UMR 5205
Towards the Internet of Things?
Lionel Brunie
National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA)
LIRIS Laboratory/DRIM Team – UMR CNRS 5205
Lyon, France
http://liris.cnrs.fr/lionel.brunie
Contents of the course
Visions: a Disruptive Technology
Technologies and Issues
Components and Architecture
13/04/2015
Contents of the course
Visions: a Disruptive Technology
Technologies and Issues
Components and Architecture
13/04/2015
A “Disruptive” Technology
US National Intelligence Council (NIC) consider Internet of
Things as one of the 6 ‘‘Disruptive Civil Technologies”
(April 2008
IEEE ranks IoT #1 in the list of “Top Trends for 2013” (Winter
2012):
“The Internet of Things is more than just the newest buzzword.
The IoT promises to be the most disruptive technological
revolution since the advent of the World Wide Web. Projections
indicate that up to 100 billion uniquely identifiable objects will
be connected to the Internet by 2020, but human understanding
of the underlying technologies has not kept pace. This creates a
fundamental challenge to researchers, with enormous technical,
socioeconomic, political, and even spiritual consequences”
13/04/2015
Internet of Things: Visions
Term introduced by the Auto-ID Labs (K. Ashton, 1999):
linking RFID-based supply chain and Internet
UN (2005): “A new era of ubiquity is coming where humans
may become the minority as generators and receivers of
traffic and changes brought about by the Internet will be
dwarfed by those prompted by the networking of everyday
objects”
ITU: ‘‘From anytime, anyplace connectivity for anyone, we
will now have connectivity for anything”
EU: ‘‘Things having identities and virtual personalities
operating in smart spaces using intelligent interfaces to
connect and communicate within social, environmental, and
user contexts”
13/04/2015
Internet of Things: Visions
EU: ‘‘Things having identities and virtual personalities operating
in smart spaces using intelligent interfaces to connect and
communicate within social, environmental, and user contexts”
US National Intelligence Council: ‘‘By 2025 Internet nodes may
reside in everyday things – food packages, furniture, paper
documents, and more”
Target applications: no limit:






logistics
industry/manufacturing (cf. German Industry 4.0 initiative)
health
domotics
ITS
social networking…
Intensive standardization and R&D activity
13/04/2015
Internet of Things: Definition
CERP-IoT: « The Internet of Things (IoT) is […] a dynamic global
network infrastructure with self configuring capabilities based on
standard and interoperable communication protocols where
physical and virtual ‘things’ have identities, physical attributes,
and virtual personalities and use intelligent interfaces, and are
seamlessly integrated into the information network.
In the IoT, ‘things’ are expected to become active participants in
business, information and social processes where they are
enabled to interact and communicate among themselves and with
the environment by exchanging data and information ‘sensed’
about the environment, while reacting autonomously to the
‘real/physical world’s events »
13/04/2015
Contents of the course
Visions: a Disruptive Technology
Technologies and Issues
Components and Architecture
13/04/2015
Internet of Things: Technologies and Issues
Integration of multiple ICT technologies
 identification and tracking technologies
 sensor networks
 network protocols (cf. Future Internet
 autonomic, pervasive and ubiquitous computing
 AI, knowledge management, semantics
Key issues:
 interoperability
 security/trust and privacy
 low resources (=> revisit protocols and algorithms
implemented in Internet and Web)
 scalability
13/04/2015
Internet of Things: 2 Points of View
Network/Internet Point of View
Things point of View
13/04/2015
Internet of Things: 3 Points of View?
L. Atzori et al. / Computer Networks 54 (2010) 2787–2805
13/04/2015
Internet of Things: a 4th Point of View
A Digital Ecosystem Point of View?
13/04/2015
The Things Point of View (1/2)
Key issue: object identification and tracing
A prominent killer app: Electronic Product Code
 basic goal: product/object traceability
 RFID tags attached to products
RFID advantages
low cost
maturity
no need of power (passive tags)
lifetime
strong support from supply chain and consumer goods
industries
Other basic things
Mobile equipments (Near Field Communications (NFC), GSM…)
Sensors and (Wireless) Sensor Networks ((W)SN)
13/04/2015
The Things Point of View (2/2)
Development of supply chain platforms
Ex: WISP (Wireless Identification and Sensing Platforms)
project
“Philosophical” vision: spime (B. Sterling)
 object tracking through space and time
 autonomy and collaboration
(Web) Semantic vision: The Web of Things
13/04/2015
The Network Point of View
Key issue: object2object communication
First approach: develop specific communication protocols
 adapted to each type of things and type of applications
 need for standardization
 which compatibility with Internet?
Second approach: (re-)use IP
 integrate IP and IEEE 802.15.4 (6LoWPAN) (IP for Smart Objects
(IPSO) Alliance)
 make IP lighter (Internet Ø)
Third approach: (re-use) 802.15.4
 enrich 802.15.4 (Zigbee)
13/04/2015
A Universal Network of Things ?
From readwrite.com
13/04/2015
16
An Infinity of Networks of Things
From readwrite.com
13/04/2015
17
Contents of the course
Visions: a Disruptive Technology
Technologies and Issues
Components and Architecture
13/04/2015
Technological Components
(some kind of layered architecture)
Identification (“sensing”)
 (passive, active) RFID tags
 sensor networks
Communication
 see discussion above
 interface object/network
 embed the TCP/IP stack into the devices (TinyTCP, mIP, IwIP…)?
Integration
 object and service discovery
 object and service cataloging
 service composition/orchestration
Intelligence and Collaboration
Security and Privacy
13/04/2015
Identification (“sensing”)
Ultimate goal: unique/universal Id for naming and addressing
individual objects i.e., to attach an ego to each object,
condition to develop ego-centric applications (cf. Jacob and
the Angel (Genesis))
Naming is difficult!
 ONS: Object Name Service
 basically, RFID tag/EPC code → URI of a description file (Object
Code Mapping Service-Direct Search (OCMS-DS)
 more complex Object Code Mapping Service-Reverse Search
(OCMS-DS): description → EPC code(s)
Addressing is difficult!
 stupid but tricky issue: RFID addresses are different from IPv6
addresses (64-96 bits vs 128 bits)
 addressing moving objects is even more difficult
13/04/2015
Communication
From host2host to object2object
TCP is not adapted
 designed for long-lasting connections while objects (like tags
or sensors) exchange small pieces of data => handshake +
congestion control/retransmit/recovery + flow control +
buffering procedures too complex
Very heterogeneous networks and traffic
Scalability?
Quality of service?
13/04/2015
Security and Privacy (1/3)
A definitive threat for privacy!
A security nightmare!
Security
 IoT = a kind of unsupervised mobile/pervasive grids whose
end-components are resource limited tiny objects = a security
nightmare
 memory segments of tags are protected by (short) password
 physical attacks
 Man in the Middle attacks
 cryptographic techniques too CPU-intensive for low energy
objects
 multiple administrative domains (cf. grids)
13/04/2015
Security and Privacy (2/3)
Privacy
 all your life can will be traced => possible monitoring,
mining, analysis
 connection possible with Linked Open Data => worsen
the threats
 open air connections => possibility of eavesdropping
 not only your digital life but also your “analogical” life
 you cannot even know what is sensed about you, when it
is sensed, etc. Sensors do not ask for permission (cf.
video surveillance)
 no “forget option”
13/04/2015
Security and Privacy (3/3)
Privacy (cont’d)
 Basic approach (e.g. EEXCESS EU project, W3C P3P
(Platform for Privacy Preference)
user defined policy
 privacy proxy
 negotiation protocol
 anonymization/pseudomization
 integration of reputation and trust mechanisms (cf. course
on security and privacy)

 Issues
 cryptographic techniques are too complex
 scalability
13/04/2015
An Intensive Activity of Standardization
RFID
 EPCGlobal
 ISO, IEC (Int. Electrotechnical Commission), CEN, NAFTA…
 industrial consortia
M2M
 ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute )
 7 standard bodies joined in 2012
Communication




6LoWPAN
ZigBee
NFC
… all communications standard bodies (ISO, IEEE…)
13/04/2015
Conclusion
Yet another buzzword or a revolution?
Strong support from the industry
IoT platforms yet exist: xively (ex cosm, ex pachube), sen.se, etc.
Close to reality in “closed” ecosystems
Far from reality in “open” ecosystem”
Need for an holistic vision → multi-scale digital ecosystem?
13/04/2015