IoT architectures: from data to smart systems

Abstract

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” It was 1991 when Mark Weiser’s pioneering article was published in the Scientific American, discussing a future where networked devices would be so ubiquitous that “no one will notice their presence” (Weiser (1991)). To a large extent, this is our reality today. We may have changed terminology and moved from ubiquitous computing to Internet of Things, but the substance has not changed. We are surrounded by data-capturing computing devices that are always on, are networked, and many of which can perform world-altering operations. Just think of hopping into a modern car. The driver is actually interacting with a distributed computing system on wheels. With up to 100 electronic control units and hundred of millions of lines of code, the modern automotive industry has become more about software than mechanics and aerodynamics. And yet, we think and interact with our car as we would have done in 1991. Or think at our symbiotic relationship with social media as experienced via our personal data capturing device: the smartphone. It is symbiotic because it satisfies the human need for emotional connectedness while it feeds content to the social media infrastructure, content that is essential for its existence and that is typically metabolized as targeted advertisement. The modern human being has feelings relatable to gymnophobia whenever leaving home without the smart phone, a fear of a sensation of nakedness, incompleteness that transcends the rational. And dually we accept any other human being we are close to or even interacting with to be concurrently doing something on their smart phone. The phone is such an integral and accepted part of who we are and how we behave that we can agree that Mark Weiser’s prediction was correct: phones are our everyday life and we do not even notice anymore. In many countries the level of penetration of mobile phones is above 80%, including population of any age (Statista (2022)). The number of active phone subscriptions is higher than 7 billion. If we consider Bluetooth, a technology often used for dynamic connectivity at the edge of the system, 4 billion Bluetooth Low Energy network interfaces are currently been shipped per year (Bluetooth SIG (2021)). Number projected to surpass 6 billions by 2025. And more generally, the predictions indicate that by 2030 the total amount of IoT devices worldwide, of any type, will reach the value of 24 billion (Transforma Insights (2020)). The unprecedented advancements in realizing IoT devices at affordable prices and the pervasive connectivity of wireless and wired Internet technologies, are essential building blocks to achieve the vision of a smart, OPEN ACCESS