Introduction to the Internet of Things

Abstract

This chapter covers the fundamentals of Internet of Things (IoT), its application domains, and the main challenges that still need to be surpassed. It reviews the main definitions and concepts involved. The chapter describes some of the proposed architectures and reference models. It includes an overview of IoT-enabling technologies and the efforts of several working groups and consortia to create standards for the IoT. The chapter gives an overview of the main IoT application domains and highlights main IoT implementation challenges. The end goal of IoT systems is to achieve a synergy between different systems, meaning that they should interoperate and communicate automatically to provide innovative services to the users. Request for Comments 7452 describes four basic communication patterns for IoT environments: device-to-device communication pattern, device-to-cloud communication pattern, device-to-gateway communication pattern, and back-end data sharing pattern. IoT technologies may bring significant benefits to the healthcare domain, namely, in two areas: clinical care and remote monitoring.