What Internet of Things is ?

The Internet of Things (IoT) encapsulates a vision of a world in which billions of objects with embedded intelligence, communication means, and sensing and actuation capabilities will connect over IP (Internet Protocol) networks. Our current Internet has undergone a fundamental transition, from hardware-driven (computers, fibers, and Ethernet cables) to market-driven (Facebook, Amazon) opportunities. This has come about due to the interconnection of seemingly disjoint intranets with strong horizontal software capabilities.

The Internet of Things or, as commonly referred to and now universally used, IoT has two keywords: things and Internet. The very idea of IoT consists allowing things to connect to the (existing) Internet, thus allowing the generation of information and, on the reverse, the interaction of the virtual world with the physical world. Internet of Things (IoT) is an infrastructure of interconnected physical entities, systems and information resources together with the intelligent services which can process and react information of both the physical world and the virtual world and can influence activities in the physical world.

IoT is a system of interrelated computing devices or objects which?have the ability to transfer the data over a network without requiring any human to?human or human to computer interaction uniquely addressable, based on standard?communication protocol. It is a giant network of connected things, capturing the data about the way they are?used and the environment around them. When we speak about the “Things” in IoT, these are objects not precisely?identifiable.

The sensors are used in the devices and objects and these feed the data to various?IoT platforms. Further, IoT platforms are used to gather the pinpointed information, detect?patterns. Thus, with the above process the IoT helps the organizations and institutions in?reducing the cost through improved processes efficiency, asset utilization and?productivity. Different names of IoT include: Internet of Everything, Smarter Planet, Machine to Machine (M2M), The Fog, Tsensors (Trillion Sensors), The Industrial Internet, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT).

Internet of Things (IoT) is envisioned as the smart network of sensors and things/devices interconnected mutually as well as embedded in other objects that can be recognized, read, localized, positioned, monitored, administered and/or controlled through the Internet and its stipulated wireless protocols for resource-constrained environments involving technologies such as IEEE 802.15.4 to sense communication capabilities and 6LoWPAN for IPv6 address allocating capabilities. Smart homes/offices is a specific example, having its own environment/climatic control, monitoring and prediction system called HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning). Human life quality improvement is the fundamental goal of IoT in the application domains such as healthcare, transportation, industry automation, that require prompt response in disastrous situations where humans have difficulty making decisions. The proficiency of IoT lies in its Internet capability to interconnect heterogeneous devices billions to trillions in number, that critically requires a compatible, interoperable, scalable and flexible layered architecture. Therefore, a converged abstract reference model of IoT architecture is yet to be proposed based on resource-constrained WSN and IoT devices.

Internet of Things (IoT) is being witnessed as the technological breakthrough to monitor and predict phenomena such as climate, weather, environments, smart living, smart cities, smart industry, smart energy, smart agriculture, smart health and smart medicine.

The pervasively employed resource-limited smart wireless/mobile objects and things augmenting Internet infrastructure and applications have been transforming the entire ecosystem of man-machine interaction. This IoT revolution termed as fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) paved the path towards Internet of Everything, Networks, Applications and Computing Systems (IoENACS), briefly termed as the Internet of Everything (IoE) or Internet of X (IoX). This apparent IoT growth is ultimately culminating towards the Cloud Computing and Communication Paradigm generically coined as Web of Everything (WoE) or WoX. IoX landscape encompasses IoSL, IoSC, IoSI, IoSH, IoSE, IoSA, IoMT, etc.

Global IoT market to grow to 24.1 billion devices in 2030

In fact, almost every object around us would be ubiquitously connected to the Internet, identifying, sensing, collecting, computing and exchanging data with other IoT devices on the cloud. At the end of 2019 there were 7.6 billion active IoT devices, a figure which will grow to 24.1 billion in 2030, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11%, according to new research published today by Transforma Insights (https://transformainsights.com/news/iot-market-24-billion-usd15-trillion-revenue-2030).

Short range technologies, such as WiFi, Bluetooth and Zigbee, will dominate connections, accounting for 72% in 2030, largely unchanged compared to the 74% it accounts for today. Public networks, which are dominated by cellular networks, will grow from 1.2 billion connections to 4.7 billion in 2030, growing market share from 16% to 20%. Private networks account for the balance of connections, 10% in 2019 and 8% in 2030.

In terms of revenue, the total IoT market in 2019 was worth USD465 billion, a figure which will rise upto USD1.5 trillion in 2030. Services, including connectivity, will account for 66% of spend, with the remainder accounted for by hardware, in the form of dedicated IoT devices, modules and gateways.

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