The Next Era of Information Technology: Internet of Things

INTERNET OF THINGS

IOT - Internet Of Things

IIoT leads to produce smart and innovative applications for the comfort of the mankind. Let it be discussed under the concept of the smart home. Imagine that you are watching television in your own house and it’s 20deg Celsius outside and you need to have a cup of tea with a warm surrounding. In here sensors installed outside of the house broadcast a message to all the other devices searching for the user. Once the user is being sensed by the sensors, relevant information is conveyed on him and he can do whatever the task he is up to . This is all about communication between the devices. IoT is very useful in making predictions, specially in cases like natural disasters. So that the rapid precautions can be taken with the given informations.

How the IoT was evolved to achieve this much success? 

The concept of IoT was introduced by Kevin Ashton in 1999 with the help of RFID tags for supply chain management. There were some hot topics going on as John Romkey connected a toaster to the internet, a group of scientists in the Cambridge university thought of an idea of monitoring the amount of coffee in their computer lab’s coffee pot using the prototype of first web camera and were able to program the webcam to take pictures of the coffee pot three times a minute and upload the images into their local computers as everyone can see it through them. In the earliest days of the evolution 85% of the devices were not connected(1st phase of evolution).

Connected IOT Devices by 2020

As it is shown, not even a single device for a person of the connected devices but during the 2nd phase(2003-2020) rapid evolution has been taken place by making a significant difference of 1.3 billion connected devices all around the globe(an average of 6.54 devices per a person). In the 3rd phase of the evolution steps were taken to solve all the problems by 2020 and made sure that for the devices to drag the relevant specific data, analyze data and send the data to the server.

Although IoT plays a major role through various fields, it too includes some barriers in innovating smart cities and IoT deployment. one of the main focuses are to be given on network migration concerns. It is obvious that the 3G is now coming to its dead end and it is 4G LTE which still rules in Sri Lanka. But migrations are being taken place to 5G. but what if you are too early on jumping on 5G bandwagon. It is time to discuss WHY?

It will be wise step to let the 5G technology to spread more and let it grow around the surrounding than being an early adaptor of the latest technology. Obviously the world is now considering that 5G solves major issues with smart devices would be highly secured with higher performances, but it does have a darker side as it is common that in any new system the probability of running into issues as the whole ecosystem is still learning to get used to solve the problems of the users. Security is one of the major expectations of IoT. If you are using a wired system it is less accessible by the outside forces like hackers. So one of the disadvantages when moving to IoT is that it is more likely exposing ourselves to the outside world. But fortunately , strategies have been taken for improving cyber security and have allowed the top level companies to use wireless technologies and cloud platforms as their device management platforms.   

Demitha  Rathnayake