An Overview of IoT Architecture

IoT Architecture

The Internet of Things, or IoT. We all have heard about it. But what is it, and why is it so promising such a vast change in the world? Smart cars, smart homes everything around us can be turned into smart devices with the help of IoT. 

What is IoT?

"The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical or digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction".     

 It's kind of messed up isn't it? In simple language it is a network of devices which can sense, accumulate, and transfer data over the internet without any human interaction.

Evolution of IoT:

• The Pre-Internet era 

In Pre-Internet era there was human-to-human communication or through telephone.

•  The Dawn of Internet

The whole world changed with the origin of Internet. We could share information with living miles apart with just a click of a button.

• Internet of People 

 Social media came started to gain popularity. Many websites like LinkedIn, etc became the prominent websites. YouTube came out in 2005, which became so popular to communicate with people, people started showcasing their talent's too.

•  Internet of Things

Now all the data is available on internet today which was created by us. The problem is people have limited time, attention, accuracy which means we are not good at capturing data about the things in real world. If we had computers that everything that was to know about things and they would gather data without any help from us, and can keep count of everything and this is what gave birth to "Internet of Things".

 

IoT Architecture: 

Generally IoT Architecture consists of 4 stages:                                                                           

Stage 1 Sensors and actuators:

A thing in the context of "Internet of Things" should be equipped with sensors and actuators, giving the ability to emit, accept and process signals.

Stage 2 Data acquisition system:

The data collected by sensors is in analog form which needs to be converted into digital streams for further processing. 

Stage 3 Edge analytics:

Once the data is digitized, it requires further processing before it enters the data center, this is where edge analytics comes into picture.

Stage 4 Cloud analytics:

The data that needs in-depth processing gets forwarded to physical data centers or cloud based systems.

Applications:

1. Natural disaster management with IoT.
2. Smart farming with IoT.
3. Pollution control with IoT.