT on
the 5 global economy may be as much as $3.9 to $11.1 trillion
by 2025 [11]. While the variability in predictions makes any
specific number questionable, collectively they paint a picture
of significant growth and influence [12].
Some observers see the IoT as a revolutionary fully–
interconnected ―Smart Thing‖ of progress, efficiency, and
opportunity, with the potential for adding billions in value to
industry and the global economy. Others warn that the IoT
represents a darker world of surveillance, privacy and security
violations, and consumer lock–in. In next subsection, this
study will discuss the evolution and the concept of Smart
Things and the challenges related to IoT.
III. SMART THINGS
Smart Things make our world smarter. Smart Things are a
group of devices which can be monitored and controlled via a
hub device (central processors) and web services. Smart
Things adding support for popular connected products such as
the Belkin WeMo family of devices, Philips Hue color-
changing bulbs, and the Sonos home music system. The idea
of smart objects and the IoT was recently popularized [13].
As with those products, Smart Things users will now be able
to control and automate today's additions directly through the
Smart Things applications. The world of smart fridges, smart
washing machines, smart TV, other home appliances, smart
shoes and smart phones is already in use, but the practice of
user experience design for Internet of Things is still fairly new
concept [3]. Smart Things are one of the latest technology
launched by innovators of Kickstarter. Design companies like
IDEO and frog design are frequently asked to design products
that unify software interaction, device design and service
design - which are all the key components of Internet of
Things. The current transition of the global Internet to IPv6
will provide a virtually unlimited number of public IP
addresses able to provide bidirectional and symmetric
(Machine–Machine: M2M) access to billions of Smart
Things. Interaction and integration of Internet of Things in the
global Internet are IPv6 integration, global interoperability,
IoT - Cloud integration. In other words, how to bridge billion
of Smart Things globally, while respecting their specific
constraints [3]. Weaving Smart Things, enterprises, and
people leads to innovation in products, services and new
business models in the fourth coming years.
Smart Things are autonomous physical or digital objects
augmented with sensing, processing, acting and network
capabilities. Adding smartness to everyday things in our
world, so that our life can be more amazing. Smart Things
places the world of linked things at your fingertips. Smart
Things are more intelligent, convenient, secure, safe and
efficient. These make it easy to connect the things in our
physical world to the internet for automate, monitor, control
and have fun with them from anywhere, at any time through
any network by any one. This smartness can be done by
different embedded Internet of Things technologies like RFID,
EPC, barcode, IPv4 / IPv6, sensors, actuators, GIS, GPS, Wi-
Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, NFC, ambient intelligence, Web 3.0
and telemedicine. We call smart any physical object connected
to the web with some sensing capabilities. Its main capabilities
are [14]:
1) Detect users and the social connections between them.
2) Access user's data.
3) Infer social context according to user's network topology,
preferences and features
4) Infer social goals according to the social context and the
user model
5) Coordinate their behavior 6) Provide a context driven
output.
Smart Devices are characterized by the ability to execute
multiple, possibly concurrent, applications, supporting
different degree of mobility and customization and by
supporting intermittent remote service and operating according
to local resource constraints [15]. Smart Devices tend to be
owned, operated, and configured and under the control of
individual human users, For Example: personal computers,
smart phones, cameras, game consoles, set up boxes and other
computer peripherals, such as printers, mouse, external disk
drives. In authors prediction IoT as a composition of smart
objects that can understand and react to their environments.
Based on practical experimentation and prototyping, smart
objects are classified into Activity-aware objects, Policy–
aware objects and Process-aware objects [16]:
1) Activity-aware objects: Amount of work performed to
convert input into output.
2) Policy–aware objects: The basic protocols issued by
government or system administrator.
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3) Process-aware objects: A series of actions, motions, or
occurrences.
They also identified the smart-object design space as a
space of three dimensions: awareness, representation and
interaction [3]. The Smart Things concept has four logical
architectural layers[17]:
1) Which connect to the Smart Things Hub or in some cases
directly to the Cloud.
2) Which acts as a gateway for getting events and messages to
or from the Cloud.
3) Which provides the abstraction and intelligence layers
described above, as well as the web services that support the
presentation layer.
4) Which provides the presentation layer for smart things in
the form of mobile applications and our web IDE.
Within the Smart Things-Cloud, however there are also
four logical ―Layers‖ of the architecture [18] as well:
1) Connectivity: Which is responsible for maintaining
persistent connectivity to Smart Things Hubs, Smart Things
Mobile application.
2) Event processing and routing: This layer routes events
from hubs or devices to smart applications that are subscribed
to specific devices or events.
3) Application: This layer provides the data access layer for
data about accounts, users, and devices and is responsible for
the execution of smart applications.
4) Web Services: This layer provides the web services or
Application Programmatic Interface (API) layer that supports
both the mobile applications as well as developers who want
to integrate from an external system using the Smart Things
APIs.
A. Concepts
One of the buzzwords in the arena of Internet of Things
applications is Smart Things. These applications can be found
in our daily life right from the morning wake up to till the late
go to the bed [19]. Even in small villages, these applications
are penetrated in the form of Smart Phones. Most of us think
about ―being connected‖ in terms of electronic devices such as
servers, computers, tablets, telephones, smart phones and
physical devices shoe, brush, bed, curtain and table. Smart
Things describes a world where just about anything can be
connected and communicates in an intelligent fashion that ever
before. In other words, with the smart things, the physical
world is becoming one big information system and Big Data
Analytics (BDA) is helping in analysis for the better decisions.
Although the concept wasn't named until 1999, the Internet
of Things has been in development for decades. The first
Internet appliance was a coke machine at Carnegie Melon
University in the early 1980s [7]. Programmers working
several floors above the vending machine wrote a server
program that tracked how long it had been since a storage
column in the machine had been empty. The programmers
could connect to the machine over the Internet, check the
status of the machine and determine whether or not there
would be a cold drink awaiting them, should they decide to
make the trip down to the machine. Gradually importance of
Smart Things under the umbrella of Internet of Things is
grown up. There are various predictions about smart devices
or things connecting to the internet based on different surveys.
A report entitled 'Internet of Things [20] has predicted that
there could be up to 16 billion connected devices by the year
2020 with an average of nearly 6 devices for every person on
the planet. But IMS Research [17] forecasts that we will have
22 billion Internet connected devices by the year 2020 as
shown in figure 1.
Fig. 1. Things connected through various IoT technologies.
IV. INTERNET OF THINGS CHALLENGES
The Internet of Things raises significant challenges that
could stand in the way of realizing its potential benefits. These
challenges include [21], [22], [23], [24]: security; privacy;
interoperability and standards; legal, regulatory, and rights;
and emerging economies and development.
 Security: Many IoT implementations present new and
unique security challenges. Addressing these challenges
and ensuring security in IoT products and services must be
a fundamental priority. Users need to trust that IoT devices
and related data services are secure from vulnerabilities,
especially as this technology become more pervasive and
integrated into our daily lives. Poorly secured IoT devices
and services can serve as potential entry points for cyber-
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attack and expose user data to theft by leaving data streams
inadequately protected.
 Privacy: The full potential of the Internet of Things
depends on strategies that respect individual privacy
choices across a broad spectrum of expectations. The data
streams and user specificity afforded by IoT devices can
unlock incredible and unique value to IoT users, but
concerns about privacy and potential harms might hold
back full adoption of the Internet of Things. This means
that privacy rights and respect for user privacy
expectations are integral to ensuring user trust and
confidence in the Internet, connected devices, and related
services.
 Interoperability. Interoperability is defined as the ability of
two or more systems to exchange information and also use the
information that has been changed. Interoperability is
important in the IoT as it will contain different heterogeneous
objects, networks and thus systems that will need to work
together to create an Internet of Things.
 Legal, Regulatory and Rights: The use of IoT devices
raises many new regulatory and legal questions as well as
amplifies existing legal issues around the Internet. The
questions are wide in scope, and the rapid rate of change in
IoT technology frequently outpaces the ability of the
associated policy, legal, and regulatory structures to adapt.
 Emerging Economy and Development Issues: The Internet
of Things holds significant promise for delivering social
and economic benefits to emerging and developing
economies. This includes areas such as sustainable
agriculture, water quality and use, healthcare,
industrialization, and environmental management, among
others. As such, IoT holds promise as a tool in achieving
the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The broad scope of IoT challenges will not be unique to
industrialized countries. Developing regions also will need to
respond to realize the potential benefits of IoT. In addition, the
unique needs and challenges of implementation in less-
developed regions will need to be addressed, including
infrastructure readiness, market and investment incentives,
technical skill requirements, and policy resources.
V. CONCLUSION
The Internet of Things is playing an active role in our
everyday life, and its applications are fabulous and countless.
Projections for the impact of IoT on the Internet and economy
are impressive, with some anticipating as many as 100 billion
connected IoT devices and a global economic impact of more
than $11 trillion by 2025. The best part of Internet of Things is
that they are bringing the quality of life to human beings,
operational efficiency and handles the situations where human
being intervention is not at all possible. At the same time,
however, the Internet of Things raises significant challenges
that could stand in the way of realizing its potential benefits.
In the future, we need to focus more on Internet of Things in
terms of development, deployment, architectural, global level
standardization, and ethical issues. We also need to
concentrate on challenges associated with IoT in order for the
potential benefits for individuals, society, and the economy to
be realized.
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