The growing advancements in technology are making the Internet of Things (IoT) flourish, facilitate and smoothen people’s livelihoods worldwide. Concepts around IoT such as augmented reality, smart environment, and smart healthcare and self-driven cars have become an inevitable and omnipresent part of the world.
What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
IoT engulfs the network of physical objects or ‘things’ implanted with sensors, software, and technological arrangements to connect and exchange data with any other such device or system through the internet. Here, network speed and reliability are of utmost importance.
According to studies, all devices by 2025 will have an internet connection, therefore multiplying the number of existing devices with Internet connectivity. Cisco suggests that by 2030 there will be 500 billion devices connected through the Internet of Things (IoT). Besides, according to Telefonica, every person will have an average of 15 connected devices by 2030. These studies indicate a more broadened evolution of smart solutions and the next generation IoT.
IoT’s evolution has its roots in amalgamating some key ICT technologies such as hyper-connectivity and new network architectures, artificial intelligence, edge computing, and block chain technology. There are high expectations of the new, interoperable IoT platforms built on these technologies. Expectations like their application across diverse domains, their quality of experience, and service requirements! It makes ongoing research and developments for these new phenomena all the more necessary.
The next-generation IoT applications have become more diverse, with IoT seeping into the fields of smart health, real-time multimedia, industrial IoT smart city, smart home, and even smart agriculture. These applications require higher data-rates, low latency, large bandwidth, increased capacity, and high throughput. IoT has now transformed the world by providing seamless connectivity between heterogeneous networks (HetNets). An eventual objective is to introduce the plug and play technology providing the end-user ease of operation, remote access, control, and configuration.
The next-generation IoT systems rely on real-time analysis of the information at the edge and shift from centralized cloud-computing solutions towards distributed intelligent edge computing systems. Such solutions begin calculations at the edge of the network where information is generated and is ideal for real-time services. This is also because they exhibit very low latency- in the order of milliseconds, and can be used for straightforward ultra-fast analytics jobs. As privacy and security areas raise serious concerns in the growth of IoT, these solutions can also provide increased privacy to the user. This is because there is no personal information storage across these applications and no record of collection, storage, and data processing.
There are several different areas of interest related to next-generation IoT based applications and user scenarios. Some of them include:
Next-generation IoT based smart health
The uses of IoT in healthcare are gradually being accepted in commercial domains with great potentials to broaden its framework. IoT based technologies flourish with computational techniques and contribute to health-related data analyses of lung pathologies by computerized tomography, real-time detection of epileptic seizures and stroke. These are some ways to apply next-gen technology to advance the healthcare system in the world further. Other such IoT applications include AR/VR based telehealthcare apps, block-chain based secure services, handheld summarized healthcare records, remote surgery, and remote interactive medical training.
Next-generation Industrial IoT
In the industrial sector, the inclusion and management of IoT empowered sensors and actuators in smart manufacturing are altering customary product assembling processes. Nowadays, there are several separate industries working on the proof of concept and executing IoT advancements in their initiatives to drive benefits.
5G technologies
There have been various global initiatives for the adoption and standardization of 5G enabled IoT. Innovation in wireless domains, next-generation technologies, and 5G enable IoT to require cutting-edge services and solutions. Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) or a network consisting of varied cell layers can support the ‘green’ aspect of 5G network by maximizing its spectral efficiency. This is done through reusing the spectrum tightly and with low uplink and downlink power transmission, making it a broad spectrum and energy-efficient.
Next Generation IoT based smart agriculture
IoT enhanced smart agriculture helps to develop farming practices and techniques to support sustainable farmers and resources. The IoT based approach is financially practical and sound, socially steady, and performs well to maintain soil quality, decrease soil erosion and degradation, and save water assets.
Next Generation IoT based data analytics
Smart devices with IoT technology continuously gather data and interface with the environment in which they are embedded. They empower the advancement of new data analytical techniques that further make smart applications even more quick and useful. Embedding machine learning techniques, equipping data analytics with neural networks and deep learning algorithms would further help in making this initiative free from any hassles and ensure a safe data management.
In recent times, IoT has emerged as one of the most useful and fastest developing technologies. Thus, researchers must improve and develop new procedures that adequately deal with necessities and security issues with AI-based solutions.
