Role of IoT in Smart Homes and Offices

Abstract

The digitization of the physical world and obstacles in day-to-day life has opened up more avenues in terms of research and innovation for researchers for making our daily lives easier. The important technologies are either a part of cloud computing or the internet of things. Existing applications include scenarios in smart offices and homes. The key effort lies in the integration and control of the device services in a smart environment. The internet of things (IoT) is a technology that allows us to add a device to an inert object, such as physical microelectric hardware units and automobiles, at times covering entire structures over IP networks, enabling them to interconnect. All these devices are embedded with software, sensors and actuators for collecting and exchanging data amongst themselves. Cloud computing plays a crucial part in IoT as associated devices can attain supplementary services like servers, databases, software, networks, analytics and other computing functions that can be operated through the cloud. This chapter discusses the concept of smart offices and homes, which are a part of the smart building environment structure, and the role of IoT and cloud computing in establishing communication amongst devices. It further discusses the components of each technology and their areas of application, and future aspects and limitations.