Internet of Things (IoT) Training Instruction: Incredible Technology Behind the Devices
The Internet of Things refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other internet-enabled devices and systems.
With an estimated 50 billion IoT devices being connected soon, much has been written about IoT smart cities, smart grids, smart meters, autonomous cars and programmable home appliances. But often overlooked is the advanced technology that goes into the connectivity that allows for devices to “talk” to one another.
An IoT ecosystem consists of web-enabled smart devices that use embedded processors, sensors and communication hardware to collect, send and act on data they acquire from their environments.
IoT devices share the sensor data they collect by connecting to an IoT gateway or other edge device where data is either sent to the cloud to be analyzed or analyzed locally. Sometimes, these devices communicate with other related devices and act on the information they get from one another.
The devices do most of the work without human intervention, although people can interact with the devices -- for instance, to set them up, give them instructions or access the data.
The connectivity, networking and communication protocols used with these web-enabled devices largely depend on the specific IoT applications deployed. For engineers and application developers there is a large choice of connectivity options. Some communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 2G/3G/4G cellular are well-known. Others are emerging such as Thread as an alternative for home automation applications, and Whitespace TV technologies, which are being implemented in major cities for wider area IoT-based use cases.
Depending on the application, factors such as range, data requirements, security and power demands and battery life will dictate the choice of one or some form of combination of technologies.
There are also several layers of IoT protocols that have choices within choices. For instance, IPv6 is an internet layer protocol for packet-switched internetworking and provides end-to-end datagram transmission across multiple IP networks.
The there’s uIP, an open source TCP/IP stack capable of being used with tiny 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers. It was initially developed by Adam Dunkels of the "Networked Embedded Systems" group at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, licensed under a BSD style license, and further developed by a wide group of developers.
The Datagram Transport Layer (DTLS) protocol provides communications privacy for datagram protocols. The protocol allows client/server applications to communicate in a way that is designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering or message forgery. The DTLS protocol is based on the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol and provides equivalent security guarantees.
Want to know more about IoT protocols? Or maybe you or your organization need a good, solid fundamental IoT course. Tonex offers several different IoT courses covering everything from fundamentals to Industry 4.0 and cybersecurity issues.
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