Survey of IoT Reference Architectures and Models and IoT Initiatives

Abstract

AbstractNowadays, digital transformation is increasing in all business areas as it introduces new business strategies, business models, business processes and information systems. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the major drivers and accelerators of this digital transformation. In fact, it is a new environment where several smart objects are connected and collaborate anytime and anywhere. Therefore, it offers many opportunities and applications bringing new challenges and requirements. Due to the diversity of devices, architectures, platforms, and network protocols, IoT ecosystems presents a high level of diversity and heterogeneity as there are multiple standards and approaches. This leads to the development of several reference architectures and models to offer a starting set of buildings blocks for IoT environments and to guide the development of concrete IoT architectures and solutions. However, there is a lack of standardization and rationalization of these reference architectures and models, as, they were developed in parallel with different focus and perspectives. Two main contributions of this paper: (i) it summarizes the current state of art of IoT reference architectures and models proposed by various organizations in various countries, and (ii) it highlights their goals, objectives, application scope, architectures and their dependencies which can help researchers and practitioners to select the appropriate IoT reference architecture for their specific objectives and use cases.KeywordsDigital manufacturingDigital transformationIndustrial Internet of ThingsIndustry 4.0Internet of Things architectures