Internet of Things: Vision, Applications and Challenges

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) being a powerful integration of radio-frequency identification (RFID), sensor and wireless devices, has given a challenging yet powerful opportunity to shape the existing systems thereby making them intelligent. Abounding applications are developed in the recent years. Millions of physical objects are expected to be connected to form a system creating wide distribution network inferencing meaningful deductions from raw data.
This survey paper is an effort to describe IoT along with its vision, possible application domains and key challenges faced in making IoT a reality. This paper presents current state-of-art of IoT in a systematic manner.

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Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Procedia Computer Science 132 (2018) 1263–1269
1877-0509 © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Data Science
(ICCIDS 2018).
10.1016/j.procs.2018.05.042
10.1016/j.procs.2018.05.042
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientic committee of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and
Data Science (ICCIDS 2018).
1877-0509
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect
Procedia Computer Science 00 (2018) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
1877-0509© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and
Data Science (ICCIDS 2018).
International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Data Science (ICCIDS 2018)
Internet of Things: Vision, Applications and Challenges
Rishika Mehtaa , Jyoti Sahnib, Kavita Khannac
aThe Northcap University, Gurugram
b The Northcap University, Gurugram
cThe Northcap University, Gurugram
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) being a powerful integration of radio-frequency identification (RFID), sensor and wireless devices, has
given a challenging yet powerful opportunity to shape the existing systems thereby making them intelligent. Abounding
applications are developed in the recent years. Millions of physical objects are expected to be connected to form a system
creating wide distribution network inferencing meaningful deductions from raw data.
This survey paper is an effort to describe IoT along with its vision, possible application domains and key challenges faced in
making IoT a reality. This paper presents current state-of-art of IoT in a systematic manner.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and
Data Science (ICCIDS 2018).
Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), near field communications, radio frequency identification (RFID), wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensors
and Actuators;
1. Introduction
Today, more than two billion people are using the Internet to send and receive the e-mails, to access the web
content, to use social networking and to do a lot more activities. With time, a lot of people will be having access to
the vast available information, taking Internet to a higher level where gadgets and smart devices will be connecting,
communicating, computing and coordinating with each-other. It is clear that, within the next few years, the Internet
will grow as a huge network of networks and networked objects. Valuable information and services will always be
available, making it easier to design newer applications, introducing newer methods of working; newer methods of
communicating; newer methods of entertainment; thus, leading to newer ways of living.
* Corresponding author: Rishika Mehta
E-mail address: rishikamehta@ncuindia.edu
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect
Procedia Computer Science 00 (2018) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
1877-0509© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and
Data Science (ICCIDS 2018).
International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Data Science (ICCIDS 2018)
Internet of Things: Vision, Applications and Challenges
Rishika Mehtaa , Jyoti Sahnib, Kavita Khannac
aThe Northcap University, Gurugram
b The Northcap University, Gurugram
cThe Northcap University, Gurugram
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) being a powerful integration of radio-frequency identification (RFID), sensor and wireless devices, has
given a challenging yet powerful opportunity to shape the existing systems thereby making them intelligent. Abounding
applications are developed in the recent years. Millions of physical objects are expected to be connected to form a system
creating wide distribution network inferencing meaningful deductions from raw data.
This survey paper is an effort to describe IoT along with its vision, possible application domains and key challenges faced in
making IoT a reality. This paper presents current state-of-art of IoT in a systematic manner.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and
Data Science (ICCIDS 2018).
Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), near field communications, radio frequency identification (RFID), wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensors
and Actuators;
1. Introduction
Today, more than two billion people are using the Internet to send and receive the e-mails, to access the web
content, to use social networking and to do a lot more activities. With time, a lot of people will be having access to
the vast available information, taking Internet to a higher level where gadgets and smart devices will be connecting,
communicating, computing and coordinating with each-other. It is clear that, within the next few years, the Internet
will grow as a huge network of networks and networked objects. Valuable information and services will always be
available, making it easier to design newer applications, introducing newer methods of working; newer methods of
communicating; newer methods of entertainment; thus, leading to newer ways of living.
* Corresponding author: Rishika Mehta
E-mail address: rishikamehta@ncuindia.edu

1264 Rishika Mehta et al. / Procedia Computer Science 132 (2018) 1263–1269
2 Rishika Mehta/ Procedia Computer Science 00 (2018) 000–000
In this scenario, the concept of Internet will diminish, giving rise to the new concept of connected ‘smart’ devices
[1]. The IoT will shape the Internet in such a way that it will materialize machine-to-machine (M2M) learning [2].
The Internet infrastructure will exist as a strong backbone.
The restructuring will take place by making physical devices ‘smart’ thereby, making them capable of
doing things on their own, thus, giving rise to ‘Internet of things.’ The IoT aims to make the use of smart
technologies by connecting things anytime to accomplish anything at any place. The IoT concept came into
existence in 1998 and the term Internet of Things was introduced by Kevin Ashton in 1999 [30].
IoT basically allows for independent yet secure connection for the interaction of real world devices [3]. The
IoT reduces physical work by automating day to day chores [4]. The objects which are connected to Internet are
growing rapidly. The smart phones embed various sensors and actuators which sense the information, perform
computation on that data, and transmit the valuable data thus gathered with the help of Internet [5]. By using such
network with various devices embedding the sensors, we will be able to create various newer applications that will
lead to convincing benefits [6].
The smart objects in IoT can be identified uniquely. These devices have Radio -Frequency Identification
(RFID) tags or bar-codes which are sensed by the sensor devices [6]. The sensors share the collected data over the
Internet for processing by the processing unit. The processing result is communicated to decision making and action
invoking system to invoke the appropriate action.
This paper discusses the current IoT scenario with its background, the primitive architecture of IoT,
possible futuristic applications and the key challenges. The paper organization is as follows. Section I gave the
introduction. Section II briefly describes the background and scope of IoT including the vision of IoT. Section III
shows the basic architecture of IoT. Section IV discusses various futuristic applications of IoT. Section V discusses
the key challenges and Section VI concludes the paper.
2. Background and Scope
2.1. Background Information
IOT can be contemplated as a comprehensive network framework consisting of various connected real-world
objects, which depend on sensory, communication, networking, and information processing technologies [19]. The
base technology for IOT is RFID which works by allowing microchips to transfer identifying data to the reader via
wireless medium. Through RFID, any person can analyze, trace, and monitor the objects connected with RFID tags
[20]. Other fundamental technology being Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), mainly works on intelligent sensors
for sensing and monitoring. RFID finds its application in transportation of goods to consumers, production of
pharmaceutical goods, and retail since 1980s [21, 22] and WSN applies to traffic, healthcare and industrial
monitoring [23, 24]. The advancement in both the technologies accelerate the growth of IoT. A lot of other
technologies and devices including barcodes, location-based service, SoA, near field communication, Wimax,
ZigBee, cloud computing etc. are also getting used to make a comprehensive network to empower IoT [25]-[29]
(refer Fig 1).
Fig 1: Technologies empowering IoT [22]

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2.2 IoT Vision
Various definitions of IoT co-exist due to the fact that everyone gives it a meaning according to their own
perspective leading to obvious fuzziness. The definition is a mix of two terms-Internet and Things. The former gives
it a network-oriented vision whereas the latter one pushes it towards objects which are combined to get settled in a
single architecture. IoT signifies “world-wide network of interconnected objects uniquely addressable based on
standard communication protocols” [11]. The biggest challenge in IoT is to uniquely identify each object in parallel
with representation and storage of the information that is exchanged among the objects.
The three visions of IoT [8] are shown in fig 2:
1. Things Oriented Vision
2. Internet Oriented Vision
3. Semantic Oriented Vision
Fig 2: Vision of IoT [8]
A. Things Oriented Vision
In this vision, objects are tracked by sensors and technologies using RFID [27]. Each object is uniquely identified by
Electronic Product Code (EPC). The data is collected through sensors and sensor based embedded system. This
vision depends on RFID-based sensor networks and other sensor-based networks which integrate technologies based
on RFID, sensing, computing devices and the global connectivity.
B. Internet Oriented Vision
The internet-oriented vision sees the various physical devices interacting with each other. The sensor-based objects
can be determined uniquely and their whereabouts can be regularly monitored. These smart embedded objects can
be considered as microcomputers with computing resources.
C. Semantic Oriented Vision
This vision states that the data collected through sensors will be huge. Thus, the collected data is processed
effectively. The raw data is processed in order to make it consistent and least redundant which is useful for better
representations and interpretation.
From things perspective, IoT focuses on the integration of smart devices or objects in a single architecture,
where things being RFID tags, the Internet perspective gives IoT a network-oriented meaning. As IP being the
worldwide accepted protocol to connect the various communicating objects, it has the power to make IoT a reality.

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Lastly, the number of objects that will be connected through IoT will be huge in number, so, the issues related to
representation, storage, interconnection, search and management of the collected information will be quite
challenging. To tackle this, semantic technologies will bring about the solutions for the vast information ge nerated
by IoT.
3. IoT architecture
The IoT associates trillions of objects or devices which will generate a lot of traffic and to handle that huge data
storage will be needed [12]. The issues like security and privacy also needs to be ensured when proposing the new
architecture for IoT addressing scalability, interoperability, reliability, QoS etc. The primitive architecture of IoT is
proposed in [10] and [12].
Fig 3: IoT Architecture [10] [12]
The five-layered architecture of IoT which is shown in Fig.3 is discussed below:
1) Perception Layer: The Perception layer also called as ‘Device Layer’, is composed of physical devices and
sensors. The sensors include RFID or barcodes based on identification of the objects. This layer works on
identifying and collecting the information via sensor devices. Based on the kind of sensors we prefer to gather the
data, the data can be geographic, temperature-specific, orientation-specific etc. The gathered data is thus sent to
Network layer for its secure transmission and processing.
2) Network Layer: The Network layer is also known to be the ‘Transmission Layer’. This layer guarantees for the
secure transfer of the information gathered from sensors to the information processing system. The transmission
media can be wired or wireless and technology can be 3G, UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, infrared, ZigBee, etc based on
the sensors. Thus, the Network layer is responsible for transmitting the information from Device layer to
Middleware layer.
3) Middleware Layer: Each smart object communicates with other devices only if they implement same service
type. It takes the data from Network layer and stores it in the database. It processes information and decides the
solution by analyzing the results.
4) Application Layer: This layer is responsible for managing the application globally depending on the processing of
objects’ information in the Middleware layer. The various applications of IoT are smart health, smart agriculture,
smart home, smart city, smart transportation, etc.
5) Business Layer: This layer manages the complete IoT system in terms of the applications and services. It makes
business models, graphs, flowcharts etc. on the basis of data obtained from previous layer. Depending on the result
analysis, this layer will predict the future actions.

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4. Applications
IoT applications are still in their nascent stages. However, its use is spreading expeditiously. As for now, some
applications are getting developed in the field of healthcare, logistics, inventory control, supply & chain,
transportation, security and privacy. A brief idea about the possible applications of IoT in various domains is
discussed below.
1) Natural calamities prediction: The sensors through their interaction, coordination and simulation can predict the
natural calamities like earthquake, hurricane, volcanic eruptions etc. so as to initiate feasible actions in time.
2) Water shortage detection: The IoT can find out the shortage of water at possible locations. The group of sensors,
along with simulation tasks not only monitors water intercession but may also be able to identify the sewage release
in the water stream leading to accidental hazards with severe after-effects.
3) Smart Homes: The IoT has the capability of making the homes smart by managing energy consumption,
providing interaction among the home appliances, spotting emergencies, ensuring safety etc.
4) Healthcare: The IoT can be of great help in medical area for enhancing the lives of many by monitoring metrics
associated with health, managing medicines in inventory etc.
5) Smart farming: Through a group of sensors different land requirements can be identified and particular actions
can be taken as per the need of the land. Various use case scenarios include smart wrapping up of seeds, fertilizers to
cater to particular environmental conditions. Smart farming will help in adopting better farming practices by getting
acquainted with the various possible land conditions and climate instability. This will drastically enhance the
productivity by averting the incorrect farming practices.
6) Smart Transport: The intelligent network of sensors will be able to efficiently monitor the traffic and can
implement fascinating and much needed feature of ceaseless electronic highway toll, law enforcement, monitoring
rules breaching by vehicles, decreasing environmental pollution, alleviating traffic etc.
7) Smart Cities: The IoT also finds its application in designing smart cities e.g., observing and controlling the good
air quality, identifying emergency routes etc.
8) Smart Security: The IoT sensors also find their applications in the area of security e.g. inspection of spaces,
maintaining infrastructure and equipments, alarming etc.
The IoT applications will keep on evolving with time but at the same time it has to overcome many
challenges pertaining to privacy, complexity, sufficient spectrum for associating large number of smart devices etc.
A number of possible key challenges are listed in the section below.
5. Key Challenges
The IoT can give a new dimension to the Internet and can contribute to extensive financial gains but it also faces
some challenges [9, 28]. Some of them are listed below.
1) Unique Identity Management: The IoT aims at connecting millions and billions of physical objects which should
be uniquely identifiable over the Internet. Thus, proper identity management scheme is needed which will
dynamically assign and manage unique names for a wide range of physical devices.
2) Standardization and Interoperability: Many vendors introduce their devices having different technologies not
known to everyone. There should be a standardized mechanism to ensure interoperability of all the physical and
sensor devices.
3) Privacy of the Information: The IoT makes the use of various object identification technologies like RFID, 2D-
barcodes etc. As each object will be carrying these tags, it is extremely important to ensure privacy of the
information thus, preventing unauthorized access.
4) Safety of physical devices: The objects irrespective of their geographic location need to be prevented from
physical damage, unauthorized access in order to ensure its safety.
5) Confidentiality of information: The sensor devices transmit the information to the information processing system
over the transmission media. The sensors should follow the encryption mechanisms to ensure data integrity at the
information processing system.

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6) Network security: The sensor devices send data either over wired or wireless transmission media. The
transmission unit should tackle with this huge data without any loss of information and should incorporate strict
measures so that no external intervention occurs.
6. Conclusion
The rising idea of Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential of improving our day-to-day life by interconnecting the
smart objects, technologies, and applications. IoT would automate nearly all activities around us. This paper
presented an outline of this very concept, technologies empowering it, its vision and various possible applications.
This should impart sound knowledge and provide a base for researchers who are keen to have an insight
into IoT, key technologies and its architecture. Further, the possible applications have also been discussed. The
challenges are also briefly discussed to give an insight about the issues faced in making IoT a reality.
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