Internet of Things- Research Directions

Internet of Things :
Research Directions
https://www.youtube.com/user/dastikop
Ravindra Dastikop
http://dastikop.blogspot.in

SESSIONS
Session 1
Web Architecture for an Internet of Things
Session 2
Will IoT be Secure Enough?
Session 3
Applications of IoT
Session 4
Research Directions

AGENDA
• A brief survey of research domains
pertaining to IoT
• why IoT needs research?
• what are current research areas
identified?
• what are future trends?

A New World Order
• The use of the Internet as a global platform
for letting devices, machines and smart
objects to communicate, dialogue, compute
and coordinate is unleashing a new world
order

IoT: Concept
IoT builds on three pillars, related to ability of
smart objects to be
1. identifiable (anything identifies itself)
2. communicate (anything communicates)
3. interact ( anything interacts)
• Either among themselves,
• building network of interconnected objects or
• with end-users or other entities in the network

A New World Order
• It is predictable that, in the coming
decade, the Internet will exist as a
seamless fabric of classic networks and
networked objects.
• Class Netwoks- network of PCs
• Networked objects- IoT

A New World Order
• Content and services will be all around us,
always available, paving the way to new
applications, enabling new ways of working,
new ways of interacting (foot rug) , new ways
of entertainments and new ways of living

IoT: what does it consists of?
• The term IoT is broadly refers to both
• The global network interconnecting smart
objects by means of extended Internet
technologies
• The set of supporting technologies necessary to
realize that vision and
• The ensemble of applications and servicing
leveraging such technologies to open new
business and market opportunities

The Challenge on Hand
– Developing technologies and solutions
for enabling such a vision is the main
challenge ahead of us.

The Central Idea
The key idea behind the Internet -of-Things concept
resides in the huge potential of embedding
computing and communication capabilities into the
object of common use. Hence we need to account
for the following
• Identification
• Sensing and actuation

You May Ask Question Now
Interaction
Time

Internet of Things
Research Domains

IoT Research Technologies-1
1. Identification Technology,
2. Architecture Technology, (covered in my
second session)
3. Communication Technology,
4. Network Technology,
5. Network Discovery,
6. Software and algorithms,
7. Hardware,

IoT Research Technologies-2
• Data and Signal Processing Technology,
• Discovery and Search Engine Technologies,
• Relationship Network Management
Technologies,
• Power and Energy Storage Technologies,
• Security and Privacy Technologies (covered
in session 3),
• Standardisation.

Taxonomy of Research Areas to IoT

1. Identity Technology
In identification technology domain, further research is
needed in development of new technologies that
address the
• global ID schemes, (across platforms, devices etc)
• identity management,
• identity encoding/ encryption,
• pseudonymity,

1. Identity Technology
In identification technology domain, further research is
needed in development of new technologies that
address the
• revocable anonymity,
• authentication of parties,
• repository management using identification,
authentication and addressing schemes and
• the creation of global directory lookup services and
discovery services for IoT applications with various
identifier schemes.

2. Architecture and dependencies
For trillions of things connected , it is necessary have
an adequate architecture that permits easy
connectivity, control , communication and useful
applications ( Covered in session 2)
• how will these things interact in and across
applications?
• Often devices needs to connected and share data
and sometimes they need to be “disjoint” and
“protected”.

2. Architecture Design
In architecture design domain, some of the issues that
need attention are:
• design of distributed open architecture with end-to-
end characteristics,
• interoperability of heterogeneous systems,
• neutral access, ( net neutrality )
• clear layering and resilience to physical network
disruption,
• decentralized autonomic architectures based on peering
of nodes etc.

2.Internet of Things Architecture
Research Issues to be addressed:
• Decentralized autonomic architectures based on
peering of nodes.
• Architectures moving intelligence at the very edge of
the networks, up to users’ terminals and things.
• Cloud computing technology, event-driven
architectures, disconnected operations and
synchronization.
• Use of market mechanisms for increased competition
and participation.

3. Communication Technology
• In the IoT the range of connectivity options will
increase exponentially and the challenges of
scalability, interoperability and ensuring return on
investment for network operators will remain.
• In this context the communication needs will change
and new radio and service architectures will be
required to cater for the connectivity demands of
emerging devices. The frequency spectrum will have to
be adapted to the new bandwidth requirements.

Issues to be addressed:
• Internet of Things energy efficient communication
multi frequency protocols, communication spectrum
and frequency allocation.
• Software defined radios to remove need for
hardware upgrades when new protocols emerge.
• Connectionless communications, even beyond IP.
• High performance, scalable algorithms and protocols

In the Internet of Things the following topics related
to communication technology have to be considered:
• Communication to enable information exchange
between “things” and between “things” and Internet
• Communication with sensors for capturing and
representing the physical world in the digital world

In the Internet of Things the following topics related to
communication technology have to be considered:
• Communication with actuators to perform actions in the
physical world triggered in the digital world
• Communication with distributed storage units for data
collection from sensors, identification and tracking systems
• Communication for interaction with humans in the physical
world
• Communication and processing to provide data mining and
services

3. Communication Technology-2
• Communication for localization and tracking
for physical world location determination
and tracking
• Communication for identification to provide
unique physical object identification in the
digital world.

4. Network Technology
• For IoT vision to be realized, the Internet of Things
architecture needs to be built on top of a network
structure that integrates wired and wireless
technologies in a transparent and seamless way.
• Wireless network technologies have gained more
focus due to their ability to provide unobtrusive
wire-free communication.

4. Network technology domain
In network technology domain further
research is needed on
• network on chip technology considering on
chip communication architectures for
dynamic configurations design time
parameterized architecture with a dynamic
routing scheme and a variable number of
allowed virtual connections at each output.

4.Network technology domain
• power-aware network design that turns on
and off the links in response to burst and
dips of traffic on demand,
• scalable communication infrastructures
design on chip to dynamically support the
communication among circuit modules
based on varying workloads and /or
changing constraints

• Design time parameterized architecture with a
dynamic routing scheme and a variable number
of allowed virtual connections at each output).
Scalable communication infrastructure on chip
to dynamically support the communication
among circuit modules based on varying
workloads and/or changing constraints.

• More research is required for IP technology
and eventually the development of different
post IP protocols optimized for IoT,
compatible and interoperable with the
existing IP technologies.

• Network technologies (fixed, wireless, mobile etc.),
• Ad-hoc and wireless sensor networks
• Autonomic computing and networking
• Development of the infrastructure for “Network of Networks”
capable of supporting dynamically small area and scale free
connections and characteristics (typical social communities).
• Password and identity distribution mechanisms at the network
level
• Anonymous networking
• IP and post IP technologies.

6. Software Service and algorithms
• Only with appropriate software will it be possible
that the Internet of Things comes to life as
imagined, as an integral part of the Future
Internet.
• It is through software that novel applications
and interactions are realized, and that the
network with all its resources, devices and
distributed services becomes manageable.

• For manageability, the need for some sort
of self-configuration and auto recovery
after failures is foreseen.

• Services play a key role: They provide a good way to
encapsulate functionality – e.g., abstracting from
underlying heterogeneous hardware or
implementation details – , they can be orchestrated to
create new, higher-level functionality, and they can be
deployed and executed in remote locations, in-situ on
an embedded device if necessary. Such distribution
execution of service logic, sometimes also called
distributed intelligence, will be key in order to deal

Issues to be addressed include:
• Service discovery and composition
• Semantic interoperability, semantic sensor web etc.
• Data sharing, propagation and collaboration
• Autonomous agents
• Human machine interaction
• Self management techniques to overcome increasing complexities
and save energy
• Distributed self adaptive software for self optimization, self
configuration, self healing
• Lightweight and open middleware based on interacting
components/modules abstracting resource and network functions;

Humans in the loop-1
As IoT applications proliferate , they will be become
more sophisticated. many of these applications will
intimately involve humans. Humans and things will
operate synergistically
Human-in-the loop offer exciting opportunities to a
broad range of applications including energy
management and health care

Humans in the loop-2
• A car designed incorporating human in the
loop design approach can improve safety
• using models of activities of daily living in
home health can improve medical
conditions of elderly and keep them safe.

Issues to be addressed include:
• Energy efficient micro operating systems
• Software for virtualisation
• Language for object interaction
• Bio-inspired algorithms (e.g. self organization) and solutions based
on game theory (to overcome the risks of tragedy of commons
and reaction to malicious nodes)
• Algorithms for optimal assignment of resources in pervasive and
dynamic environments
• Mathematical models and algorithms for inventory management,
production scheduling, and data mining.

7. Hardware
• The developments in the area of IoT will
require research for hardware adaptation
and parallel processing in ultra low power
multi processor system on chip that handle
non predictable situations at design time with
the capability of self adaptiveness and self
organization.

7. Hardware
• Research and development is needed in the area
of very low power field programmable gate
array hardware where the configuration (or parts
of it) is changed dynamically from time to time to
introduce changes to the device.
• Context switching architectures, where a set of
configurations are available and the device
between switch between them depending on the
defined using context.

7. Hardware
• Research is needed for very large scale integrated (VLSI)
circuits containing scalable cognitive hardware systems
that are changing the topology mapped on the chip using
dedicated algorithms.
• Self adaptive networks on chip that analyzes itself during
run time and self adapts are required for IoT applications.
Such run time adaptive network on chip will adapt the
underlying interconnection infrastructure on demand in
response to changing communication requirements
imposed by an application and context.

7. Hardware
• Nanotechnologies- miniaturization
• Sensor technologies – embedded sensors, actuators
• Solutions bridging nano and micro systems.
• Communication – antennas, energy efficient RF front
ends
• Nanoelectronics – nanoelectronics devices and
technologies, self configuration, self optimization, self
healing circuit architectures
• Polymer electronics

7. Hardware
• Embedded systems - micro energy microprocessors/
microcontrollers, hardware acceleration
• Spintronics
• Low cost, high performance secure identification/
authentication devices
• Low cost manufacturing techniques
• Tamper-resistant technology, side-channel aware
designs.

8. Data and Signal Processing
• In the context of Internet of Things the devices that are
operating at the edge are evolving from embedded
systems to cyber physical and web enabled “things” that
are integrating computation, physical and cognitive
processes.
• Cognitive devices, embedded computers and networks
will monitor and control the physical processes, with
feedback loops where physical processes affect
computations and cognitive processes and contrariwise.

This convergence of physical computing and
cognitive devices (wireless sensor networks,
mobile phones, embedded systems, embedded
computers, micro robots etc.) and the Internet
will provide new design opportunities and
challenges and requires new research that
addresses the data and signal processing
technology.

A typical feature of to cyber physical and web enabled
“things” will the heterogeneity of device models,
communication and cognitive capabilities. This
heterogeneity concerns different execution models
(synchronous, asynchronous, vs. timed and real-timed),
communication models (synchronous vs. asynchronous),
and scheduling of real time processes.
I

• Semantic interoperability,
• service discovery, service composition,
• semantic sensor
• web, data sharing,
• propagation and collaboration,
• autonomous agents, human
• machine interaction.

9. Discovery and Search Engine Technologies
The Internet of Things will consist of many distributed
resources including sensors and actuators, as well as
information sources and repositories.
• It will be necessary to develop technologies for
searching and discovering such resources according
to their capabilities (e.g. type of sensor / actuator /
services offered), their location and/or the information
they can provide (e.g. indexed by the unique IDs of
objects, transactions etc.)..

Search and discovery services will be used not only by
human operators but also be application software and
autonomous smart objects, in order to help gather
complete sets of information from across many
organisations and locations, as well as discovering what
ambient infrastructure is available to support smart
objects with their needs for transportation and
handling, heating/cooling, network communication and
data processing.

These services play a key role in the mapping
between real entities such as physical
objects and in the assembly of their digital
and virtual counterparts from a multitude of
fragments of information owned and
provided by different entities.

Universal authentication mechanisms will be
required, together with granular access
control mechanisms that allow owners of
resources to restrict who can discover their
resources or the association between their
resource and a specific entity, such as a
uniquely identified physical object.

For efficient search and discovery, metadata
and semantic tagging of information will be
very important and there are significant
challenges in ensuring that the large volumes
of automatically generated information can be
automatically and reliably without requiring
human intervention.

It will also be important that terrestrial mapping
data is available and cross-referenced with
logical locations such as postcodes and place
names and that the search and discovery
mechanisms are able to handle criteria
involving location geometry concepts, such as
spatial overlap and separation.

• Device discovery, distributed repositories
• Positioning and localisation
• Mapping of real, digital and virtual entities
• Terrestrial mapping data
• Semantic tagging and search
• Universal authentication mechanisms.

10. Relationship Network Management
Technologies
With many of Internet of Things and Internet of Services
applications moving to a distributed seamless
architecture the future application manager needs to
monitor more than just the infrastructure.
The Internet of Things must incorporate traffic and
congestion management.
This will sense and manage information flows, detect
overflow conditions and implement resource reservation
for time critical and life-critical data flows.

Technologies
• The network management technologies will need depth
visibility to the underlying seamless networks that serves
the applications and services and check the processes that
run on them, regardless of device, protocol, etc
• This will require identifying sudden overloads in service
response time and resolving solutions, monitoring IoT and
web applications and identify any attacks by hackers, while
getting connected remotely and managing all “things”
involved in specific applications from remote “emergency”
centres.

Technologies
• Propagation of memes by things
• Identity, relationship and reputation
management.

11. Power and Energy Storage Technologies
• Objects require a digital “self” in order to be
part of the Internet of Things.
• This participation is obtained by combining
electronic, embedded and wireless
communication technologies into the
physical objects themselves.

• Simple digitalization alternatives, such as bar code and
passive RFID, do not require a power source on the
embedded devices.
• More complex alternatives, such as those that provide
active communications and object condition
monitoring, need batteries to power the electronics
that make the objects first class citizens of the IoT.

• Energy storage has become one of the most important
obstacles to the miniaturization of electronic devices,
and
• today’s embedded. wireless technologies such as
Wireless Sensor Networks and Active RFID suffer from
either bulky packaging to support large batteries or
from short life times, that will require recharging or
replacement of the integrated batteries.

• Energy harvesting is still a very inefficient process that
would require a large amount of research. Sources for
energy harvesting in embedded devices could include,
among others, vibration, solar radiation, thermal energy,
etc.
• Micropower technologies have emerged as a new
technology area that can provide many development
opportunities for IoT devices.

Research topics and issues that need to be addressed include:
• Energy harvesting/scavenging for MEMS
devices and microsystems
• Electrostatic, piezoelectric and
electromagnetic energy conversion schemes
• Thermoelectric systems and micro coolers
• Photovoltaic systems
• Micro fuel cells and micro reactors

Research topics and issues that need to be addressed include:
• Micro combustion engines for power generation
• and propulsion
• Materials for energy applications
• Micro power ICs and transducers
• Micro battery technologies
• Energy storage and micro super capacitor
technologies.

12 Security and Privacy Technologies
• Internet of Things needs to be built in such
a way as to ensure an easy and safe user
control.
• Consumers need confidence to fully
embrace the Internet of Things in order to
enjoy its potential benefits and avoid any
risks to their security and privacy.
• .

• In the IoT every ‘thing’ is connected to the global
Internet and ‘things’ are communicating with each
other, which results in new security and privacy
problems, e. g.,
• confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity of
data sensed and exchanged by ‘things’.
• Privacy of humans and things must be ensured to
prevent unauthorized identification and tracking.

In this context, the more autonomous and intelligent
“things” get, problems like the identity and privacy of
things, and responsibility of things in their acting will
have to be considered.
The Internet of Things will challenge the traditional
distributed database technology by addressing very
large numbers of “things” that handle data, in a
global information space and a universal data space.
This poses challenges.

• In this context the information map of the real
world of interest is represented across billions of
“things”, many of which are updating in real-time
and a transaction or data change is updated
across hundreds or thousands of “things” with
differing update policies, opens up for many
security challenges and security techniques
across multiple policies.

• In order to prevent the unauthorized use of
private information and permit authorized use,
research is needed in the area of dynamic
trust, security, and privacy management.

• Event-driven agents to enable an intelligent/ self aware
behaviour of networked devices
• Privacy preserving technology for heterogeneous sets of
devices
• Models for decentralised authentication and trust
• Energy efficient encryption and data protection technologies
• Security and trust for cloud computing
• Data ownership
• Legal and liability issues

• Repository data management
• Access and use rights, rules to share added
value Responsibilities, liabilities
• Artificial immune systems solutions for IoT
• Secure, low cost devices

• Integration into, or connection to, privacy
preserving frameworks, with evaluation
• privacy-preserving effectiveness.
• Privacy Policies management.

13. Standardisation
• The Internet of Things will support interactions among
many heterogeneous sources of data and many
heterogeneous devices through the use of standard
interfaces and data models to ensure a high degree of
interoperability among diverse systems.
• Although many different standards may co-exist, the
use of ontology based semantic standards enables
mapping and cross-referencing between them, in order
to enable information exchange.

13. Standardisation
• From an architectural perspective, standards
have an important role to play both within an
organisation or entity and across organisations;
• adoption of standards promotes interoperability
and allows each organisation or individual to
benefit from a competitive marketplace of
interoperable technology solutions from multiple
providers;
•

13. Standardisation
• when those organisations or individuals
which to share or exchange information,
standards allow them to do so efficiently
minimising ambiguity about the
interpretation of the information they
exchange.

13. Standardisation
Standards regarding frequency spectrum
allocation, radiation power levels and
communication protocols ensure that the
Internet of Things co-operates with other
users of the radio spectrum, including mobile
telephony, broadcasting, emergency services
etc.

13. Standardisation
Standards can be expected to develop, as the
Internet of Things increases in scale and
reach and as additional radio spectrum
becomes available through digital switchover
etc.

13. Standardisation
As greater reliance is placed on the Internet of Things as
the global infrastructure for generation and gathering of
information, it will be essential to ensure that
international quality and integrity standards are deployed
and further developed, as necessary to ensure that the
data can be trusted and also traced to its original
authentic sources.

13. Standardisation
• IoT standardisation
• Ontology based semantic standards
• Spectrum energy communication protocols
• standards
• Standards for communication within and
• outside cloud
• International quality/integrity standards
• for data creation, data traceability.

Additional Research Areas
1. Massive scaling
2. Creating knowledge and big data
3. Robustness
4. Openness

1. Massive scaling
The rate at which smart devices are being
deployed implies that eventually trillions of
things will be on the Internet. The research
challenges will be
• How to name, authenticate access,
maintain, protect, use and support
such a large scale of things?

1. Massive scaling
• will IPv6 suffice? will protocols such as 6LowPAN
play a role?
• will entirely new standards and protocols
emerge?
• Since many of IoT will require their own sources
of energy source, will energy scavenging and
enormously low-power circuits eliminate need
for batteries?
• how will massive amount of data collected,
used and stored?

2. Creating knowledge and big data
In an IoT world, there exists a vast amount of raw data
being continuously collected. It is necessary to
develop techniques that convert this raw data into
usable knowledge
Example:
In medical area, new streams of sensor values must be
converted into semantically meaningful activities
performed by or about a person such as eating, poor
respiration, or signs of depression and more

3. Robustness
IoT applications be based on deployed sensing,
actuation, and communication platforms. Such devices
need to know their locations, have synchronized
clocks and know their neighbouring devices while
cooperating.
Over time, these conditions may deteriorate and
devices may be physically moved .
Robustness is required in such cases to recognize new
environments and respond accordingly

4. Openness
Sensor based systems are closed systems.
Car, airplanes and ships have networked sensor
systems that operate largely within the vehicle.
• cars are sending are automatically transmitting
maintenance information
• airplanes are sending real-time jet engine
information to manufactures
• This needs openness ( open standards)

IoT Research Directions
The
Conclusion

Conclusions
• IoT is a new found land.
• It is an opportunity make our world smarter
by enabling IoT ecosystem
• Research is underway and needs to
intensified to take advantage of this enabler

Upcoming SESSIONS
Session
India’s Draft Internet of Things (IoT)
Policy

Contact Information
Visit
http://dastikop.blogspot.in
email: ravindra.dastikop@gmail.com
http://youtube.com/user/dastikop

References
1. Research Directions for the Internet of Things, John
Tankovic , IEEE Internet of Things Journal Vol 1, No 1,
Feb, 2014
2. Internet of Things – From Research and Innovation to
Market Deployment
3. http://www.internet-of-things research.
eu/pdf/IERC_Cluster_Book_2014_Ch.3_SRIA_WEB.pdf

References
1. Internet of Things- Converging Technologies for Smart
Environments and Integrated Ecosystems

Internet of Things- Research Directions

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