IoT systems

IoT, as a concept, has been around for a long time. This technology was visible in the form of a large number of sensors that were deployed in control systems in manufacturing plants, home gadgets, mobile phones, and even virtual gaming consoles. The sensors could take real-life inputs, digitize them, and present them to the digital world and vice versa. Since the sensors were active devices, they needed a power source, and battery life was limited, thus limiting the use of these devices. Further, the sensors were isolated devices with limited networking capabilities, which would further limit their usefulness. The development of battery-efficient, low-power devices and the introduction of networking protocols gave a big push to the use of these technologies. These devices could now communicate using protocols such as Low Range (LoRa ), Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), IPv6 Low-power wireless Personal Area Network (6LowPAN), ZigBee, and mobile networks.

The range of these networks is generally limited, and these devices talk to their gateways using the protocols listed earlier, which then connect over IP to other networks across the WAN. This provides the ability for these small sensors spread across the physical world, to create meaningful data that can then all be collated and analyzed at a central location to help in providing a cohesive view, helping take better business decisions. We will cover only the IP networks as a part of this book and treat the gateways to the other networks as users of the IP network.