Categorization framework for data objects in the Internet of things [recurso electrónico] / Jorge Eduardo Ibarra Esquer ; director, Félix Fernando González Navarro

Maestría y Doctorado en Ciencias e Ingeniería

Tesis (Doctorado) --Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Instituto de Ingeniería, Mexicali, 2019.

Both the idea and technology for connecting sensors and actuators to a network to remotely
monitor and control physical systems have been known for many years and developed
accordingly. However, a little more than a decade ago the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT)
was coined and used to integrate such approaches into a common framework. Technology has
been constantly evolving and so has the concept of the Internet of Things, incorporating new
terminology appropriate to technological advances and different application domains. This
document presents the changes that the IoT has undertaken since its conception and research
on how technological advances have shaped it and fostered the arising of derived names suitable
to specific domains. A two-step literature review through major publishers and indexing
databases was conducted; first by searching for proposals on the Internet of Things concept and
analyzing them to find similarities, differences, and technological features that allow us to create
a timeline showing its development; in the second step the most mentioned names given to the
IoT for specific domains, as well as closely related concepts were identified and briefly analyzed.
The study confirms the claim that a consensus on the IoT definition has not yet been reached, as
enabling technology keeps evolving and new application domains are being proposed. However,
recent changes have been relatively moderated, and its variations on application domains are
clearly differentiated, with data and data technologies playing an important role in the IoT
landscape. In addition, the study allowed us to obtain a clearer insight on this technology and
what can be achieved through it. Observing the way these definitions have evolved and how
different concepts, technologies and ideas have been incorporated as the IoT develops suggests
that a correct description and characterization of the things at the end-points of the IoT should
be one of the first goals towards a final definition.
Things are the core of the IoT and must be properly characterized according to the different
functions they accomplish. Identifying their capabilities and combining them as sets provides a
view on the single or joint properties of existing things and guiding in properly designing and
building new things while maximizing their potential benefits within an IoT. Building on five
essential but independent capabilities of things (identification, location and tracking, sensing,
actuation, and processing), four categories or groups of things are defined. These groups
comprise the diversity of objects found in the IoT, as trackable, data, interactive, or smart objects.
A description of the aforementioned capabilities is presented, stating how each of the groups of
objects includes them. Then, given that data is one of the most important assets for both
organizations and individuals a further description of the data objects group is made, proposing
a categorization framework that thoroughly describes and measures the level in which each of
these capabilities is contained and how it contributes to the performance and data properties of
any data object. The framework has the capability of allowing IoT solution designers and
providers understand the scope and outcomes of both IoT products and projects. It can be used
to categorize both existing objects and new objects before they are constructed, which is where
designers would benefit most from it.