The Era of Internet of Things

The physical layer is the most detailed level of abstraction in IoT. It mainly consists of sensors that acquire information for the system and actuators that do actions in response to instructions from the system. To imagine how they both, actuators and sensors, act together in a system, a smart house is considered for example. The actuators here are used to lock and unlock doors, switch on/off the lights and alert users of any warnings or control the temperature of a room or the whole house. The sensors are used to send feedback to the controller of each small system of those systems mentioned above. For example, they send feedback about the condition of the rooms and whether there are any people in the rooms or not, and accordingly, the controller sends its signals to the actuators to turn off unnecessary working devices such as the lights and the air conditioner. Transducer terminology is used for both sensors and actuators. It means a device that converts energy form to another. In this chapter, different types of sensors and actuators are thoughtfully presented and discussed. Actuators may be written, sensors may be read. Moreover, different controllers used in IoT are discussed with its programming methods.

The communication layer is considered as the backbone of the IoT systems. It is the main channel between the application layer and different operating activities in the IoT system. The whole physical system is loaded with amounts of data and information that need to be shared with other nodes. Therefore, it is needed to set up a suitable connection network among these nodes through a communication protocol. The communication could be wire-connected or wireless based on the protocol defined by the designer. Moreover, networks are very vital components in IoT to connect things to the outside world of internet. IoT requires an intelligent network infrastructure. Any IoT hardware can connect to the internet via the following [1–17]:

In this chapter, we will discuss the basic motivation behind cloud computing and its importance for IoT. Thanks to TCP/IP and HTTP, any client or IoT hardware can talk to any IoT service, no matter which hardware you choose. We will learn how to use the cloud as an intelligent system.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing industry. Analysts predict that (IoT) products and services will grow exponentially in next years. It is a confluence of different sectors: embedded systems, communication systems, sensors/actuators, WWW, and mobile applications. Use Internet of Things Technology to solve all problems in different life sectors: healthcare, museums, libraries, inventory management, advertisement, real-estate identification, food tracking, maintenance, radiation/pollution monitoring, and security [1].