THE INternet of Things

THE INternet of Things

Contents Abstract 1 Introduction 1 Origination 1 Definition 1 Vision of the internet of things 1 Internet of things a buzzword or future reality? 2 Applications and Business opportunities of the internet of things 3 Retail 3 Supply Chains 3 Applications within the public sector 4 Government 4 Healthcare 4 Transportation 5 Overall opportunities for business 5 Technological factors in the adoption of the internet of things. 6 Miniaturisation of devices 6 Reduction in cost of components 7 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) 7 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) 8 Increasing communication throughput and lower latency 8 Real-time Analytics 9 Cloud Computing 10 Security and Privacy 11 Cisco and its stake in the future of the internet of things 12 Company Background and activity 12 CISCOS vision 12 CISCOS stake in the internet of things. 12 Ireland and the internet of things 13 Overview 13 Blueface and IOT 13 Challenges Ireland faces in IOT adoption 14 Conclusion. 14

Abstract
The following report examines the “Internet of things” (IOT) as a concept and emerging buzzword .This examination is carried out by first examining the applications and opportunities for IOT and then analysing the core technological advances in which will aid the expansion of this platform. Finally examples of those with a stake in the growth of the area within the international and Irish context are briefly examined.
Introduction
Origination
Internet of things (IOT) as a term has been around for the last decade, since its inception in 1999 as a word used by the radio frequency identification community, but it is not until the last number of years that the term has become a hot topic amongst big business and government organisations. The sudden interest in the term is founded from a rapidly evolving environment in which core technological advances including cloud computing, data analytics and faster wireless speeds have made the concept a reality and as a result made the internet of things a buzzword.
Definition
The IOT is largely a new concept with wide meaning and therefore can be complex in its definition, however the internet of things is defined by many as the connection of physical objects within the real world to the internet through the uses of devices attached to physical objects. This integration of the real and virtual world is characterised by an interconnected set of individually addressed and constrained devices in a distributed system, with sensing/active devices for physical phenomena, data collection, and applications using sensing, computation and actuation (IDA, 2012).The “things” in which is referred to is further defined as not just electronic devices but almost any everyday object such as objects not usually associated with technology such as clothing and food.
Vision of the internet of things
IOT envisions a world in which billions of objects communicate and share information over a network comprised of both public and private networks. These interconnected objects, regularly have data collected, analysed and used to in the process of decision making, planning and management. This world of IOT would be one in which a wealth of knowledge from data would increase efficiencies through the utilisation of information. However the future of this buzzword is still unsure as it remains in its infancy. This report aims to examine closely the future of the concept.

Internet of things a buzzword or future reality?
Figure 1: Growth of internet devices and population (Evans, 2011)
Figure 1: Growth of internet devices and population (Evans, 2011)
Over the next five years the market for IOT is expected to grow at an exponential rate due to countless applications and uses in which it promises to have. According to a report carried out by Gartner, Global spending on IT will grow 3.6 percent during 2014, to $3.8 trillion by the end of 2014 (Fogarty, 2013). IOT in fact will account for an increasing number of connections within the economy with a growth from 1.9 billion devices at the present time, to an expected 9 billion in 2018 (Adler, 2014).This it is estimated will equal all other devices including smart phones, tablets and pcs combined highlighting the significant role the internet of things will play in the future.

Figure 1: Forecasted Growth for the Internet of Things (IDA, 2012)

Applications and Business opportunities of the internet of things

The sudden growth in IT investment is linked with the growth of IOT and therefore naturally an era of increased investment comes with increased business opportunities. The following section describes some of the applications of the internet of things and the opportunities in which they will bring.
Retail
Applications within the retails sector offer a major opportunity for business to reduce cost and increase profit. The implementation of the internet of things will enable retailers to track their inventory in real time. With products on shelves equipped with technologies such RFID TAGS and smart shelves would be equipped with sensors, retailers would be able to track the movement of products and quickly replace out of stock items. (Thomas W. Gruen, 2007)
Business opportunity: For businesses this offers a major cost saving opportunity. An estimated 3.9% of sales losses each year are accounted for by shelves going empty of products in demands. With the use of sensors within retail, this would not happen due to the ability to more effectively monitor the product and order it when it becomes low. Further to this the data in which it will produce will be invaluable to retailers for the analysis of their customers’ behaviour within the store. Sensors throughout stores would enable the retailer to analyse how long customers stay at individual areas and how this effects what products they ultimately buy. This will enable retailers to optimise the displays in order to increase sales (Sankaran, 2014)
Supply Chains
The internet of things is set to have many applications within business, however a major application which is already wide use in many major businesses today is the use of sensors to track products throughout the supply chain. RFID tags are set to be placed on products within the supply chain in order increase the overall management capabilities of supply chain. These RFID tags would enable businesses to track their inventory in real time throughout the supply chain process. The introduction of tags throughout supply chains would lead to increased efficiency, reduced costs and less working capital for businesses
Business opportunity: In 2008 Wall-Marts required 15’000 of its suppliers to attach RFID tags to their palates in which were being supplied to their stores. This had the result of decreasing wall marts overall manual orders by 15%.This example shows the large effect a small scale introduction of sensors can have to a business. Overall this means that businesses will be able to receive rich information about their products at any time. This will be an essential future application of IOT.(Aline Senart, 2008)

Applications within the public sector
Government
The opportunities for IOT extends passed it application within business. IOT promises to have application within for the public sector in which many public and private organisation will be keen to be involved. These applications range from areas such as improving public services and enhancing homeland security. Sensors placed within a countries infrastructure would enable public services to more efficiently monitor and analyse data in order to improve in the areas most need. A prime example of this would be sensors placed within public transport in which allows transport authorities to better analyse passenger numbers and make investment in the transport systems in which experience the heaviest traffic of people.
Opportunity: Most importantly however it would allow better communication between all government departments through the sharing of key data from sensors. This would enable a more efficient allocation of key resources throughout an economy.
Healthcare
One of the areas in which IOT is set to have the largest impact is healthcare. This is seen in MBAN (medical body area network) which is a new are in healthcare which sensors or devices are used actively to monitor the bodies vital signs, and communicate information about the body to wirelessly to BCU (body central unit).
Opportunity: With sensors monitoring the bodies’ vital signs continuously and remotely, early warnings of complications or major problems can be flagged within the system which in turn warns medical professionals. The opportunity with thins application is seen in the possible re-structuring of healthcare from primarily treatment based to a more preventative based approach. With the ability of monitoring patients remotely with a system which gives early warnings, many patients could be treated from the home with the safety of being under constant surveillance from a centralised medical system. This would also enable many elderly people to be monitored providing the elderly with more independent living. The American health industry estimates that this could save up to $11 billion in the coming years.

Transportation
IOT promises to revolutionise the way in which transport is managed and in the process save lives and increase efficiency. Applications can help to improve transport utilisation and road safety with the convergence of real-time road traffic data. Data is collated from various sensors such as fibre optic cables and CCTV cameras, and the analytics of the real-time data is performed by back-end systems, taking into consideration past data trends. There are plans to publish relevant real-time tunnel situation details to the public. For example In Stockholm, Sweden35, the city cut traffic by 20% through the use of smart tolling traffic systems, spin-off perks included 15% lowered carbon emissions and 40,000 additional daily users of public transportation. (Presson, 2012)

Overall opportunities for business
All of the applications above be they either within the public or private sector offer a huge opportunity for businesses to innovate and develop products in which offer the solutions in which make the above applications a reality. The company in which can develop the technology which will enable millions of sensors to be connected will be the company which will ultimately make huge profits within the developing area.

Technological factors in the adoption of the internet of things.
The Following section examines the Key technology trends in which are essential in order for IOT to grow over the next number of years. These technologies will help shape the way in which IOT evolves and will ultimately determine the internet of things primary applications in the coming years. Miniaturisation of devices
Figure 2: Moore’s Law (Wikipedia, 2014)
Figure 2: Moore’s Law (Wikipedia, 2014)
Figure [ 2 ]: Moore’s law Wikipedia 2014
Figure 2: Moore’s law Wikipedia 2014
IOT uses devices to connect physical objects to the internet, In order for this to be achievable it is therefore essential that the cost and size of the devices is economically viable for widespread adoption. The electronic components that are needed to support the various capabilities of IOT, such as sensing and tracking, play a central role in the widespread adoption within industry applications. The reduction in size of these devices over the last thirty 40 years has paved the way for a new age of physical object being connected to the internet. Every two years the density of transistors has doubled. This rapid increase has kept with Moore’s law (Figure 3) in which says that the size of transistors will continue to decrease while their power will double year two years.
The improvement of design and architecture of chips has enabled semiconductor producers to reduce the size and cost of production of sensors. The number of transistors to be fitted on to one chip has been drastically reduced with the aid of key technologies including nanotechnology, lithography and metrology. For example in the year 2000, the industry standard for chip solutions was 1,000 nanometres (nm), however in 2010 the industry shifted to commercially available system on chip that use 28nm-45nm lithography which in essence means that they can integrate and entire radio transceiver with digital signal processing and baseband microprocessors meaning smaller and more technologically advanced chips are becoming a reality. In applications of the internet of things, like remote healthcare, which require chips to be no only small but concealable the miniaturisation of the devices is essential. The trend indicates that this is happening at lightening speeds. The commercialisation of this was seen in 2012 when Intel launched “Ivy Bridge” a microprocessor capable of fitting more than 2.9 million transistors on it with improvements of performance of over 50% than its predecessor

Reduction in cost of components
The cost of sensing components has also been greatly reduced in line with the reduction in size. A report by Gartner has forecast that technology components such as Wi-Fi and sensors could drop in cost by up to 45% from prices at 2010 levels to that of predicted prices in 2015.With the reduction in cost businesses and individuals could afford to implement sensors within everyday products, in a situation in which these sensors are too expensive the viability of IOT would be simply undermined. An example of how affordability can impact a businesses is within the supply chain. If sensors become affordable, small and medium businesses would have the ability to integrate them within the supply chain processes and increase their monitoring capabilities of inventory, thus increasing its efficiency (LeHong, 2011).

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
Radio frequency identification is set to play a crucial part in the widespread adoption and implementation of the IOT. Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) is currently used in one of the first mainstream applications of IOT in the tracking and monitoring of goods within a supply chain. The technology itself has several basic components, which include the following (1) the antenna, which allows transmission of information from and to the reader (2) The chip which hold information on the object it is placed on to, and transfers the data wirelessly to the reader (3) The packaging encases, chip and antenna which enables the attachment of a tag to an object which allows identification.
Today the bar code in which is placed upon goods is useful within the supply chain, however bar codes once printed are not updatable and have no ability to relay data or information. RFID on the other hand has the ability to collect and process data within its environment. With the capability to relay information and data within a supply chain RFIDs will enable a new era of tracking and monitoring the movement of goods. RFID has the potential to provide streams of data, which will feed information systems from individual items and have the flexibility to be placed in small spaces .This type of flexibility will be useful for countless future applications (IDA, 2012)

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
The Standard Internet protocol (IPv4) according to indicators is becoming exhausted. The internet assigned Numbers Authority have begun to allocate the final five ipv4 blocks to the five regional registries, meaning that the need for a new internet protocol is becoming ever more apparent. With the exhaustion of Ipv4 no new addresses from this protocol can be issued however the next internet protocol ipv6 offers a solution to this problem and in the process leads the way for the expansion of the internet and therefore the expansion of the IOT into the mainstream. IPV6 has approximately 3.4x1038, unique addresses, which offers massive room for the growth of a network of connected devices. Estimations indicate that up to 50 billion devices could be connected in the future. The new internet protocol is therefore essential for a smooth transition into a period where the demand for individual addresses will grow exponentially. (IDA, 2012)

Increasing communication throughput and lower latency
In order for the internet things to effectively operate, it requires a communication network in which can be accessed everywhere at all times .The infrastructure of networks has been vastly improved through the enhancement of cell sites, transceivers and interconnection facilities. Operators have made several additions including General packet service (GPRS) infrastructure. As a result most operators today are in the process of deploying a universal telecommunication system with high speed access technology (3G/4G) for higher throughput and low latency. This always and everywhere connectivity has meant that innovations such as the internet of things are able to go ahead

Figure [ 3 ]: Higher throughput in communication technologies (Research, 2011)
Figure 3: Higher throughput in communication technologies (Research, 2011)

Real-time Analytics
An essential technological element within the future of IOT will be the availability of real time information. As the volume of data increases with the huge increase in connected devices, the ability to use technologies which have analytical capabilities in order to quickly process the huge streams of data moving between devices. Traditional analytics involved the precreation of metadata in order for the actual analytics process to occur. New forms of analytics however have solved this problem by removing the need to pre-model metadata resulting in faster data processing. In new data analytics data is analysed and stored in the systems memory in order to improve the relevance of the data content and increase speed and decision making.(Sviler, 2014)
Cloud Computing
IOT will potentially connect billions of devices and sensors. These billions of devices will make up the structure in which new applications and services are provided. However in order to support these applications it is necessary that a reliable but flexible platform exists. Cloud Computing offers a platform in which can support the internet of things.
Cloud computing is an architecture in which controls various technology capabilities including, multi tenancy, automated provisioning and usage accounting while also relying on the internet and web browsers in order to deliver computing like a utility (IDA, 2012)
Cloud computing uses three various service models, which are cloud software as a service (SAAS) ,Cloud Platform as a service (PAAS) and cloud infrastructure as a service (IAAS), Consumers through these services are given the ability to set up services and manage hardware through the cloud. The ability to do this remotely will be essential in an age in which billions of devices need to be managed. (IDA, 2012)
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Figure [ 4 ]: Cloud computing Platform (IDA, 2012)

Security and Privacy
Ensuring privacy and security will be essential for the survival of the internet of things. The following gives and overview of essential security standards and technologies in ensuring this.
Internet protocol version 6: In areas of network protocol security, Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation protocol for the Internet; it contains Addressing and security control information, i.e., IPsec to route packets through the Internet. In IPv4, IPsec is optional and connecting computers (peers) do not necessarily support IPsec. With IPv6, IPsec support is integrated into the protocol design and connections can be secured when communicating with other IPv6 devices. IPsec provides data confidentiality, data integrity and data authentication at the network layer, and offers various security services at the IP layer and above. These security services are, for example, access control, connectionless integrity, data origin authentication, protection against replays (a form of partial sequence integrity), confidentiality (encryption), and limited traffic flow confidentiality. Other IP-based security solutions such as Internet Key Exchange (IKEv2) and Host Identity Protocol (HIP) are also used to perform authenticated key exchanges over IPsec protocol for secure payload delivery. Extensible authentication protocol: In order to enable network access authentication between clients and the network infrastructure, a Protocol for carrying Authentication for Network Access (PANA) forms the network-layer transport for EAP. In EAP terms, PANA is a User Datagram Protocol (UDP)-based EAP lower layer that runs between the EAP peer and the EAP authenticator.
Data privacy policies: The implementation of data protection acts by regions such as the European Union are essential in protecting people’s data from misuse and ensuring the trust in all IOT networks. This privacy can be further secured by Technical implementations known as PET, which use a variety of techniques like data substitution, hashing break the sensitive association of data, so that he data is no longer personally identifiable and safe to use.(IDA, 2012)

Cisco and its stake in the future of the internet of things

Company Background and activity
Cisco systems incorporated, is an American based multinational company headquartered in San Francisco with operation all around the world. Its main operations are in the design, manufacture and sale of networking equipment. It is the area of networking equipment. As CISCO is currently the world’s largest producer of networking devices and although not the inventor of the internet of things, they are quickly jumping on board with large investment in the area.
CISCOS vision
According to cisco by 2020 they expect the figure of devices within the internet of things to have reached 50 billion. According to CISCOs chief futurist Dave Evans. The IOT is a way to automate the world in ways never before available to humans. Cisco’s economic analyses and research on the subject states that For businesses, it could improve asset management, improve employee productivity, knock out what are still appallingly large gaps in visibility into supply-chain and transportation networks, improve customer service), and make innovation simpler by providing a single, global network to which any “thing” can be connected to those who need to monitor or control it .By making every “thing” remotely accessible to be monitored, controlled or ordered to notify humans when some set of criteria are met, the network underlying the IOT could tip global civilization into a new era (CISCO, 2014)

CISCOS stake in the internet of things.
According to Cisco global private sector profits will increase by 21 percent in the next 10 years due to improvements stemming from IOT The profit from making it possible, and owning the hardware and software that make it happen, would “dwarf” the $14.4 trillion Cisco predicts would be available to other companies. This according to Cisco is why investing in the development of key IOT technologies is and area in which they hope will yield huge profit.
The profit potential according to cisco is being an early mover in the area to such an extent that much of the IOT infrastructure will be owned by CISCO. It is in a position to make itself immensely richer by owning and controlling the technology underneath the internet if things. CISCO is only one of the many examples of company making an early move in the area, however company such as CISCO may become major players with the expansion of IOT.

Ireland and the internet of things
The following section gives some brief examples of the internet of things in the Irish context.
Overview
It is estimated that by 2020 over 16 million devices will be connected to IOT in Ireland. According to a report carried out by Blueface predicts that while many of these devices will be personal smart devices, as much as 42% will bee business related devices. This however they outline may be a conservative estimate. This growth indicates that the internet of things will have a key role in Ireland’s economy in the next 10 years.(Blueface, 2014)
Blueface and IOT
Blueface telecommunications is an Irish owned telecommunications company in which provides IP telephone services through the use of its IP platform. This platform is currently used by customers in 12 countries. Blueface telecommunications is a prime example of how an Irish company is claiming a stake in the internet of things.
Along with its stake in many areas of telecommunication, it is investing in the area of IOT as a future prospect. In the second half of 2014 Blueface is set to launch a product called “SMARTY”, which will provide a platform for M2M communication. This platform they believe will pave the way for the roll out of applications for the internet of things in Ireland.
According to Blueface this platform will be aimed initially at businesses such as target service providers, carriers, fleet management providers, utilities and application providers. All of these type of companies who want to innovate in the area of M2M technology will be provided with a secure platform and access layer for such services.
In the process Blueface will MVNO (Mobile virtual network operator) with 3G in Ireland to provide M2M customers with secure data backhaul, static IP addressing and open access API’S. This M2M platform will according to Blueface be highly differentiated by virtue of its open architecture and ease of deployment for companies who have application layers and need to roll out services quickly and efficiently.
This M2M platform provided by Blueface is an example of how Irish companies are investing in the potential of IOT as a future growing area which offers endless business opportunities.

Challenges Ireland faces in IOT adoption
The main challenge Ireland faces In adopting IOT is ensuring the right infrastructure is available for the expansion of IOT devices. At the moment issues with broadband speed and connectivity availability may hamper Ireland’s development in the area. Although 4G is slowly being introduced Ireland’s network and infrastructure will have to be greatly improved in order to deal with the exponential growth in the number of devices in the coming years. Along with this it must also invest in all the core technologies stated above. If Ireland fails to do this, the economy and external investment from multinationals such as CISCO and Intel may suffer.

Conclusion.
The report overall has aimed to provide an overview of the internet of things, with the aim of giving a general sense of how it will be used with the example of important applications and what technological advances are essential in shaping the future of the internet of things. The report also gave an outline of both local and multinational companies who look to play a central role in this emerging area.

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