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Today’s IoT
§ Operations – Typically on the IoT platform and
optimizing operations across multiple control
domains, it includes prognostics, optimization,
monitoring and diagnostics, provisioning and
deployment, and management.
§ Information – Typically on the IoT platform but
also emerging as part of the edge, it comprizes
core IoT analytics and data and is responsible
for gathering, transforming, persisting and
modelling the data to support optimized
decision making, system-wide operations and
improvement of system models.
§ Application – Typically on the IoT platform but
can also contain components that are part of
the business domain. Typically consists of the
application program interface, user interface
and logic and rules and is responsible for
implementing logic that realizes functionalities
for the IoT system itself.
§ Business domain – Typically on a platform
separate from those of the core IoT functions
defined in the operations, information,
application and to some extent control
domains, it integrates the IoT functionalities
with back end applications such as CRM, ERP,
billing and payments.
The IoT platform itself can be located in the cloud,
located on premise or involve a combination of
the two. It can comprize a single server, multiple
servers or a combination of physical and virtual
servers. Regardless of its physical location or
architecture, the domains that comprize the IoT
platform – operations, information, application and
perhaps even aspects of business and control –
contain multiple data and control flows with one
another, with the back end applications of the
business domain and with the physical systems/
control domain that resides in the edge. Additional
services of the IoT platform can include resource
interchanges to enable access to resources
outside of the IoT system, network services, cloud
integration services and many other services as
defined by the individual platform provider.
2.2 IoT system design
A number of tools exist to assist IoT systems
designers in the use of the IoT system components
described in Section 2.1. Chief amongst these is the
ISO/IEC/IEEE architecture description standard [9].
In addition, a number of IoT architectures/reference
architectures from various standards organizations
and IoT-focused consortia are available. The
following subsections provide an overview of the
most prominent approaches available today for
better understanding the various options and
potential opportunities for the IoT 2020 smart and
secure IoT platform.
2.2.1 ISO/IEC 30141, Internet of Things
Reference Architecture (IoT RA)
Joint Technical Committee 1 of the International
Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the
IEC (ISO/IEC JTC 1) chartered its Working Group
(WG) 10 to examine and provide recommendations
and develop International Standards for the
Internet of Things. The first major deliverable
from this group is a working draft of International
Standard ISO/IEC 30141. The working draft
provides key insights into the problems faced
by IoT implementers and specific aspects of IoT
architecture design and implementation that
will help align the efforts of future IoT architects
in designing seamless interoperability and plug-
and-play IoT systems. The draft defines the
various components of the IoT universe as well
as a conceptual model, a reference model, and a
reference architecture consisting of views. WG 10
has established liaison agreements with a number
of groups defining the other architectures cited in
Section 2.2, and input from those groups can be
readily identified in the current working draft.