Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) vision is increasingly being realized to facilitate convenient and efficient human living. To conduct effective IoT research using the most appropriate tools and techniques, we discuss recent research trends in the IoT area along with current challenges faced by the IoT research community. Several existing and emerging IoT research areas such as lightweight energy-efficient protocol development, object cognition and intelligence, as well as the critical need for robust security and privacy mechanisms will continue to be significant fields of research for IoT. IoT research can be a challenging process spanning both virtual and physical domains through the use of simulators and testbeds to develop and validate the initial proof-of-concepts and subsequent prototypes. To support researchers in planning IoT research activities, we present a comparative analysis of existing simulation tools categorized based on the scope of coverage of the IoT architecture layers. We compare existing large-scale IoT testbeds that have been adopted by researchers for examining the physical IoT prototypes. Finally, we discuss several open challenges of current IoT simulators and testbeds that need to be addressed by the IoT research community to conduct large-scale, robust and effective IoT simulation, and prototype evaluations.

INTRODUCTION

he vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to build a smart environment by utilizing smart things/objects/devices that have sensory and communication capability to autonomously generate data and transmit it via the Internet for decision making. Such decisions are used to address issues related to human living such as energy management, climate change, transportation, healthcare, business logistics, building automation and others [1]. The IoT vision encompasses several building blocks that integrate and engage multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary activities from both business and technical domains [2]. This implies that there must be a symbiotic interaction among various entities of the IoT ecosystem to facilitate its growth and success. Within the ecosystem, information will be shared among diverse sub-systems to make timely decisions that impact human living. Therefore, the longterm success of IoT will depend on the evolution and development of sub-systems of the IoT ecosystem. Since the inception of IoT, several research works have been undertaken in many areas. These efforts can be classified into business-related or technical-related research. In this paper, we focus on some of the most recent technical research activities reported for IoT. First, we classify these technical research works based on the main components of the IoT ecosystem. Thus, the classification is based on research works that have actually focused on the following IoT aspects: IoT devices, communication and connectivity i.e., networks, smart services and data. Technical research in the IoT area is challenging because of the rapid pace of technological advances, the inter-disciplinary collaboration required in some areas and the ever-increasing demands of society [1]. To achieve an effective IoT ecosystem, a right balance must be created among research activities involving the technical components or systems and subsystems of the IoT because an unbalanced proportion of the research activities may affect the overall growth of the IoT in the near future.