Internet of Things

Preface

The Internet of Things or, as commonly referred to and now universally used, IoT has two keywords: things and Internet. The very idea of IoT consists allowing things to connect to the (existing) Internet, thus allowing the generation of information and, on the reverse, the interaction of the virtual world with the physical world. This book does not attempt to be an exhaustive treaty on the subject of IoT. Rather, it tries to present a broad view of the IoT based on the joint research activity at the University of Parma, mainly in the years between 2012 and 2015 (when all the authors were affiliated with the same Department of Information Engineering), especially in the context of the EU FP7 project CALIPSO (Connect All IP‐based Smart Objects!, 2012–2014). In particular, we present, in a coherent way, new ideas we had the opportunity to explore in the IoT ecosystem, trying to encompass the presence of heterogeneous communication technologies through unifying concepts such as interoperability, discoverability, security, and privacy. On the way, we also touch upon cloud and fog computing (two concepts interwoven with IoT) and conclude with a practical view on IoT (with focus on the physical devices). The intended audience of the book is academic and industrial professionals, with good technical skills in networking technologies. To ease reading, we have tried to provide intuition behind all presented concepts.

The contents of the book flow from a preliminary overview on the ...