Scalable Architecture for the Internet of Things

Chapter 1. Internet of Things (IoT)

This chapter provides a general overview of the Internet of Things (IoT). We will cover the data-driven computing paradigm and associated architectures, desired quality attributes of an IoT platform, and evaluation criteria for IoT platforms. In addition, we’ll examine a comparative case study showing the transformative power of the IoT (in this case, in the smart grid domain).

Introduction to IoT

What does it mean to be driven by data? Data-driven business and engineering solutions are becoming the norm in our modern society. Only a couple of centuries ago, counting and calculation (a synonym for computing at that time) were done manually, just as data-gathering efforts were. This manual labor had obvious scalability issues. The appearance of a difference engine (an automatic mechanical calculator) in the 19th century heralded a new age from the point of view of computing.¹ The early attempts to build viable mechanical automata ran into serious problems, and the mechanical approach was abandoned in the favor of an electrical variant. In both cases the principal goal was to boost the computing power. Computing is meaningless without data; thus, data must be somehow coupled with computing nodes. The recent advancements in communication technologies, especially the emergence of the internet, enabled data to emanate from everywhere. This significantly pushed our attention toward distributed solutions for reasons of performance, scalability, dependability, ...