Internet of Things (IOT) is about interconnected devices. These devices have inbuilt sensors which transmit or receive information using Industry standard protocols. These sensors can sense humidity, temperature, direction, range/distance, chemicals and many more. Some of these devices are intelligent, meaning they have inbuilt microprocessors or microcontrollers, while the rest are not so intelligent Some of the devices are active devices meaning they have transistors and power sources, the rest are passive in nature. The passive devices derive power from external sources.

The devices transmit or receive packets or datagrams using Industry standard formats (TCP or UDP). The Network layer protocol is the same Industry standard Internet Protocol (IP), with a variance. While the traditional internet communication happens through version 4 of Internet Protocol (IPv4), IOT requires a more advanced version of IP (IPv6). The traditional and widely accepted IPv4 has 32 bit address meaning that there can be maximum 2^ 32 devices with unique IP address that can be connected. While this number is good enough for connecting existing computers and devices, this is insufficient to provide unique addresses to ever-growing IOT devices. Hence the latest form of IP (IPv6) came into existence.  IPv6 has significant improvements over IPv4, the most important one being the availability of 128 bit address. This means that we can provide unique address to 340 trillon trillon trillon devices, which can handle the addressing requirements in IOT world.

These devices mostly use wireless communication techniques like Bluetooth, Wifi, Radio Frequency, RFID and Near Field Communication (NFC) techniques based on different standards and protocols. Communication using Bluetooth is usually achieved through BLE(Bluetooth Low Energy) protocol, which is a IOT specific variant of Bluetooth technology. Protocols like ZigBee or ZWave use low power Radio Frequency. These communication mechanisms have different applications in the IOT world. For example, BLE finds usage in wearables, whereas ZigBee/ZWave are used in home automation.

Information on the connected devices can reside locally or in centralized servers. Very often, these servers are in Cloud space for delivering additional business value.

To sum up, IOT is a combination of the following elements.

• Sensors and Microcontrollers
• IP version 6
• Communication techniques
• Cloud Infrastructure

The diagram  is a simplified view.

IOT: Simplified view of components

We shall talk more about IOT. Please watch out this space.