Enabling technologies for effective deployment of Internet of Thing (IoT) systems: a communication networking perspective

The demand for IoT (Internet of Thing) systems that encompasses the cloud computing, multitude of low power sensing and data collection electronic devices, and distributed communications architecture is increasing at an exponential pace. With increasing interests from different industrial, business and social groups, in the near future it will be necessary to support massive deployment of diverse IoT systems in different geographical areas. Large scale deployment of IoT systems will introduce challenging problems for the communication designers, as the networking is one of the key enabling technologies for the IoT systems. Major challenges include cost effective network architecture, support of large area of coverage and diverse QoS (Quality of Service) requirements, reliability, spectrum requirements, energy requirements, and many other related issues. The paper initially reviews different classes of IoT applications and their communication requirements. Following the review, different communications and networking technologies that can potentially support large scale deployment of IoT systems for different industrial, business and social applications are discussed. The paper then concentrates on wireless networking technologies for IoT systems with specific focus on deployment issues. The deployment discussion concentrates on different IoT systems QoS and networking requirements, cost, coverage area and energy supply requirements. We introduce a sustainable low cost heterogeneous network design using short range radio standards such as IEEE802.15.4/Zigbee, IEEE802.11/WLAN that can be used to develop a wide area networks to support large number of IoT devices for various applications. Finally the paper makes some general recommendations towards sustainable network design techniques for future IoT systems that can reduce the OPEX and CAPEX requirements.