Architecture Of Internet Of Things :- loT is transforming industry landscapes on a grand scale, thanks to rising broadband availability and low hardware costs. The applications of IoT range from the medical profession to construction, education, insurance, and many other fields.
Though the hardware, software, and infrastructure requirements of an Industry grade IoT systems vary by domain, the fundamental components stay the same.
Architecture Of Internet Of Things
An IoT system’s operation is defined by four key components. The components of an IoT System are depicted in the diagram below.
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Components Of Internet Of Things
However, all complete IoT systems are the same in that they represent the integration of four distinct components: sensors, devices, Gateway, Cloud.
(1). Sensor
Sensors or receivers are an important component that allows you to collect real-time data from your surroundings. All of this data may be of varying degrees of complexity.
It could be a basic temperature monitoring sensor, or it could be a video stream. A gadget may contain a variety of sensors that perform functions other than sensing.
A mobile phone, for example, includes various sensors such as GPS and a camera, but your smartphone cannot detect these things.
Most modern smart devices and sensors can connect to low-power wireless networks such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Bluetooth, Z-wave, LoRAWAN, and so on.
In terms of power, data transfer rate, and overall efficiency, each of these wireless technologies offers advantages and disadvantages over each other.
(2). Devices
Devices are the User interfaces that are a visible, tangible part of the IoT system which can be accessible by users. Designers will have to make sure a well designed user interface for minimum effort for users and encourage more interactions.
The information needs to be available to the end-user in some way which can be achieved by triggering alarms on their phones or sending them notification through email or text message.
The user sometimes might need an interface which actively checks their IoT system. For example, the user has a camera installed in his home and he wants to access video recording and all the feeds with the help of a web server.
Modern technology offers much interactive design to ease complex tasks into simple touch panels controls. Multicolor touch panels have replaced hard switches in our household appliances and the trend is increasing for almost every smart home device.
User interface design has higher significance in today’s competitive market, it often determines the user whether to choose a particular device or appliance.
Users will be interested to buy new devices or smart gadgets if it is very user friendly and compatible with common wireless standards.
(3) Gateway
As the large numbers of data are produced by this sensors and actuators they need high-speed Gateways and Networks to transfer the data. This network can be of type Local Area Network (LAN such as WiFi. Ethernet, etc.),
Wide Area Network (WAN such as GSM, 5G, etc.). IoT Gateway manages the bidirectional data traffic between different networks and protocols. Another function of gateway is to translate different network protocols and make sure interoperability of the connected devices and sensors.
Gateways can be configured to perform pre-processing of the collected data from thousands of sensors locally before transmitting it to the next stage. In some scenarios, it would be necessary due to compatibility of TCP/IP protocol.
Each option has tradeoffs between power consumption, range, and bandwidth. Choosing which connectivity option is best comes down to the specific loT application, but they all accomplish the same task: getting data to the cloud.
loT gateway offers a certain level of security for the network and transmitted data with higher order encryption techniques. It acts as a middle layer between devices and cloud to protect the system from malicious attacks and unauthorized access.
(4_). Cloud
The loT creates massive data from devices, applications and users which has to be managed in an efficient way. IoT cloud offers tools to collect, process, manage and store huge amounts of data in real time.
Industries and services can easily access these data remotely and make critical decisions when necessary. All the collected data is sent to a cloud.
The sensors, devices and applications connected to the cloud using various mediums of communications. These communication mediums include mobile or satellite networks, Bluetooth, WI-FI, WAN, etc.
IoT cloud is a sophisticated high performance network of servers optimized to perform high speed data processing of billions of devices, traffic management and deliver accurate analytics. Distributed database management systems are one of the most important components of loT cloud.
Cloud systems integrate billions of devices, sensors, gateways, protocols, data storage and provide predictive analytics. Companies use these analytics data for improvement of products and services, preventive measures for certain steps and build their new business model accurately.
Once that data is collected, and it gets to the cloud, the software performs processing on the gathered data. This process can be just checking the temperature, reading on devices like AC or heaters. However, it can sometimes also be very complex like identifying objects, using computer vision on video or analyzing the user preferences.
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Internet of Things Layer Architecture
The loT architecture can be expressed as a collection of various abstraction layers. A layer hides away implementation details of a subsystem, allowing separation of concerns. In other words, a layer is only aware of its sub-layer (but without knowing the inner working details of each sublayer). The information is passed on the other layer one by one in an loT system.
The system requirement may vary for each loT system according to the challenge or task it is assigned to. Many attempts have been made to model an IoT architecture using layers.
Depending on what specific challenge a model tries to solve, the focus can be on different viewpoints, for example, functional features versus data processing
3 Layer Architecture of Internet of Things
This image Shows the three layers of this architecture. A three-layer architecture is the common and generally known structure. The process flow of the model follows a few points listed below.
- The basis of this model is sensors and physical devices.
- A sensor has to send data over a network, which is the layer above the sensors
- Finally, data gets processed by some kind of application, which is the top layer.
This model is mainly used in the context of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. It indicates three levels: perception, network, and application. The three layers and their functioning is explained as follows:
(1). The perception layer
This layer is the physical layer, which has sensors for sensing and gathering information about the environment. Sensors and embedded systems are used mainly in this. These collect large amounts of data based on the requirements.
This also includes edge devices, sensors, and actuators that communicate with the surroundings. It senses some physical parameters or identifies other smart objects in the environment. The collection of data takes place in this layer.
(2). The network layer
This laye is responsible for connecting to other smart things, network devices, and servers. The data obtained by these devices must be distributed and stored. This is the responsibility of the network layer.
It binds these intelligent objects to other intelligent/ smart objects. It is also in charge of data transfer. The network layer is in-charge of linking smart objects, network devices, and servers. Its features are also used for transmitting and processing sensor data.
(3). Application Layer
The application layer is responsible for delivering application specific services to the user. The user communicates with this application layer.
It is in-charge of providing the customer with software resources. Example: in a smart home application, where users press a button in the app to switch on a coffee machine,
for example. It defines various applications in which the Internet of Things can be deployed, for example, smart homes, smart cities, and smart health.
The architecture can be used in various applications with simple information flow among the layers. For example, to switch on a smart air conditioner, the user has to click on the application connected to it in their smartphone.
The information will be transmitted through the network layer to the device and after perceiving the temperature the AC will be adjusted to the room temperature it should be on.
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5 Layer Architecture of Internet of Things
The 5 layered Architecture of loT is shown in Figure 1.4. It is a detailed version of a 3 layer Architecture of IoT. The 5 layers are as follows:
(1). Perception Layer
Perception Layer consists of the Sensors and embedded systems to collect the data as explained in 3 layer architecture (refer page).
(2). Transport Layer
The transport layer or Network Layer transfers the sensor data as explained earlier in 3 layer Architecture (refer page).
Here the transmission takes place from the perception layer to the processing layer and vice versa through networks such as wireless, 3G, LAN, Bluetooth, RFID, and NFC etc explained below.
⚫ Ethernet connects stationary or fixed loT devices like security and video cameras, permanently installed industrial equipment, etc. WiFi, the most widely used technology of wireless networking, is a great fit for loT solutions that are easy to recharge and operate within a small area.
⚫ NFC (Near Field Communication) enables simple and secure data sharing between two NFC-enabled devices over a distance of 10cm or less.
⚫ Bluetooth is widely used by wearables and fitness devices for short-range communications and in order to meet the needs of low-power loT devices, the Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) standard was designed. It transfers only small portions of data and doesn’t work for large files.
⚫ LPWAN (Low-power Wide-area Network) was created specifically for IoT devices. It provides long-range wireless connectivity on low power consumption with a battery life of 10+ years. Sending data periodically in small portions, the technology meets the requirements of smart cities, smart buildings, and smart agriculture (field monitoring).
⚫ ZigBee is a low-power wireless network for carrying small data packages over short distances. The outstanding thing about ZigBee is that it can handle up to 65,000 nodes. Created specifically for home automation, it also works for low-power devices in industrial, scientific, and medical sites.
(3). Processing Layer
The processing layer is also known as the middleware layer. It stores, analyzes, and processes huge amounts of data that comes from the transport layer.
It can manage and provide a diverse set of services to the lower layers. It employs many technologies such as databases, cloud computing, and big data processing modules.
It stores all the data-sets transferred by the perception layer through the network layer and based on the device address and name, it gives appropriate data to that device.
It can also make decisions based on the processing and analysis/calculations done on a data-set obtained from sensors. All these tasks are commonly handled via IoT platforms and include two major stages:
- Data accumulation Stage
- Data Abstraction Stage
(4). Application Layer
The application layer is what the user interacts with. It delivers application specific services to the user and defines all applications in which IoT has been deployed.
It is the interface between the end IoT devices and the network. It has the authority to provide services to the applications. The services may be different for each application because of services based on the information collected by sensors. It is applied through a dedicated application at the device end.
(5). Business Layer
The business layer manages the whole IoT system, including applications, business and profit models, and user’s privacy. The success of any device does not depend only on technologies used in it but also how it is being delivered to its consumers. Business layer does these tasks for the device.
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7 Layer Architecture of Internet of Things
The 7 layered Architecture of IoT is shown in Figure 1.5 The 7 layers are as follows:
(1). Things
The “things” in “internet of things” refers to these physical devices as they are responsible for sending and receiving data. Sensors, actuators, controllers are included in this layer.
These devices make it possible for data collection for further transmission. Emerging Technology for Engineers
(2). Fog Computing
Mobile devices, GPS technology, sensors, and other technologies that can store and process data at the source can be included in the user base.
The fog is a layer that exists between the edge and the clouds. When edge computers send massive amounts of data to the cloud, fog nodes process the information and determine what is relevant.
The fog nodes then send the critical data to the cloud to be stored, while keeping the unimportant data on their own for future analysis. As a result, fog computing saves a lot of space the cloud while also transferring essential data swiftly.
In the Internet of Things, fog computing is an intermediary layer that extends the Cloud layer to bring computing, network, and storage devices closer to end-nodes.
The devices at the edge are called fog nodes and can be deployed anywhere with network connectivity. Edge computing is used for data formatting which makes sure that the succeeding layer can make sense of the data sets. To do this, it performs data filtering, cleaning, and aggregation. The task included in edge computing is as follows:
- (a) It is used for the evaluation so data can be validated and computed by the next layer.
- (b) It assists in the data reformat to ease up high-level and complex processing.
- (c) It provides assistance in the data compression, thereby decreasing the traffic workload on the network.
- (d) It creates event alert
Architecture Of Internet Of Things
loT is transforming industry landscapes on a grand scale, thanks to rising broadband availability and low hardware costs. The applications of IoT range from the medical profession to construction, education, insurance, and many other fields.
