Page 152 - Unleashing the potenti al of the Internet of Things

3 Unleashing the potential of the Internet of Things

7.2 Things-related services

The IoT is capable of providing thing-related services within the constraints of things, such as privacy
protection and semantic consistency between physical things and their associated virtual things. In
order to provide thing-related services within the constraints of things, both the technologies in the
physical world and information world will change.

7.3 Heterogeneity
The devices in the IoT are heterogeneous and based on different hardware platforms and networks.
They can interact with other devices or service platforms through different networks.

7.4 Dynamic changes

The state of devices change dynamically, e.g., sleeping and waking up, connected and/or
disconnected as well as the context of devices including location and speed. Moreover, the number
of devices involved can change dynamically.

7.5 Enormous scale
The number of devices that need to be managed and that communicate with each other will be at least
an order of magnitude larger than the devices connected to the current Internet. The ratio of
communication triggered by devices as compared to communication triggered by humans will
noticeably shift towards device-triggered communication. Even more critical will be the management
of the data generated and their interpretation for application purposes. This relates to semantics of
data, as well as efficient data handling.

7.6 Data gathering and processing by things
IoT devices gather data from the real world and pre-process the data. Then IoT services are provided
to the user, either directly from IoT devices or via a service provider.
NOTE – As seen in the definition of the IoT, sensor network technology is one of the key enablers for IoT
services. [ISO/IEC 29182-1] describes the characteristics and defines the requirements of sensor networks.
This clause rephrases the characteristics described in [ISO/IEC 29182-1] for reflecting the characteristics of
the IoT.

7.7 Collaborative data processing

In IoT applications, IoT devices may collaborate to solve complex sensing problems such as the
detection, classification and tracking of objects in the physical world. The data from an IoT device
may be pre-processed and refined at the IoT device acquiring the data or at another IoT device.

Depending on the application, intermediate data, such as features or estimated parameters, may be
extracted from the captured data during pre-processing. The results from this pre-processing may be
shared among IoT devices. Once shared, the intermediate data from the multiple IoT devices can be
transformed into context data and situation information by data fusion.
NOTE – As seen in the definition of the IoT, sensor network technology is one of the key enablers for IoT
services. [ISO/IEC 29182-1] describes the characteristics and defines the requirements of sensor networks.
This clause rephrases the characteristics described in [ISO/IEC 29182-1] for reflecting the characteristics of
the IoT.

7.8 Maintenance-free operation
IoT devices may have to operate for long periods of time without maintenance or technical support
to resolve problems. Provision of remote diagnostics and resolution may be required.
NOTE – As seen in the definition of the IoT, sensor network technology is one of the key enablers for IoT
services. [ISO/IEC 29182-1] describes the characteristics and defines the requirements of sensor networks.

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