Introduction to Internet of Things (IOT) BETCK105H

MODULE 3: IOT PROCESSING TOPOLOGIES AND TYPES

3.1. DATA FORMAT
The Internet is a vast space where huge quantities and varieties of data are generated regularly
and flow freely. As of January 2018, there are a reported 4:021 billion Internet users worldwide.
The massive volume of data generated by this huge number of users is further enhanced by the
multiple devices utilized by most users. In addition to these data-generating sources, non-
human data generation sources such as sensor nodes and automated monitoring systems further
add to the data load on the Internet. This huge data volume is composed of a variety of data
such as e-mails, text documents (Word docs, PDFs, and others), social media posts, videos,
audio files, and images, as shown in Figure 3.1. However, these data can be broadly grouped
into two types based on how they can be accessed and stored: 1) Structured data and 2)
unstructured data.

Figure 3.1 The various data generating and storage sources connected to the Internet and the
plethora of data types contained within it

 Structured data
These are typically text data that have a pre-defined structure. Structured data are associated
with relational database management systems (RDBMS). These are primarily created by using
length-limited data fields such as phone numbers, social security numbers, and other such
information. Even if the data is human or machine generated, these data are easily searchable
by querying algorithms as well as human generated queries. Common usage of this type of data
is associated with flight or train reservation systems, banking systems, inventory controls, and
other similar systems. Established languages such as Structured Query Language (SQL) are
used for accessing these data in RDBMS. However, in the context of IoT, structured data holds
a minor share of the total generated data over the Internet.

 Unstructured data
In simple words, all the data on the Internet, which is not structured, is categorized as
unstructured. These data types have no pre-defined structure and can vary according to

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applications and data-generating sources. Some of the common examples of human-generated

unstructured data include text, e-mails, videos, images, phone recordings, chats, and others.
Some common examples of machine-generated unstructured data include sensor data from
traffic, buildings, industries, satellite imagery, surveillance videos, and others. As already
evident from its examples, this data type does not have fixed formats associated with it, which
makes it very difficult for querying algorithms to perform a look-up. Querying languages such
as NoSQL are generally used for this data type.

3.2. IMPORTANCE OF PROCESSING IN IOT

The vast amount and types of data flowing through the Internet necessitate the need for
intelligent and resourceful processing techniques. This necessity has become even more crucial
with the rapid advancements in IoT, which is laying enormous pressure on the existing network
infrastructure globally. Given these urgencies, it is important to decide when to process and
what to process? Before deciding upon the processing to pursue, we first divide the data to be
processed into three types based on the urgency of processing: 1) Very time critical, 2) time
critical, and 3) normal. Data from sources such as flight control systems, healthcare, and other
such sources, which need immediate decision support, are deemed as very critical. These data
have a very low threshold of processing latency, typically in the range of a few milliseconds.
Data from sources that can tolerate normal processing latency are deemed as time critical data.
These data, generally associated with sources such as vehicles, traffic, machine systems, smart
home systems, surveillance systems, and others, which can tolerate a latency of a few seconds
fall in this category. Finally, the last category of data, normal data, can tolerate a processing
latency of a few minutes to a few hours and are typically associated with less data-sensitive
domains such as agriculture, environmental monitoring, and others. Considering the
requirements of data processing, the processing requirements of data from very time-critical
sources are exceptionally high. Here, the need for processing the data in place or almost nearer
to the source is crucial in achieving the deployment success of such domains. Similarly,
considering the requirements of processing from category 2 data sources (time-critical), the
processing requirements allow for the transmission of data to be processed to remote
locations/processors such as clouds or through collaborative processing. Finally, the last
category of data sources (normal) typically have no particular time requirements for processing
urgently and are pursued leisurely as such.

3.3. PROCESSING TOPOLOGIES

The identification and intelligent selection of processing requirement of an IoT application are
one of the crucial steps in deciding the architecture of the deployment. A properly designed
IoT architecture would result in massive savings in network bandwidth and conserve
significant amounts of overall energy in the architecture while providing the proper and
allowable processing latencies for the solutions associated with the architecture. Regarding the
importance of processing in IoT as outlined in Section 3.2, we can divide the various processing
solutions into two large topologies: 1) On-site and 2) Off-site. The off-site processing topology
can be further divided into the following: 1) Remote processing and 2) Collaborative
processing.

 On-site processing
As evident from the name, the on-site processing topology signifies that the data is processed
at the source itself. This is crucial in applications that have a very low tolerance for latencies.
These latencies may result from the processing hardware or the network (during transmission
of the data for processing away from the processor). Applications such as those associated with
healthcare and flight control systems (real-time systems) have a breakneck data generation rate.

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These additionally show rapid temporal changes that can be missed (leading to catastrophic
damages) unless the processing infrastructure is fast and robust enough to handle such data.
Figure 3.2 shows the on-site processing topology, where an event (here, fire) is detected
utilizing a temperature sensor connected to a sensor node. The sensor node processes the
information from the sensed event and generates an alert. The node additionally has the option
of forwarding the data to a remote infrastructure for further analysis and storage.

Figure 3.2 Event detection using an on-site processing topology

 Off-site processing
The off-site processing paradigm, as opposed to the on-site processing paradigms, allows for
latencies (due to processing or network latencies); it is significantly cheaper than on-site
processing topologies. This difference in cost is mainly due to the low demands and
requirements of processing at the source itself. Often, the sensor nodes are not required to
process data on an urgent basis, so having a dedicated and expensive on-site processing
infrastructure is not sustainable for large-scale deployments typical of IoT deployments. In the
off-site processing topology, the sensor node is responsible for the collection and framing of
data that is eventually to be transmitted to another location for processing. Unlike the on-site
processing topology, the off-site topology has a few dedicated high-processing enabled
devices, which can be borrowed by multiple simpler sensor nodes to accomplish their tasks. At
the same time, this arrangement keeps the costs of large-scale deployments extremely
manageable. In the off-site topology, the data from these sensor nodes (data generating sources)
is transmitted either to a remote location (which can either be a server or a cloud) or to multiple
processing nodes. Multiple nodes can come together to share their processing power in order
to collaboratively process the data (which is important in case a feasible communication
pathway or connection to a remote location cannot be established by a single node).

 Remote processing
This is one of the most common processing topologies prevalent in present-day IoT solutions.
It encompasses sensing of data by various sensor nodes; the data is then forwarded to a remote
server or a cloud-based infrastructure for further processing and analytics. The processing of
data from hundreds and thousands of sensor nodes can be simultaneously offloaded to a single,
powerful computing platform; this results in massive cost and energy savings by enabling the
reuse and reallocation of the same processing resource while also enabling the deployment of
smaller and simpler processing nodes at the site of deployment. This setup also ensures massive
scalability of solutions, without significantly affecting the cost of the deployment. Figure 3.3
shows the outline of one such paradigm, where the sensing of an event is performed locally,
and the decision making is outsourced to a remote processor (here, cloud). However, this
paradigm tends to use up a lot of network bandwidth and relies heavily on the presence of
network connectivity between the sensor nodes and the remote processing infrastructure.

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Figure 3.3 Event detection using an off-site remote processing topology

 Collaborative processing
This processing topology typically finds use in scenarios with limited or no network
connectivity, especially systems lacking a backbone network. Additionally, this topology can
be quite economical for large-scale deployments spread over vast areas, where providing
networked access to a remote infrastructure is not viable. In such scenarios, the simplest
solution is to club together the processing power of nearby processing nodes and
collaboratively process the data in the vicinity of the data source itself. This approach also
reduces latencies due to the transfer of data over the network. Additionally, it conserves
bandwidth of the network, especially ones connecting to the Internet.

Figure 3.4 shows the collaborative processing topology for collaboratively processing data
locally. This topology can be quite beneficial for applications such as agriculture, where an
intense and temporally high frequency of data processing is not required as agricultural data is
generally logged after significantly long intervals (in the range of hours). One important point
to mention about this topology is the preference of mesh networks for easy implementation of
this topology.

Figure 3.4 Event detection using a collaborative processing topology

3.4. IOT DEVICE DESIGN AND SELECTION CONSIDERATIONS

The main consideration of minutely defining an IoT solution is the selection of the processor
for developing the sensing solution (i.e., the sensor node). This selection is governed by many
parameters that affect the usability, design, and affordability of the designed IoT sensing and
processing solution. In this chapter, we mainly focus on the deciding factors for selecting a
processor for the design of a sensor node. The main factor governing the IoT device design and

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selection for various applications is the processor. However, the other important considerations
are as follows.
Size: This is one of the crucial factors for deciding the form factor and the energy consumption
of a sensor node. It has been observed that larger the form factor, larger is the energy
consumption of the hardware. Additionally, large form factors are not suitable for a significant
bulk of IoT applications, which rely on minimal form factor solutions (e.g., wearables).
Energy: The energy requirements of a processor is the most important deciding factor in
designing IoT-based sensing solutions. Higher the energy requirements, higher is the energy
source (battery) replacement frequency. This principle automatically lowers the long-term
sustainability of sensing hardware, especially for IoT-based applications.
Cost: The cost of a processor, besides the cost of sensors, is the driving force in deciding the
density of deployment of sensor nodes for IoT-based solutions. Cheaper cost of the hardware
enables a much higher density of hardware deployment by users of an IoT solution. For
example, cheaper gas and fire detection solutions would enable users to include much more
sensing hardware for a lesser cost.
Memory: The memory requirements (both volatile and non-volatile memory) of IoT devices
determines the capabilities the device can be armed with. Features such as local data
processing, data storage, data filtering, data formatting, and a host of other features rely heavily
on the memory capabilities of devices. However, devices with higher memory tend to be
costlier for obvious reasons.
Processing power: As covered in earlier sections, processing power is vital (comparable to
memory) in deciding what type of sensors can be accommodated with the IoT device/node, and
what processing features can integrate on-site with the IoT device. The processing power also
decides the type of applications the device can be associated with. Typically, applications that
handle video and image data require IoT devices with higher processing power as compared to
applications requiring simple sensing of the environment.
I/O rating: The input–output (I/O) rating of IoT device, primarily the processor, is the deciding
factor in determining the circuit complexity, energy usage, and requirements for support of
various sensing solutions and sensor types. Newer processors have a meager I/O voltage rating
of 3.3 V, as compared to 5 V for the somewhat older processors. This translates to requiring
additional voltage and logic conversion circuitry to interface legacy technologies and sensors
with the newer processors. Despite low power consumption due to reduced I/O voltage levels,
this additional voltage and circuitry not only affects the complexity of the circuits but also
affects the costs.
Add-ons: The support of various add-ons a processor or for that matter, an IoT device provides,
such as analog to digital conversion (ADC) units, in-built clock circuits, connections to USB
and ethernet, inbuilt wireless access capabilities, and others helps in defining the robustness
and usability of a processor or IoT device in various application scenarios. Additionally, the
provision for these add-ons also decides how fast a solution can be developed, especially the
hardware part of the whole IoT application. As interfacing and integration of systems at the
circuit level can be daunting to the uninitiated, the prior presence of these options with the
processor makes the processor or device highly lucrative to the users/ developers.

3.5. PROCESSING OFFLOADING

The processing offloading paradigm is important for the development of densely deployable,
energy-conserving, miniaturized, and cheap IoT-based solutions for sensing tasks. Building
upon the basics of the off-site processing topology covered in the previous sections in this
chapter, we delve a bit further into the various nuances of processing offloading in IoT.
Figure 3.5 shows the typical outline of an IoT deployment with the various layers of processing
that are encountered spanning vastly different application domains from as near as sensing the

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environment to as far as cloud-based infrastructure. Starting from the primary layer of sensing,
we can have multiple sensing types tasked with detecting an environment (fire, surveillance,
and others). The sensors enabling these sensing types are integrated with a processor using
wired or wireless connections (mostly, wired). In the event that certain applications require
immediate processing of the sensed data, an on-site processing topology is followed, similar to
the one in Figure 3.2. However, for the majority of IoT applications, the bulk of the processing
is carried out remotely in order to keep the on-site devices simple, small, and economical.
Typically, for off-site processing, data from the sensing layer can be forwarded to the fog or
cloud or can be contained within the edge layer. The edge layer makes use of devices within
the local network to process data that which is similar to the collaborative processing topology
shown in Figure 3.4. The devices within the local network, till the fog, generally communicate
using short-range wireless connections. In case the data needs to be sent further up the chain to
the cloud, long-range wireless connection enabling access to a backbone network is essential.
Fog-based processing is still considered local because the fog nodes are typically localized
within a geographic area and serve the IoT nodes within a much smaller coverage area as
compared to the cloud. Fog nodes, which are at the level of gateways, may or may not be
accessed by the IoT devices through the Internet.

Figure 3.5 The various data generating and storage sources connected to the Internet and the
plethora of data types contained within it

Finally, the approach of forwarding data to a cloud or a remote server, as shown in the topology
in Figure 3.3, requires the devices to be connected to the Internet through long-range
wireless/wired networks, which eventually connect to a backbone network. This approach is
generally costly concerning network bandwidth, latency, as well as the complexity of the
devices and the network infrastructure involved. This section on data offloading is divided into

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three parts: 1) offload location (which outlines where all the processing can be offloaded in the
IoT architecture), 2) offload decision making (how to choose where to offload the processing
to and by how much), and finally 3) offloading considerations (deciding when to offload).

 Offload location
The choice of offload location decides the applicability, cost, and sustainability of the IoT
application and deployment. We distinguish the offload location into four types:

Edge: Offloading processing to the edge implies that the data processing is facilitated to a
location at or near the source of data generation itself. Offloading to the edge is done to achieve
aggregation, manipulation, bandwidth reduction, and other data operations directly on an IoT
device.
Fog: Fog computing is a decentralized computing infrastructure that is utilized to conserve
network bandwidth, reduce latencies, restrict the amount of data unnecessarily flowing through
the Internet, and enable rapid mobility support for IoT devices. The data, computing, storage
and applications are shifted to a place between the data source and the cloud resulting in
significantly reduced latencies and network bandwidth usage.
Remote Server: A simple remote server with good processing power may be used with IoT
based applications to offload the processing from resource constrained IoT devices. Rapid
scalability may be an issue with remote servers, and they may be costlier and hard to maintain
in comparison to solutions such as the cloud.
Cloud: Cloud computing is a configurable computer system, which can get access to
configurable resources, platforms, and high-level services through a shared pool hosted
remotely. A cloud is provisioned for processing offloading so that processing resources can be
rapidly provisioned with minimal effort over the Internet, which can be accessed globally.
Cloud enables massive scalability of solutions as they can enable resource enhancement
allocated to a user or solution in an on-demand manner, without the user having to go through
the pains of acquiring and configuring new and costly hardware.

 Offload decision making

The choice of where to offload and how much to offload is one of the major deciding factors
in the deployment of an offsite-processing topology-based IoT deployment architecture. The
decision making is generally addressed considering data generation rate, network bandwidth,
the criticality of applications, processing resource available at the offload site, and other factors.
Some of these approaches are as follows.

Naive Approach: This approach is typically a hard approach, without too much decision
making. It can be considered as a rule-based approach in which the data from IoT devices are
offloaded to the nearest location based on the achievement of certain offload criteria. Although
easy to implement, this approach is never recommended, especially for dense deployments, or
deployments where the data generation rate is high or the data being offloaded in complex to
handle (multimedia or hybrid data types). Generally, statistical measures are consulted for
generating the rules for offload decision making.
Bargaining based approach: This approach, although a bit processing-intensive during the
decision making stages, enables the alleviation of network traffic congestion, enhances service
QoS (quality of service) parameters such as bandwidth, latencies, and others. At times, while
trying to maximize multiple parameters for the whole IoT implementation, in order to provide
the most optimal solution or QoS, not all parameters can be treated with equal importance.
Bargaining based solutions try to maximize the QoS by trying to reach a point where the
qualities of certain parameters are reduced, while the others are enhanced. This measure is

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undertaken so that the achieved QoS is collaboratively better for the full implementation rather
than a select few devices enjoying very high QoS. Game theory is a common example of the
bargaining based approach. This approach does not need to depend on historical data for
decision making purposes.
Learning based approach: Unlike the bargaining based approaches, the learning based
approaches generally rely on past behavior and trends of data flow through the IoT architecture.
The optimization of QoS parameters is pursued by learning from historical trends and trying to
optimize previous solutions further and enhance the collective behavior of the IoT
implementation. The memory requirements and processing requirements are high during the
decision making stages. The most common example of a learning based approach is machine
learning.

 Offloading considerations
There are a few offloading parameters which need to be considered while deciding upon the
offloading type to choose. These considerations typically arise from the nature of the IoT
application and the hardware being used to interact with the application. Some of these
parameters are as follows.
Bandwidth: The maximum amount of data that can be simultaneously transmitted over the
network between two points is the bandwidth of that network. The bandwidth of a wired or
wireless network is also considered to be its data-carrying capacity and often used to describe
the data rate of that network.
Latency: It is the time delay incurred between the start and completion of an operation. In the
present context, latency can be due to the network (network latency) or the processor
(processing latency). In either case, latency arises due to the physical limitations of the
infrastructure, which is associated with an operation. The operation can be data transfer over a
network or processing of a data at a processor.
Criticality: It defines the importance of a task being pursued by an IoT application. The more
critical a task is, the lesser latency is expected from the IoT solution. For example, detection of
fires using an IoT solution has higher criticality than detection of agricultural field parameters.
The former requires a response time in the tune of milliseconds, whereas the latter can be
addressed within hours or even days.
Resources: It signifies the actual capabilities of an offload location. These capabilities may be
the processing power, the suite of analytical algorithms, and others. For example, it is futile
and wasteful to allocate processing resources reserved for real-time multimedia processing
(which are highly energy-intensive and can process and analyze huge volumes of data in a short
duration) to scalar data (which can be addressed using nominal resources without wasting much
energy).
Data volume: The amount of data generated by a source or sources that can be simultaneously
handled by the offload location is referred to as its data volume handling capacity. Typically,
for large and dense IoT deployments, the offload location should be robust enough to address
the processing issues related to massive data volumes.

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