What is IOT ?

The Internet is the interconnection of several computers in a global range. IoT has extended the vision of Internet further. Here, not only computers are interconnected, rather all the entities on the earth should be connected. The motto is that “Anything that can be connected will be connected. The term ‘Internet of Things’ was first coined by Kevin Ashton, a British technology pioneer, in 1999. The basic goal was to capture and share data in an automated and pervasive manner. The ‘things’ in IoT can include anything from a smart-watch to a cruise control system. But the common factor is that every object is consisting of some type of sensors (e.g. temperature, light, motion, etc.) or actuators (e.g. displays, sound, motors, etc.). These sensors and actuators are often part of a larger ‘things’ where a number of them are embedded. The other components of the IoT ecosystem include the computing resources (to process the sensed data locally or remotely) and the communication medium (Bluetooth, ZigBee, RFID, etc., for short range and the Internet for long range). The IoT devices sense or read their surroundings or the environment where they are embedded. The sensed data are processed and analyzed to acquire information and knowledge on the basis of which some definitive action may be taken. Actually, the essence of IoT is to make any information available to anyone and anytime across all the barriers. IoT devices can do their work autonomously i.e. without any explicit external command. They independently collect information and exchange them proactively with other IoT devices within the network. The gathered data are analyzed in runtime or later either manually or by the machine to infer information. The applications of IoT have been seen in the wide range of domains such as manufacturing sector, logistic, transportation, agriculture, medical and healthcare, home and building automation, smart grid, service sector, etc. The advancements in technologies that have led to cheap sensors, cheap processing, and cheap bandwidth with ubiquitous wireless coverage and smartphones, have provided an effective ground for IoT to harvest information from the environment and interact with the physical world. This has abetted in minimizing the gap between the physical objects and the cyber world, which has made easier to control these devices. In short, by means of the ubiquitously and universally connected devices, IoT has taken us to the new possibilities of a smart world for a smart living.