Scalability Analysis of Data Transfer in Massive Internet of Things Applications

Abstract

This work analyzes the data transfer of massive Internet of Things (IoT) applications through network simulations. We focus on an environment, in which a massive number of IoT devices are sending data to a server located in the cloud. In the future, there will be an enormous number of IoT devices that generate an extensive amount of data to the mobile network. It has been estimated that approximately 28 billion connected IoT devices will exist by 2021. The number of IoT devices and the amount of data sent by the devices requires careful planning of the network infrastructure. This is why scalability analysis of the data transfer is very important. IoT devices are conventionally connected to the Internet via information brokers or gateway nodes. However, a single information broker may not be able to support the data transfer of a massive IoT node population. Our results show that once the sensor node population reaches to a massive level, more information brokers or gateway nodes are needed in the network. The results of this work can be very useful when designing the network infrastructure in massive IoT scenarios.