Ambiance Intelligence Approach Using IoT and Multi-Agent System

2.1. Internet of Things

The IoT is a set of computing devices, objects, mechanical and digital machines (Gubbi, Buyya, Marusic, and Palaniswami, 2013). Such entities remain connected to the Internet, and are integrated with one or more sensors (Minerva, Biru, and Rotondi, 2010). Currently, IEEE standard association considers three layers in IoT architecture, as shown in Figure 1 and explained below:

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  Application Layer: It represents the software level. It varies according to IoT markets and stakeholders;

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  Networks and data communication Layer: It is responsible for packet forwarding, which includes the routing through intermediate routers. Since the networks layer knows the address of the neighbouring network nodes, it manages quality of service (QoS);

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  Sensing Layer: This layer senses/controls the physical world and data-acquirement. It is integrated with existing hardware (RFID, sensors, actuators, etc.).

Figure 1.

IoT architecture (Wu, Lu, Ling, Sun, and Du, 2010)