OVERVIEW AND MOTIVATIONS 5
Recently, the IoT has been seen as an emerging “paradigm of building smart com-
munities” through the networking of various devices enabled by M2M technologies
(but not excluding H2M), for which standards are now emerging (e.g., from European
Telecommunications Standards Institute [ETSI]). M2M services aim at automat-
ing decision and communication processes and support consistent, cost-effective
interaction for ubiquitous applications (e.g., fleet management, smart metering,
home automation, and e-health). M2M communications per se is the communication
between two or more entities that do not necessarily need direct human intervention:
it is the communication between remotely deployed devices with specific roles and
requiring little or no human intervention. M2M communication modules are usually
integrated directly into target devices, such as automated meter readers (AMRs),
vending machines, alarm systems, surveillance cameras, and automotive equipment,
to list a few. These devices span an array of domains including (among others) indus-
trial, trucking/transportation, financial, retail point of sales (POS), energy/utilities,
smart appliances, and healthcare. The emerging standards allow both wireless and
wired systems to communicate with other devices of similar capabilities; M2M
devices, however, are typically connected to an application server via a mobile data
communication network.
IoT applications range widely from energy efficiency to logistics, from appliance
control to “smart” electric grids. Indeed, there is increasing interest in connecting and
controlling in real time all sorts of devices for personal healthcare (patient monitor-
ing and fitness monitoring), building automation (also known as building automation
and control (BA&C)—for example, security devices/cameras; heating, ventilation,
and air-conditioning (HVAC); AMRs), residential/commercial control (e.g., secu-
rity HVAC, lighting control, access control, lawn and garden irrigation), consumer
electronics (e.g., TV, DVRs); PC and peripherals (e.g., mouse, keyboard, joystick,
wearable computers), industrial control (e.g., asset management, process control,
environmental, energy management), and supermarket/supply chain management
(this being just a partial list). Figures 1.2–1.5 provide some pictorial views of actual
IoT applications; these figures only depict illustrative cases and are not exhaustive or
normative. As it can be inferred, however, in an IoT environment there are a multi-
tude of applications and players that need to be managed across multiple platforms
(6). Some see IoT in the context of the “Web 3.0” (a name/concept advanced by
John Markoff of The New York Times in 2006), although this term has not yet gained
industry-wide, consistent support (7). The proposed essence of the term implies
“an intelligent Web,” such as supporting natural language search, artificial intelli-
gence/machine learning, and machine-facilitated understanding of information, with
the goal of providing a more intuitive user experience. IoT might fit such paradigm,
but does not depend on it.
The initial vision of the IoT in the mid-2000s was of a world where physical
objects are tagged and uniquely identified by RFID transponders; however, the con-
cept has recently grown in multiple dimensions, encompassing dispersed sensors
that are able to provide real-world intelligence and goal-oriented collaboration of
distributed smart objects via local interconnections (such as through wireless LANs,
WSNs, and so on), or global interconnections (such as through the Internet). The