Everything about the architecture of IoT technology?

"If we had computers that knew everything using the data that they gathered without any help from us, would be able to track and count everything which would, in turn, lead to a reduction of waste, loss, and cost."

Hi guys, this is Prabhat, and welcome to this interesting discussion titled "IoT explained with IoT carriers and market trends".
  

Now, let's go to the core, or let's go to the start or talk about the idea which bought the concept of IoT into the picture. 

 It was a statement made by Kevin Ashton, which spoke about how we need to empower the computers with their means of gathering information so that they could hear, smell and feel the world for themselves in all of its random glory. 

The statement made by Kevin Anston in 1999 was one that bought the concept of IoT into the global picture as well. 

 

Now, when I talk about IoT, let's try to address the most fundamental question, which is, 

What is IoT? 

Now, IoT is a concept or a technology or even a domain, which aims to create just one thing. It helps us achieve a world where all the devices and appliances are connected through a network and collaborate with each other, to achieve or complete various complex tasks, which requires a high level of intelligence.

 

Now, if I had to, if I had to summarize this, it basically comes down to the statement, which is the Internet of Things is an interaction between the physical and the digital world using the various sensors and actuators as well. 

 

Now, when I need to understand IoT, I need to first get an idea of how things actually work in the Internet of Things domain.

So let's try to get a glimpse of how the workflow works. In the IoT domain, now, always the core fundamentals, or the key concept here is sensors, sensors are present all around us, they gather information for us. 

 

But once they have gathered information, what happens to them, they start emitting this information to a storage state. Now the storage center may be present on the cloud, it could be a database, depending on the various architectures that are out there, you can use it anywhere as well.

 

Now, once I have this information, then I begin to process this information. Before I go on to get insights from this information. There's one very important thing that I need to take care of. 

That is I also need to create triggers for the issues as well as the challenges which have been encountered with these sensors as well. Now let's take a real-world example. 

To help you understand this. Let's try to understand the example of a car. A smart car is something that all the organizations or all the businesses today want to create out there, self-driving car, it's just one of the examples out there, let's say tomorrow there is a failure with respect to any of the components of the car.

 

In such cases, you need to avert all the corresponding responses with people. And if I know it is the first case itself, then it makes it very easy for me to prevent this from happening in the future as well.

 

 Once I have this information, or once I created this actionable item, and I've faced all or I have ensured that there are no more challenges ahead, then I can be sure that the information that I gather is always going to be reliable as well as useful as such.

 

Now, once this data is present, you take it on and process it using the various machine learning as well as artificial intelligence techniques that are out there. This could be deep learning that could be natural language processing, anything that the user requires. 

 

What this information is going to give us is not just an insight into what information is gathered, but also help us improve our overall system as such, because this feedback is further going to be fed back into those sensors. Now, this completely becomes a workflow or this is a cycle that happens with respect to it.

 

Now, when this comes on or when this keeps happening, your system starts to learn, it starts to provide better information and stats to customize the user's requirements as well. To give you another example of the entire ecosystem, let's take the case of how we travel from home to office. 

Let's say on a daily basis, I switch on the AC once or twice a day. If my machine knows that I'm leaving my office at so and so type, it can already customize or it can already turn on the AC and it'll be cool by the time I get home. 

 Also read: How to secure IoT with Blockchain technology?

Really nice implementation, right? This is way how you customize or this is a mechanism through which you bring personalization into the ecosystem as such.

• IoT architecture:
  

Now talking about the next important concept, which is the overall architecture associated with IoT, when I come down to the architecture there are mainly three fundamental layers associated with the overall architecture, or overall the IoT is domain as such. 

 

• The first layer is the perception when I talk about the perception layer, it becomes a layer wherein you gather information using the various sensors and actuators. 

          This gathers all the information around it and uses it as per the user's requirement.

         Once I have this it comes to the responsibility of the network layer to transport or to move this,               information from the sensors to an application that will process and give insights from this information.

 

• The application layer does the same, it understands the information that comes to us and it also helps you understand what is needed, what is happening, and what can be done as well. 

 

• There is another layer which is the transport layer. When I have the transport layer,
  

        This mainly deals with how the information is going to be processed from the sensor to the                     processing layer or how it has to be moved from here to there

         This can be done using 3d sensors, it can be done using LANs Bluetooth, RFID, or NFC as well.

     There are various other ways as well. And these have various shortcomings or various standards also incorporated to create a standard measure. 

 Also read: What is the Internet of Things? How does it help businesses?

An example of this could be an IPV6 format where you use shorter forms for identifying these devices. IPV4 in itself has a limit. And this is why the IPV6 shortcode is also used.

• Keywords or Key-Components in IoT:
  

Next, let's talk about the various taxonomies associated with IoT. These are the keywords that make the architecture or which makes the entire ecosystem necessary and useful as such. 

 

• The first is perception. Now again, we've talked about the perception layer as well perception here basically means to collect the data using various sensors that are around us. Now, once the data is gathered, then I'm going to begin processing.

 

• Now the processing or the pre-processing here can also help us to gather or take valid information, you need to understand that most sensors stream real-time data and this is a huge amount of data that comes around. 

          If I can ensure that only valid information is taken ahead, then it makes it quite useful for me to get insight as such.

 Also read: How is IoT revolutionizing our life?

• Then comes the communication Now again, in communication-end, there are various protocols and standards that you use in order to achieve a very seamless system that's out there, based on the various components and architecture that you use, each communication protocol has its advantages and its disadvantages as well.

• Now we have middleware that actually acts as an abstraction, which hides the necessary hardware details. And the application does not directly need to interact with the sensor, it just needs to pass on or process information or create a request as well. And this is where middleware really comes into use. Or it comes to the advantage of the overall system as well. 

 

Now, one thing that's really important in the IoT domain is to understand how the overall environment really works out. So for a business or for an organization, it's essential that you understand how each of your smart devices works. 

 Must read: What is Internet of Everything?

So, let's say  I create a Smart Water Filter, if I create a smart AC that's out there, my business layer will actually give me an overall insight into how each one of these devices is working. How the challenges are information is gathered from them as well. 

The user's experience or user information also will help me improve my overall business as such. Finally, we have an application. 

Now the application is one of the collections or this is what you usually most useful for your interface, or do you use to process your information now, applications can do various usage with respect to it. 

 Must read: How is IoT revolutionizing our life?

This is what usually most people look at. And this is what we interact with. It's the other segments that really are what brings out the interest in the IoT domain as well.

Now, these are just some of the examples where IoT is being used, you need to understand that IoT today is restricted only by the idea of its user, there is no such domain wherein you cannot use IoT. 

Credit: JIGSAW/ EDUREKA

Link: Jigsaw: How to build your career in IoT

          Edureka: Careers in IoT