Page 151 - Unleashing the potenti al of the Internet of Things

Unleashing the potential of the Internet of Things 3

– Things communicate with each other via the infrastructure or the infrastructure-less
communications means.

6.2 Common characteristics
There are common characteristics in things as follows:

– Things can use services that act as interfaces to things;
– Things could be competing with other things for resources, services and subject to selective
pressures;
– Things may have embedded or attached sensors (and/or actuators), thus they can interact with
their environment;
– Things use protocols to communicate with each other and the infrastructure; and
– Things are environmentally safe, where things are devices for identification, sense or
communication, etc.

6.3 Social characteristics
Things have the following social characteristics towards other things or people:

– Things can communicate with other things, computing devices and with people;
– Things can collaborate to create groups or networks;
– Things can initiate communication without human intervention;

– Things can create, manage and destroy other things; and
– Things can respect the privacy, security and safety of other things or people with which they
interact.

6.4 Autonomy of things
Autonomy is an important feature of the IoT. The followings are characteristics of autonomous things:
– Things can do many tasks autonomously;

– Things can negotiate, understand and adapt to their environment;
– Things can extract patterns from the environment or to learn from other things;
– Things can take decisions through their reasoning capabilities; and
– Things can selectively transform or evolve and propagate information.

6.5 Capability of self-replication or control
Autonomous things tend to have a capability of self-replication or control under specific conditions.
– Things can create, manage and destroy other things.

7 Characteristics of IoT applications
NOTE – Characteristics given in clauses 7.1 to 7.5 refer to [ITU-T Y.2060] and characteristics given in
clauses 7.6 to 7.10 refer to [ISO/IEC 29182-1].

7.1 Interconnectivity

In the IoT, anything will be inter-connected with the global information and communication
infrastructure.

Rec. ITU-T Y.4103/F.748.0 (10/2014) 137