Page 25 - Unleashing the potenti al of the Internet of Things

Unleashing the potential of the Internet of Things 1

– Data-carrying device: A data-carrying device is attached to a physical thing to indirectly
connect the physical thing with the communication networks.
– Data-capturing device: A data-capturing device refers to a reader/writer device with the
capability to interact with physical things. The interaction can happen indirectly via
data-carrying devices, or directly via data carriers attached to the physical things. In the
first case, the data-capturing device reads information on a data-carrying device and can
optionally also write information given by the communication networks on the
data-carrying device.
NOTE 3 – Technologies used for interaction between data-capturing devices and data-carrying
devices or data carriers include radio frequency, infrared, optical and galvanic driving.
– Sensing and actuating device: A sensing and actuating device may detect or measure
information related to the surrounding environment and convert it into digital electronic
signals. It may also convert digital electronic signals from the information networks into
operations. Generally, sensing and actuating devices form local networks communicate
with each other using wired or wireless communication technologies and use gateways to
connect to the communication networks.
– General device: A general device has embedded processing and communication capabilities
and may communicate with the communication networks via wired or wireless
technologies. General devices include equipment and appliances for different IoT
application domains, such as industrial machines, home electrical appliances and smart
phones.

7 Fundamental characteristics and high-level requirements of the IoT

7.1 Fundamental characteristics

The fundamental characteristics of the IoT are as follows:
– Interconnectivity: With regard to the IoT, anything can be interconnected with the global
information and communication infrastructure.
– Things-related services: The IoT is capable of providing thing-related services within the
constraints of things, such as privacy protection and semantic consistency between physical
things and their associated virtual things. In order to provide thing-related services within
the constraints of things, both the technologies in physical world and information world
will change.
– Heterogeneity: The devices in the IoT are heterogeneous as based on different hardware
platforms and networks. They can interact with other devices or service platforms through
different networks.
– Dynamic changes: The state of devices change dynamically, e.g., sleeping and waking up,
connected and/or disconnected as well as the context of devices including location and
speed. Moreover, the number of devices can change dynamically.
– Enormous scale: The number of devices that need to be managed and that communicate
with each other will be at least an order of magnitude larger than the devices connected to
the current Internet. The ratio of communication triggered by devices as compared to
communication triggered by humans will noticeably shift towards device-triggered
communication. Even more critical will be the management of the data generated and their
interpretation for application purposes. This relates to semantics of data, as well as efficient
data handling.

Rec. ITU-T Y.4000/Y.2060 (06/2012) 11