Internet of Things in Simple Words

The term Internet of things or IoT is one of the most widely used phrases these days, especially after the Government of India’s smart city plan. People are familiar with the term, however, there are confusions that still exist when it comes to terms like ‘Internet of things’, ‘Internet of everything’, and machine to machine’, etc.  Here we try to decipher different aspects of Internet of things to help you understand this new technology.

Confusions around IoT

Is it networking of the things?

It is communication between heterogeneous devices?

Is it communication between machines?

Is it one step ahead in automation?

It’s ALL of the above.

Components of IoT
We all know that devices connected to the Internet are connected to the network based on unique IP Address allocated to them and therefore devices are able to communicate with each other.  Now let’s expand the base from Internet connected devices to other physical things and see how other things can become part of it. 

Conceptually to communicate with each other, we need the following:

1.      Unique identification

2.      Communication channel

3.      Information or data for communication

4.      Information processing & Events for communication

Unique identification: To achieve unique identification, you can attach any of the following with your physical thing to identify it uniquely:

   IP Address 

   GPS device ID

   RFID

   BLUE Tooth Address, etc.

Communication channel: Now you can use any of the supported communication channel for data transmission, such as follows:

   TCP/IP or http protocols or FTP 

   GPRS or SMS through SIM module

   Radio waves

Devices: Now that you all elements in place, you need any of the following devices to collect the data/information:

  Sensors

  Receivers

  Readers

  Output from programs or processing

Information processing:  Finally firmware program or resident software programs are used to run on the connected device to process data/information & invoke communication either on a  Particular Event or a given Frequency.

The solution created from the permutation and combination of all the components and elements cited above is called Internet of Things.

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