Internet of Things: Devices, Issues, Solutions, and Home Layout

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the Internet of Things (IoT). It begins by defining IoT as a network of interconnected devices capable of transferring data without human interaction. The report then details various IoT devices, including activity trackers, smart home security systems, smart refrigerators, smart TVs, smart speakers, smart doorbells, smart meters, connected cars, and wearable computers. It also discusses the issues associated with IoT, such as security vulnerabilities, privacy concerns, interoperability challenges, legal and regulatory uncertainties, and connectivity problems like signaling, presence detection, and power consumption. Furthermore, the report explores potential solutions to these issues, including the use of secure protocols and encryption, standardized communication protocols, and machine cloud services. Finally, the report concludes by summarizing the key findings and highlighting the significance of IoT in today's world.

INTERNET OF THINGS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
10 Internet of Things devices ....................................................................................................1
Issues of IoT................................................................................................................................3
Potential solution of these issues of IoT.....................................................................................5
Layout of IoT devices present at home ......................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8
APPENDIX......................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
IoT (Internet of Things ) can be defined as a system of interconnected computing devices,
objects, digital machines and people or animal that are given with unique identifiers and the
capability of transferring data over a network (Hwang, Dongarra and Fox, 2013). This does not
require any human to computer or human to human interaction. A thing could be a vehicle that
consists of built-in sensors for alerting the driver when pressure of tire is low, a person having
heart monitor implant, a farm animal consisting of a bio chip transponder or various other
artificial or natural object that are assigned with an IP address and has an ability of transferring
information over network. The present report is based on the Internet of Things whereby uses of
IoT are explained.
10 Internet of Things devices
There are a lot of IoT devices present in this era. Some of the important one are described
as below:
 Activity tracker: It is also known as fitness tracker. It is an application that monitors and
tracks metrics related to fitness like distance covered while walking, consumption of
calorie and in some cases, it tells about the heart beat and also determines the quality of
sleep. This term is now mainly used for smart watches that are synchronized, in most
cases wirelessly, to a smart phone or computer for tracking data for long term.
 Ismart Alarm: It is a do-it-yourself (DIY) smart home security that is controlled by the
help of a user's smartphone. This system uses a hub attached to a router of home and
allows users to control the home safety and automation devices present in home including
multiple wireless devices (Kopetz, 2011). People can arm and un-arm their system and
can achieve a push notification, email, call or text message in the case if system is
triggered. This system can be used as a solution for self-monitoring without any monthly
fee and contracts in comparison to conventional monitored system such as Vivint or
ADT.
 Internet refrigerator: It is also known as Smart refrigerator. It has been programmed for
sensing what types of products are present inside it or stored in it. It also keeps track of
the stock via RFID scanning or through barcode. Such type of refrigerator is frequently
equipped for determining itself in the case a food item requires to be replenished.
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 Smart TV: It is also known as connected TV or hybrid TV. It is a set of television that
consists of integrated Web 2.0 features. It has technological convergence among
computers, set-top boxes and flat screen television sets (Medaglia and Serbanati, 2010).
Such devices provide online interactive media, home networking access, internet TV, on
demand streaming media and OTT (over- the- top content). In these television, operating
system is available via the set top box. Applications get preloaded into device or installed
on the demand of users through an online app store in the same way apps are installed or
updated in smartphones.
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(Source: What Does a Smart TV do That Normal TVs Can’t?, 2017)

 Smart speaker: It is a kind of wireless speaker that uses that take use of Bluetooth, Wi-
Fi and various other standards for extending usage beyond audio playback. It consist of
features like compatibility across different services and platforms, intelligent personal
assistant, peer to peer connectivity via mesh networking and many others.
 Smart doorbell: It is an internet connected doorbell that gives notifications in the
smartphone of the user when any one arrives at their entrance door (Rathod and et. al.,
2015).
 Smart meter: It is an electrical device that is used for recording consumption of electric
energy in the interval of hours and convey that data at least daily back to the utility to
monitor and billing.
 Connected Cars: It is a car that is equipped with access of internet and also with the
wireless local area of the network. This also permits the car for sharing access of internet
with different other devices inside and outside the vehicle.
 My Sensors: It is a free and open source DIY software model for wireless IoT devices
that allows devices for communication via radio transmitters.
 Wearable computers: It is also known as body borne computers or wearables. It can be
worn by human under, on top or with the clothing. It is used for special purpose
information technologies. It is also used in media development.
Issues of IoT
If there are various advantages of Internet of Things, then some limitations or issues also
exist. Some of them are listed as below:
 Security: IoT faces a serious threat of security that has been drawing attention of big
organisations and government agencies in all over the world. The hacking of cameras,
baby monitors, thermostats, drug infusion pumps, smart fridges and even the radio in car
are indicating an insecure conditions that is being caused by the future of IoT. Different
new models are being added to networks and internet. This causes malicious actors that
do in-numerous attacks for carrying out their evil activities. It becomes more threat-able
as IoT is now deep-rooted in lives of common people. Now the health and lives of
civilians can become the target of IoT hack attacks. Researchers have been capable to
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hack into real, on the marketing devices along with enough time and energy, this means
hackers are capable in replicating their efforts.
 Privacy: Internet of Things are also creating many challenges to the privacy, most of
that go far from data privacy problems that exist presently. This has become more
prevailing in users devices like tracking devices used in phone, cars and smart television
(Rifkin, 2014). The edification of IoT gives substantial private information in extreme
detail without the active participation of users. Manufacturers or hackers can really use a
connected device in invading the home of a person virtually. German researchers shows
this by catching unencrypted data by using a smart meter device in determining what
shows of television are being watched by any one at that moment.
 Inter-operability standard issues: In the idealistic environment, exchange of
information should take place among all inter connected IoT devices. But the real scene
is inherently more complex and are depending on the different levels of communication
protocols stacks among these devices (Vermesan and Friess, 2013). The industries that
are producing OEM requires to invest a large sum of revenue and time for creating
standardised protocols which are same for all IoT devices or else it would delay in
deployment of products across various verticals.
 Legal Regulatory and Right Issues: No concrete or practical law is present which
would encompass the different layers of IoT across the world. The range of devices that
are connected with one another are raising various security issues and there exist no legal
laws that address such vulnerability. The issues lie in whether present susceptibility laws
would widen their arm for devices which are linked to internet all the time as those
devices have tangled accountability issues. Connectivity: There are some of the issues regarding connectivity in IoT. Some of them
are explained below:
◦ Signalling: For connecting IoT devices, reliable two-way signalling is very important
to collect and route data between devices. IoT data streams plays a vital role here.
Devices might be talking to a server for collecting data or server might be talking to
the devices. Data requires to get from one point to another quickly and reliably
without considering what use case are involved into them. Some requires to be
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completely or 100 % sure that stream of data is travelling for reaching at its
destination every time.
◦ Presence Detection: It is very essential to instantly know when an IoT device is
dropping its networking and are going offline. The time of being that device online is
also important to know. Presence detection of IoT devices provides a perfect, up to
date second state of all devices lying on the network (Weber, 2010). This provides
users the capabilities of monitoring their IoT devices and as a result they can fix any
of the issue rising within the network.
◦ Power consumption: Large number of IoT devices that are sending and signalling
data between each other consumes a lot of power and CPU consumption is also high.
In all this communication, users requires minimum consumption of power and low
draining of battery. Users can not afford to utilise complete 100 % of an expensive
embedded CPU power of IoT device.
Potential solution of these issues of IoT
Some of the solution for the above listed issues are explained below:
 Issues regarding security can be be minimised by using secure protocols and encryption
technologies such as HTTPS and SRTP (secure real time protocol). This provides data
privacy, peer to peer encryption and modern authentication mechanisms so that integrity
of devices can be ensured.
 The issue regarding inter-operability in IoT can be resolved by using one M2M, a M2M
communication and a global standard for IoT offers common middleware for enabling
IoT devices and application inter-operability (Wortmann & Flüchter, 2015). This
involves giving an application ID registry with internationally unique identifiers for
supporting data sharing, interworking and security among IoT platforms.
 Connectivity issues like signalling, presence detection and power consumption can be
resolved by using Axeda Machine Cloud Services. This includes M2M and IoT
connectivity services, tool kits and software agents, which are enabling users in
establishing connectivity between devices and Axeda platform. Axeda M2M connectivity
services consist of various types of solution that depends on the class of devices that
someone needs to connect. These are wireless agent tool kit, Policy server, Firewall
Friendly agents, MQTT and Device Protocol Adapter.
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Layout of IoT devices present at home
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Smart TV
Ismart alarms
Smart refrigerator
Smart Speaker
Smart Doorbells
Wearable computers
Router
Wireless
connectivity
Drawing 1: IoT devices in a room

CONCLUSION
From the above based report, it can be concluded that Internet of Things is nothing but a
network or hub of physical devices, auto-mobiles and other items embedded with electrical,
sensors, software and network connectivity which are enabling these objects in collecting and
exchanging data. They are extensively used now a days. Everything is now becoming smart and
are depending on the internet for its better performance. This provides various advantages to
users. There are many devices that are based on the IoT such as Smart Tv, smart refrigerator,
smart doorbells, etc. that consist of specialised features in comparison to ordinary televisions,
refrigerator and door bells respectively. But there exist certain limitations of IoT like issues of
security and privacy to data of users. There are certain connectivity issues like signalling, power
consumption, etc. that are described in this report.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Al-Fuqaha, A. & et. al. (2015). Internet of things: A survey on enabling technologies, protocols,
and applications. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials. 17(4). 2347-2376.
Atzori, L. & et. al. (2012). The social internet of things (siot)–when social networks meet the
internet of things: Concept, architecture and network characterization. Computer
networks. 56(16). 3594-3608.
Coetzee, L. & Eksteen, J. (2011, May). The Internet of Things-promise for the future? An
introduction. In IST-Africa Conference Proceedings, 2011 (pp. 1-9). IEEE.
Dini, M. T. & Sokolov, V. Y. (2017). INTERNET OF THINGS SECURITY PROBLEMS.
Сучасний захист інформації, (1).
Gan, G., Lu, Z. & Jiang, J. (2011, August). Internet of things security analysis. In Internet
Technology and Applications (iTAP), 2011 International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Guinard, D. & et. al.. (2011). From the internet of things to the web of things: Resource-oriented
architecture and best practices. Architecting the Internet of things.97-129.
Holler, J. & et. al. (2014). From Machine-to-machine to the Internet of Things: Introduction to a
New Age of Intelligence. Academic Press.
Hwang, K., Dongarra, J. & Fox, G. C. (2013). Distributed and cloud computing: from parallel
processing to the internet of things. Morgan Kaufmann.
Kopetz, H. (2011). Internet of things. In Real-time systems (pp. 307-323). Springer US.
Medaglia, C. M. & Serbanati, A. (2010). An overview of privacy and security issues in the
internet of things. In The Internet of Things (pp. 389-395). Springer, New York, NY.
Rathod, P. A. & et. al. (2015). Internet of Things. Data Mining and Knowledge Engineering.
7(9), 297-301.
Rifkin, J. (2014). The zero marginal cost society: The internet of things, the collaborative
commons, and the eclipse of capitalism. St. Martin's Press.
Vermesan, O. & Friess, P. (Eds.). (2013). Internet of things: converging technologies for smart
environments and integrated ecosystems. River Publishers.
Weber, R. H. (2010). Internet of Things–New security and privacy challenges. Computer law &
security review. 26(1). 23-30.
Wortmann, F. & Flüchter, K. (2015). Internet of things. Business & Information Systems
Engineering. 57(3). 221-224.
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Online
What Does a Smart TV do That Normal TVs Can’t?. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.electronicworldtv.co.uk/blog/what-does-a-smart-tv-do-that-normal-tvs-
cant>. [Accessed on 19th September 2017].
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APPENDIX
IoT devices Manufacturer Cost Function
Smart speaker Amazon Echo 5.71 Pounds
It is a type of wireless
speaker that is using
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and
various other standards
for extending usage
beyond audio
playback.
Smart TV Amazon 489.0 Euro It consists of
integrated Web 2.0
features. It has
technological
convergence among
computers, set-top
boxes and flat screen
television sets.
Connected Cars Tesla 1,890 Euro It is equipped with
access of internet and
also with the wireless
local area of the
network.
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