IoT Reference Architecture

An IoT reference architecture serves as a foundational blueprint that outlines the essential components and
interactions within an IoT system. It provides a solid starting point for designing and implementing IoT
solutions.

Layers of IoT Reference Architecture

• Perception Layer: This layer comprises the physical devices or sensors that collect data from the
environment or interact with the physical world. These devices can include temperature sensors,
motion detectors, cameras, and other IoT−enabled devices.

• Network Layer: The network layer facilitates the connectivity and communication between the IoT
devices and the cloud or other data processing components. It includes protocols, gateways,
routers, and other networking infrastructure to ensure seamless data transfer and reliable
connections.

• Data Processing Layer: This layer involves processing and analyzing the data collected from IoT
devices. It may include edge computing devices or cloud−based platforms where data is
aggregated, filtered, transformed, and analyzed to derive valuable insights.

• Application Layer: The application layer encompasses the software applications or services that
utilize the processed IoT data to provide specific functionalities or address specific use cases. These
applications can range from real−time monitoring and control systems to predictive analytics,
machine learning algorithms, and automation

Key Components of IoT Reference Architecture

The key components of an IoT reference architecture include:

• Devices: These physical objects, ranging from sensors to smart appliances, play a crucial role in
collecting data and transmitting it to the cloud.

• Network: The network infrastructure, which can be wired or wireless, connects the devices to the
cloud, enabling seamless data transfer and communication.

• Cloud: The cloud serves as the centralized storage and processing hub for the data collected by the
devices. It can be a public, private, or hybrid cloud, depending on specific requirements.

• Applications: Software applications leverage the data collected by devices to deliver insights and
value. These applications can be tailored for various purposes, including monitoring, control, and
automation.

• Security: Security measures are essential to protect the data collected by devices from
unauthorized access. Techniques like encryption, authentication, and authorization ensure data
security.

• Privacy: Privacy measures safeguard personal data collected by devices from unauthorized access.
Anonymization, pseudonymization, and data minimization techniques contribute to maintaining
privacy.

• Governance: Governance policies ensure responsible and ethical use of the IoT system. These
policies address aspects such as data ownership, data sharing, and appropriate data usage.
Functional Viewpoint
The functional viewpoint focuses on the functional components in an IIoT system, their structure and
interrelation, the interfaces and interactions between them, and the relation and interactions of the system
with external elements in the environment, to support the usages and activities of the overall system.
These concerns are of particular interest to system and component architects, developers and integrators.

Two major themes

Decomposition

Cross-cutting Functions

Decomposition

A functional domain is a (mostly) distinct functionality in the overall IIoT system. A decomposition of a
typical IoT system into functional domains highlights the important building blocks that have wide
applicability in many industrial verticals. It is a starting point for conceptualizing a concrete functional
architecture.

We decompose a typical IIoT system into five functional domains:

• Control Domain

• Operations Domain

• Information Domain

• Application Domain

• Business Domain
 Application Domain

The application domain represents the collection of functions implementing application logic that
realizes specific business functionalities. Functions in this domain apply application logic, rules and
models at a coarse-grained, high level for optimization in a global scope.
Business Domain

The business domain functions enable end-to-end operations of the industrial internet of things systems by
integrating them with traditional or new types of industrial internet systems specific business functions
including those supporting business processes and procedural activities.

Control Domain

The control domain represents the collection of functions that are performed by industrial control systems.
The core of these functions comprises fine-grained closed-loops, reading data from sensors (“sense” in the
figure), applying rules and logic, and exercising control over the physical system through actuators
(“actuation”).

Information Domain

The information domain represents the collection of functions for gathering data from various domains,
most significantly from the control domain, and transforming, persisting, and modeling or analyzing those
data to acquire high-level intelligence about the overall system.

Operations Domain

The operations domain represents the collection of functions responsible for the provisioning,
management, monitoring and optimization of the systems in the control domain.
Cross-cutting Functions

The functional components described so far in the functional domains focus on major system functions that
are generally required to support generic IIoT usages and to realize generic IIoT system capabilities for
business purpose. However, additional functions must be provided to enable the major system functions.
Often these enabling functions, the so-called crosscutting functions, need to be made available across many
of the system functional components. For example, system functions need to be connected so they can
interact with each other to complete functionality at the system level.

Information View: Description of the data and information that the system handles.
•Deployment and Operational View: Description of the main real world components of the system such as
devices, network routers, servers, etc.

Device and Application functional group figure

Communication functional group

• The Hop-by-Hop Communication is applicable in the case that devices and messages have to
traverse the mesh from node-to-node (hop-by-hop) until they reach a gateway node which
forwards the message (if needed) further to the Internet.

• This FC has two main interfaces:

• one “southbound” to/from the actual radio on the device, and

• one “northbound” to/from the Network FC in the Communication FG.

 • The Network FC is responsible for message routing & forwarding and the necessary translations of
various identifiers and addresses.

• The translations can be

• (a) between network layer identifiers to MAC and/or physical network identifiers,

• (b) between high-level human readable host/node identifiers to network layer addresses
and

• (c) translation between node/service identifiers and network locators in case the higher
layers above the networking layer use node or service identifiers

IoT Service functional group

• The IoT Service FC is a collection of service implementations, which interface the related and
associated Resources.

• Sensor type of a Resource, the IoT Service FC includes Services that receive requests from a User
and returns the Sensor Resource value in synchronous or asynchronous (e.g.
subscription/notification) fashion.

• The IoT Service Resolution FC contains the necessary functions to realize a directory of IoT Services
that allows dynamic management of IoT Service descriptions and discovery/lookup/resolution of
IoT Services by other Active Digital Artifacts.

Process Management functional group

The IoT Process Management FG, integration of business processes with IoT-related services.

• It consists of two FCs:

• The Process Modelling FC provides that right tools for modelling a business process that utilises
IoT-related services.

• The Process Execution FC contains the execution environment of the process models created by the
Process Modelling FC and executes the created processes by utilising the Service Organisation FG in
order to resolve high-level application requirements to specific IoT services

Security functional group

The Security FG contains the necessary functions for ensuring the security and privacy of an IoT system.

The Identity Management FC manages the different identities of the involved Services or Users in an IoT
system

The Authentication FC verifies the identity of a User and creates an assertion upon successful verification.
verifies the identity of a User and creates an assertion upon successful verification.

The Authorization FC manages and enforces access control policies. It provides services to manage policies
(CUD), as well as taking decisions and enforcing them regarding access rights of restricted resources.

The Key Exchange & Management is used for setting up the necessary security keys between two
communicating entities in an IoT system.
The Trust & Reputation FC manages reputation scores of different interacting entities in an IoT system and
calculates the service trust levels.

IoT Device Constraints

Key Takeaways

• Power consumption and its interplay with portability in IoT design.

• Additional factors that influence the performance of an IoT system.

• How to evaluate IoT along a simple three-branch approach.

In most IoT applications, the largest constraint in design is power consumption. Sensors need to
constantly monitor system states and update the network, with the added wrinkle that devices may be
distributed over a wide area with limited access to a continuous power supply. On-board power has the
challenge of balancing portability against the total capacity of the supply, and network transactions that
supply power between devices require extreme proximity.

There‘s an additional host of factors to consider shaping an IoT network, and much like board design, there
is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to performance. Some of the major influences on the
network include:

Networking - Connections need to be established before transmission, which due to the often trivial length
of the latter, means considerable energy expenditures spent on setup versus the actual content of the data.

Congestion - Fail safes need to be in place to prevent overwhelming systems, especially at points that route
a large number of signals. Protocols with increased bandwidth can be an option, generally with higher
associated power consumption, but systems can also prevent network congestion by designing built-in
throttling during periods of high traffic.

Hardware - The major cost driver is components alongside labor, and designers will want to ensure that
cost-per-unit is kept to a minimum due to the high number of IoT devices that may be present throughout a
system. RFID can be a successful implementation of IoT-aligned technology due to a few key aspects such as
low power consumption, large broadcast area, and low manufacturing costs.

Interoperability - Navigating through multiple different devices and protocols becomes a challenge,
especially when attempting to optimize data send/receive for the lowest energy cost per transmission.

Security and privacy - Security is an increasing concern within the realm of IoT: as connectedness continues
to climb, so too does the possibility of a data breach. Not only do designers need to be aware of how a
system prevents unintentional access to the network, but long-term storage of data gathered on users is
increasingly being stored indefinitely as the value of the information supersedes that of the long-term
storage cost.

What are Design Constraints?

Design constraints are limitations or restrictions in the design process imposed by internal and external
factors. These constraints impact the final product, so it’s critical that everyone in the organization is aware
of them and considers these limitations before every project.

Common types of design constraints include:

• Interoperability IoT devices and applications can have different standards, protocols, and platforms
that may not work well together.
• Connectivity IoT devices may have constraints in terms of network connectivity. As the number of
IoT devices increases, the load on servers will increase, and bandwidth-intensive applications will
face space crunch.

• Security Security is one of the most critical concerns in IoT, closely related to data ethics, privacy,
and liability.

• Energy inefficiency IoT devices are battery constrained and not fully self-dependent.

• Cloud IoT devices are not useful without cloud connectivity. However, one of the primary design
constraints for IoT applications is the over reliance on a centralized cloud infrastructure.

• Hardware limitations Many IoT devices have limited processing power and memory available for
storing and processing data.

• Cost considerations IoT devices are often designed to be affordable, so developers must work
within cost constraints when selecting hardware components.