Cloud Computing and Internet of Things Integration: Architecture, Applications, Issues, and Challenges

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud Computing both are developing technologies. Cloud Computing blows up to provide support to IoT by working as a sort of front-end and it is based on the concept of permitting users to do computing tasks using services delivered with internet. The cloud computing empower an appropriate, on-demand, and scalable network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. The cloud-based IoT architecture includes features of cloud-based IoT platform and its interaction with three main cloud computing models: IaaS (infrastructure as a service), Paas (platform as a service), and SaaS (software as a service). The cloud and IoT integration empowers new scenarios, for smart services and applications, as Sensing as a Service (SaaS), DataBase as a Service (DBaaS), Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS), and many more. Various live company products, research projects, and projects with freely available source code in various areas of Cloud Computing and IoT integration are Nimbits, ThingSpeak, Paraimpu, Device Cloud, Sensor Cloud. REpresentational State Transfer (REST) architectural style web services and Constrained Application Protocol (COAP), Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT), web transfer protocols are used for communication for the IoT resource-constrained things. Networking protocols like IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN) and IPv6 over Bluetooth Low Energy are used for constrained networks in IoT and cloud integration. The data link layer protocols for IoT devices like IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.11ah, Z-Wave, WirelessHART, Bluetooth, Zigbee are used for short range communication for IoT things. The applications of integrated cloud and IoT include agriculture, video surveillance, healthcare, smart city, smart home and smart metering, etc. IoT and cloud integration involves several challenges and issues as standardization of machine to machine (M2M) communication and interoperability, power and energy efficiency of devices for data transmission and processing, big data generated by several devices, security and privacy, integration methodology, pricing and billing, network communications, storage, etc. In this chapter, the introduction of cloud and IoT, their integration architecture, integration applications, and challenges and issues involved are discussed.