The Internet of Things: Connecting Objects

Chapter 1

Introduction to the Internet of Things ¹

1.1. Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) is somehow a leading path to a smart world with ubiquitous computing and networking. It aims to make different tasks easier for users and provide other tasks, such as easy monitoring of different phenomena surrounding us. With ubiquitous computing, computing will be embedded everywhere and programmed to act automatically with no manual triggering; it will be omnipresent.

In the IoT, environmental and daily life items, also named “things”, “objects”, or “machines” are enhanced with computing and communication technology and join the communication framework. In this framework, wireless and wired technologies already provide the communication capabilities and interactions, meeting a variety of services based on person-to-person, person-to-machine, machine-to-person, machine-to-machine interactions and so on. These connected machines or objects/things will be new Internet or network users and will generate data traffic in the current or emerging Internet.

Connecting objects might be wireless, as with the radio frequency identification (RFID), or sensor radio technologies that offers, respectively, identification of items and sensing of the environment. Connection may be wired, as with power line communication (PLC). PLC offers data transport over electrical media and has pioneered the in-home networking connectivity of electronic consumer devices that we also name “objects” such as smart ...