The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated, internet-connected objects which can collect and transfer data over a wireless network without human intrusion. Thus, the Internet of Things aims to make it possible for objects to be connected with other objects, individuals, at any time or anywhere using any network, path, or service.
Internet of Things – Applications
Based on AbdelRahman, the various applications of IoT are as follows:
Smart Cities
The IoT plays an essential role in improving the smartness of cities and improving general infrastructure. The IoT applications in smart cities include intelligent transportation systems, smart buildings, traffic congestion, waste management, smart lighting, smart parking, and urban maps.
IoT may include different functionalities such as monitoring available parking spaces within the city, monitoring the levels of pedestrians and vehicles. Intelligent highways can send out alerts and critical information, such as access to alternate routes based on weather conditions or unforeseen events such as traffic jams and accidents.
Healthcare
Most healthcare systems in many countries are inefficient, slow, and inevitably prone to error. It can be easily changed since the healthcare sector depends on various activities and devices that can be automated and improved through technology. A lot of benefits that IoT application offers in the health-care sector are mostly categorized into the patients, staff, and objects tracking, identifying, as well as authenticating, individuals, and the automatic gathering of data and sense. Hospital workflow can be significantly improved once the patient flow is tracked. Furthermore, authentication and identification reduce incidents that may be harmful to patients, record keeping, and the number of cases of mismatched infants. Other elements of IoT include RFID, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi among others. These will greatly improve the measurement and monitoring techniques of critical functions like blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, blood glucose, cholesterol levels, and many others.
Smart Agriculture and Water Management
The IoT can strengthen and enhance the agriculture sector by examining soil moisture. IoT would allow to control and preserve the number of vitamins found in agricultural products and regulate microclimate conditions to make the most of the production of vegetables and fruits and their quality. The study about weather conditions allows forecasting of drought, wind changes, rain, or snow, thus controlling temperature and humidity levels to prevent fungus as well as other microbial contaminants. With efficient monitoring techniques and administration of the entire agriculture area, a lot of wasted and spoiling may be avoided through IoT implementation in agriculture. It also guides to better electricity and water control.
In water management, the role of IoT includes studying water suitability in seas and rivers for both drinking and agriculture use, identifying pressure variations in pipes, and liquid presence outside tanks as well as observing levels of water variation in dams, rivers, and reservoirs.
Retail and Logistics
The IoT in retail Management has many benefits. Some include observing storage conditions throughout the supply chain, product tracking to enable traceability purposes, payment processing depending on the location or activity period in public transport, theme parks, gyms, and others. Inside the retail premises, IoT can be applied to various applications such as the direction in the shop based on a preselected list, fast payment processes like checking out automatically with the aid of biometrics, detecting potential allergen products, and controlling the rotation of products on shelves and warehouses to automate restocking procedures.
In the industries, IoT helps in detecting levels of gas and leakages within the industry and its environments, tracking toxic gases as well as the oxygen levels within the confines of chemical plants to ensure the safety of goods and workers, and observing levels of oil, gases, and water in cisterns and storage tanks. The Internet of Things can also help with maintenance and repair since systems can be set up to compute equipment problems while also automatically scheduling periodic maintenance services before the equipment fails.
Smart Living
In this domain, IoT can be applied in remote control devices, one can remotely switch appliances on and off hence preventing accidents as well as saving energy. Other smart home appliances include refrigerators fitted with LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screens, enabling one to know what is available inside, what has overstayed and is almost expiring as well as what needs to be restocked. This information can also be linked to a smartphone application enabling one to access it when outside the house and therefore buy what is needed. The washing machines can allow one to remotely monitor laundry. In addition, a wide range of kitchen devices can be interfaced with through a smartphone, hence making it possible to adjust the temperature, like in the case of an oven. Some ovens which have a self-cleaning feature can be easily monitored as well. In terms of safety in the home, IoT can be applied through alarm systems and cameras can be installed to monitor and detect window or door openings hence preventing intruders.
Smart Environment
The environment has a vital role within all aspects of life, from people to animals, birds, and also plants, which are all affected by an unhealthy environment in one way or another. There have been numerous efforts to create a healthy environment in terms of eliminating pollution and reducing wastage of resources, but the existence of industries, as well as transportations wastes coupled with reckless and harmful human actions, are commonplace elements that consistently damage the environment. Consequently, the environment requires smart and innovative ways to help in monitoring and managing waste, which provides a significant amount of data that forces governments to put in place systems that will protect the environment.
Smart environment strategies integration with IoT technology should be created for sensing, tracking, and assessment of objects of the environment that offer potential benefits in achieving a sustainable life and a green world. The IoT technology allows observing and managing air quality through data collection from remote sensors across cities and providing round-the-clock geographic coverage to accomplish better ways of managing traffic jams in major cities. Additionally, IoT technology can be applied in measuring pollution levels in water and consequently enlighten decisions on water usage. In waste management, which consists of various types of waste, like chemicals and pollutants being detrimental to the environment and people, animals, and plants as well, IoT can also be applied. In weather forecasting, IoT can be used to deliver a significant accuracy and high resolution for monitoring the weather by information sharing and data exchange.
Through IoT technology, weather systems can collect information such as barometric pressure, humidity, temperature, light, motion, and other information, from vehicles in motion and transmit the information wirelessly to weather stations. The information is attained by installing sensors on the vehicles and even on buildings after which it is stored and analyzed to assist in weather forecasting.
Internet of Things Challenges
The various challenges of IoT based on Dr. M L Sharma are as follows:
Scalability
Internet of Things has a big concept than the conventional Internet of computers because things cooperate within an open environment. Basic functionality such as communication and service discovery, therefore, needs to function equally efficiently in both small-scale and large-scale environments. The IoT requires new functions and methods to gain an efficient operation for scalability.
Self-Organizing
Smart things cannot be managed as computers that require their users to configure and adapt them to particular situations. Mobile things, which are often only sporadically used, need to establish connections spontaneously, and able to organize and configure themselves to suit their particular environment.
Data volume
Some applications of the IoT will involve infrequent communication, and gather information from sensor networks, or logistics and large-scale networks will collect huge volumes of data on central network nodes or servers. The term that represents this phenomenon is big data which requires many operational mechanisms in addition to new technologies for storing, processing and management.
Data interpretation
To assist smart item users, it is necessary to comprehend the local context determined by sensors as precisely as possible.For service providers to profit from the disparate data that will be generated, need to be able to draw some generalized able conclusions from the interpreted sensor data.
Interoperability
Each type of smart object on the Internet of Things has different information, processing, and communication capabilities. Different criteria, such as energy availability and communications bandwidth needs, would apply to different smart items.
Automatic Discovery
In dynamic environments, the things must be automatically identified, which requires appropriate semantic means of describing their functionality.
Software complexity
A more extensive software infrastructure will be needed on the network and background servers to manage the smart objects and provide services to support them. That because the software systems in smart objects will have to function with minimal resources, as in conventional embedded systems.
Security and privacy
Other needs would be required in an Internet of Things, in addition to the security and protection components of the Internet, such as communications confidentiality, the authenticity and trustworthiness of communication partners, and message integrity. There is a need to access certain services or prevent them from communicating with other things in IoT and also business transactions involving smart objects would need to be protected from competitors’ prying eyes.
Wireless communications
From an energy point of view, the existing wireless technologies such as GSM, UMTS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth are far less suitable; more recent WPAN standards such as ZigBee and others still under development may have a narrower bandwidth, but they do use significantly less power.
Bibliography
- https://www.iotforall.com/what-is-internet-of-things
- AbdelRahman H. Hussein, “Internet of Things (IOT): Research Challenges and Future Applications “ International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 10, No. 6, 2019.
- Dr. M L Sharma, Sachin Kumar, Nipun Mehta, “INTERNET OF THINGS APPLICATION, CHALLENGES AND FUTURE SCOPE “ International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) Volume: 05 Issue: 02 Feb-2018.
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