Networking Topologies and Communication Technologies for the IoT Era

Abstract

A kind of deeper and decisive connectivity is the most indispensable requirement for the projected and promised IoT era. To start with, every common and casual thing in our midst gets systematically digitized. There are several peculiar advantages being accrued out of the digitization process as well as any digitized entities/smart objects/sentient materials. The digitization technologies, if appropriately leveraged, can make ordinary objects in our daily environments into extraordinary articles. Digitized elements are self-, surroundings-, and situation-aware individually as well as collectively. Not only the physical assets but also all kinds of mechanical, electrical, electronics, and IT devices in our places are accordingly instrumented and interconnected. They are interconnected to purposefully and precisely communicate, collaborate, corroborate, and correlate to be innately cognitive in their operations, offerings, and outputs. Further on, everyday electronics, instruments, machines, equipment, wares, utensils, robots, and other fixed, portable, wearable, hearable, implantable, mobile, and nomadic devices in our personal, professional, and social environments are seamlessly integrated. This integration is made feasible with the help of cloud-hosted (traditional IT servers and private, public, and hybrid clouds) cyber applications, services, and data sources in order to be empowered adequately to join in the mainstream computing. Even fog or edge computing is beginning to blossom so that localized and user-centric devices are capable of forming ad hoc clouds of devices. The main objective of fog computing is to set a stimulating foundation for producing next-generation, real-time, insights-filled, context-aware, event-driven, and people-centric applications. Thus, clearly we are heading toward the tightly interconnected world. This chapter is specially crafted for conveying all about the emerging network topologies and communication technologies; key limitations of these technologies have also been discussed. In addition, the chapter provides details on how the inherent issues can be tackled so that the expressed liabilities, vulnerabilities, threats, drawbacks, and loopholes can be surmounted toward secure, safe, and smart IoT era.