The role of standards is and will be instrumental for the evolution and wider adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, there is no such thing like a single blueprint or standard for IoT, given that the latter is not a single technology but rather a collection of technological building blocks that enable advanced applications that leverage data and services from multiple Internet-connected devices.
Any non-trivial IoT deployment comprises sensors, actuators, wireless networks, Cloud computing infrastructures, middleware components, as well as application elements. Therefore, when the discussion comes to IoT standards there are tens of different standards covering the above areas.
There are different ways you can find your way in this complex standards landscape, as soon as you can understand how these standards are clustered into different categories.
In particular:
- Classification by Technology: A prominent classification of IoT standards can be based on the technological layer they deal with. Based on this classification, one cluster is formed by connectivity standards such as the WiFi / IEEE 802.11 family of standards, 3GPP (http://www.3gpp.org/) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) standards for all IP communications, ZigBee (www.zigbee.org/) standards for the wireless connectivity of sensor networks and more. Likewise, there are standards that focus on the Web layer of IoT applications such as the SWE (Sensor Web Enablement) standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)[1], the IETF CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) standard for HTTP/RESTful access over IoT devices and the W3C Semantic Sensor Networks (SSN) ontology for IoT data modeling. Similarly, there are standards associated with the Cloud and application layers of IoT applications.
- Classification by application domain: Another clustering of IoT standards can be based on the vertical application domain that they address. There are sets of standards, which facilitate IoT application deployment in specific vertical domains such as smart buildings, healthcare, energy, manufacturing and more. For example, as we outlined in an earlier article in the manufacturing area, there are standards developed by the Industrial Internet Consortium and the Indusrie 4.0 initiative[2]. Similarly, there is a large number of standards, which have been developed in order to support smart home and smart buildings applications, including ZigBee and KNX (https://www.knx.org).
- Classification by standardisation body: A third way to keep track of standards is to follow the organizations that develop them. A non-exhaustive list of organizations that develop IoT standards include: the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (ieee.org), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) (www.iec.ch), the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) (www.iso.org), the International Society of Automation (ISA) (www.isa.org), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (www.itu.int), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) (www.ietf.org), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (http://www.w3.org/), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) (http://www.etsi.org/) and OASIS (https://www.oasis-open.org/). These organisations develop standards associated with specific technologies (e.g., Web technologies in the case of W3C), and in several cases with specific vertical domains (e.g., IEEE has develop a rich set of standards for healthcare, which involve numerous IoT protocols and devices[3]).
In this sea of standards we have selected and herewith present a set of selected standards that are already deployed and expected to have significant impact in the coming years:
LoRaWAN is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) specification. It is intended for wireless battery operated things in regional, national or global network. The specification targets key IoT requirements such as secure bi-directional communication, mobility and localisation services. Furthermore, it provides seamless interoperability among smart things without the need of complex local installations, which facilitates users, developers, and businesses in the roll out of IoT applications. Several IoT deployments are nowadays relying on LoRa infrastructures.
6LoWPAN is a simple low throughput wireless network comprising typically low cost and low power IoT devices such as sensor networks. It supports common topologies such as star, mesh and combinations of star and mesh.
LoWPAN networks are typically used for supporting:
(i) Networking transducers (e.g., sensing & actuation, smart sensors)
(ii) Simple control applications such as control in smart home environments
(iii) Complex networked controls such light, switch and motion sensors. LoWPAN’s are a reality and already deployed in various applications (e.g., smart home).
The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized Web transfer protocol for use with constrained IoT nodes and networks. It is designed for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications such as smart energy and building automation. It is very commonly used in conjunction with the LoWPAN. CoAP enabled device expose developer-friendly REST APIs, which facilitate developers to write applications over them. There is already rich language support for writing applications over CoAP devices, including C/C++, Java and Python.
The Hypercat specification (developed by the Hypercat consortium), provides one of the most prominent standards for interoperability across different IoT systems and applications. In particular, it enables IoT client applications to discover information about IoT assets over the Web. Based on Hypercat, developers can write applications that will work across many different servers, breaking down the walls between vertical silos of IoT applications. Hypercat is extremely simple as it is based on mainstream developer-friendly standards such as https, REST and JSON. The standard is already deployed extensively in the United Kingdom, while it is currently being adopted in Australia as well.
The oneM2M family of specifications defines a software layer for communication and interaction between geographically and administratively dispersed applications and devices. It’s an IP-based layer, which has been produced with the active engagement of the industry (notably of the telcos). oneM2M functionalities exposes to application developers via IT-friendly APIs, which eases the development of cross domain applications, including intelligent applications that combine multiple devices, gateways and Cloud apps in a single offering. oneM2M is suitable for applications that comprise multiple distributed devices and is already deployed in various cities. Given that the specifications are quite new, we expect to see a proliferation of oneM2M deployments in the coming years.
The above-listed standards are dedicated to supporting IoT devices and applications. Although predicting the future is always very risky, we strongly believe that you will read more and more about them in the years to come.
[1] http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/markets-technologies/swe
[2] http://theinternetofallthings.com/industry-4-0-iot-as-a-game-changer-in-future-manufacturing-10172016/
[3] https://standards.ieee.org/findstds/standard/healthcare_it.html
John Soldatos is an Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, JavaEE consultant, writer and published author.
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