Understanding the Internet of Things: What and How?
The Internet of Whaaaat?!
Things. Yes, you heard it right! Gone are the days when only full-fledged computing devices like computers and mobiles had access to the internet. Nowadays, millions of smart devices (“things”) composed of teeny-tiny microcontrollers are pinging the internet servers every second and this number is growing at an unprecedented rate. In fact, by 2025, the number of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices is expected to surpass 40 billion!
But how did we get here? The initial years of the 21st century saw blazing advancements in the semiconductor and communication technology which led to the rapid expansion and adoption of the internet. The handheld portable computing devices literally compressed the entire world into the palm of a common man! Initially, the internet was seen as a portal of information and an alternative to standard cellular communication. However, as more and more devices got connected to the internet and semiconductors became cheaper by the minute, a new wave of smart devices started making their way into people’s homes. The idea was simple: why can’t our stupid manual appliances be controlled via the internet? Why can’t I access my refridgerator from my smart phone when I’m at the convenience store to check what items I need to buy? (Or better, why can’t it understand my eating habits and order items on its own?) Why can’t I program my microwave remotely from my phone so that my food is hot and ready the moment I reach home? Why can’t my home understand my behavior and automate appliances on its own? Ideas such as these expanded the internet connectivity to non-standard computing devices thereby making an internet of “things”.
Now that you have a generic idea of what is meant by the term “Internet of Things”, let’s put it in a more formal way. The Internet of Things or IoT is a novel paradigm that envisions a network of connected objects (non-standard computing devices) that use the internet for communicating with each other as well as humans.
Okay, But How Does This Work?
To answer this, we’ll have to dive into the components of an IoT system.
IoT Device: An IoT device is simply a connected object that can exchange data over the internet. This includes a myriad of smart devices such as smart bulbs, smart microwaves, smart meters, smart televisions, smart vehicles, etc. (standard computing devices such as smart phones are not IoT devices). Putting our techie hats on, we can describe an IoT device as an embedded system having a microcontroller, one or more transducers (sensors and/or actuators) and a communication interface to connect to the internet via a gateway.
Humans interact with IoT devices in 2 ways: either directly command them to perform a specific task via some user interface or monitor some automated system. The examples for the first type of interaction include turning on/off smart electrical appliances via a mobile app, commanding smart speakers like Alexa to dim the lights with our voice, etc. In the second form of interaction, humans consume useful information from the IoT system. This includes tracking health data from fitness bands via a web portal, monitoring data from smart energy meters, etc.
IoT Gateway: A gateway, as the name suggests, acts as a gate that allows interconnection of two dissimilar networks. A broadband WiFi router, present in most homes throughout the world, is an example of a residential gateway that connects all sorts of WiFi devices present on the local area network (LAN) to the wide area network (WAN) of the ISP. Now, why are we discussing gateways in an article about IoT? Well, as it turns out, the communication market for IoT devices is pretty fragmented. Apart from WiFi and LTE, IoT devices also support communication technologies like Bluetooth, Z-wave, ZigBee, LoRa, NB-IoT and so on. Clearly, not all of these can directly access the internet. This is where IoT gateways come into picture. These gateways not only provide connectivity from device to the internet (cloud) but also among devices themselves. For example, a smart speaker can ping a local WiFi-based light bulb over the WiFi router without needing to access the internet. Because most homes already have WiFi routers, a majority of smart home devices support the WiFi standard to avoid installation of costly gateways.
Cloud: With the explosion in the number of IoT devices, data is being generated at an alarming rate. It is estimated that by 2025, around 79.4 zettabytes (ZBs) of data would be generated by these devices alone ! Thankfully, even before IoT became a mainstream concept, cloud had already integrated itself into the application development cycle. Cloud empowers IoT with distributed storage, computational power as well as networking capabilities. With the big data and machine learning tools already integrated into the cloud ecosystem coupled with benefits like elasticity, reliability, scalability of resources and the fact that cloud machines are globally accessible, one may conclude that IoT would not have enjoyed its success without cloud being there in the backend.
For applications which involve a human commanding an IoT device via a mobile app, cloud may serve as a simple network router between the IoT device and the human. On the other hand, for more complex IoT applications, the cloud machines may be integrated with the IoT devices to handle and process raw data which can either be pushed back to the IoT devices (automation) or to the end user via some kind of user interface.
User Interface: User interfaces fuel the human-device interactions in IoT. They enable the end user to easily configure IoT devices or consume processed information from them or both. The interface may be something as trivial as an SMS, internet chat or an email-based push notification service or something complex like a full fledged web/native mobile application. These applications ping a cloud endpoint in the backend and display the data and virtual control buttons in an appropriate manner so that it is easy for any user to understand. The latest advancement in the domain of IoT user interfaces is the voice user interface that is primarily employed in the smart speaker systems. In fact, the smart speakers with their voice activated technology has helped fuel the IoT adoption all over the globe.
Conclusion
IoT has revolutionized the way we interact with our surroundings and simplified the manner in which we perform everyday tasks. However, the current scenario is not even 1% of what has been envisioned by the people who have bet big on the IoT bandwagon. It’s not just smart home applications that I’ve repeatedly exemplified in this post. IoT has paved its way into the industrial sector (called the Industrial IoT), agriculture, transportation, energy grid, health and even supply chain. But let’s postpone that discussion for another medium post :)
