Distributed IoT and Applications: A Survey

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has given rise to a vast network of connected smart objects, leading to the development of cyber-physical pervasive frameworks. Recent years have witnessed an exponential growth and interest in developing smart systems, enabling the identification of innovative solutions for industrial, domestic, and agricultural sectors. Various applications have been built and deployed in IoT space that leverage the increasing ubiquity of radio-frequency identification (RFID), wireless, mobile, and sensor devices. However, the current IoT paradigm with traditional cloud-based architecture is not scaled for the future, and requires all data to be transferred to a central point for analysis and action. This centralized processing model presents numerous challenges with the future need to connect hundreds of billions of devices. The major bottlenecks are associated with various dimensions such as cost of connectivity, meaningful value creation from sensor data, reliability, establishing digital trust, traceability, preventing concentration of power, unmanageable complexity, security, privacy, and latency. One solution to overcome these hurdles is to bring the concept of decentralization to the IoT space to build distributed IoT. This paper presents the current state of the research on IoT and its potential business use cases along with a case study on distributed IoT. It also discusses various challenges and opportunities in decentralized ecosystems, along with open research questions and future directions.