The internet has changed the way human activities are performed. In a few years, this communication infrastructure evolved to leverage a new technological paradigm named internet of things (IoT). This technology fuses processes and devices to create multipurpose cyber-physical systems (CFS) that improve human quality of life. These systems rely on internet availability, which can be affected by natural phenomena such as earthquakes carrying out economic and social consequences. In this work, an autonomous communication model for IoT domains is proposed. The main goal of this model is to set the basis for the development of a communication system capable of operating independently of the internet. This communication autonomy is critical in catastrophe scenarios where information broadcasts can support disaster management. According to simulation results, the proposed model can be implemented in different IoT scenarios including cities developed under this technology.
TopIntroduction
The Internet has become an important communication infrastructure that involves an increasing number of human activities. This complex communication system doubles its size every five years including a wide variety of devices. Different surveys show that by 2025 there will be around 7 billion IoT devices operating on different applications around the world (Vincentelli, 2015). This number will grow with the development of new services and products.
The development of the Internet over the years enabled the communication of a large number of heterogeneous devices, which are utilized to automate diverse human activities. In this context, a new technological paradigm evolved and it was named Internet of Things (IoT) (Atzori, Iera & Morabito, 2010). This technology involves several scenarios that can be grouped into three broad domains: industry, smart cities, and health well-being (Borgia, 2014).
The industry domain includes areas such as logistics, manufacturing, process control, customer services, bank, and financial management, government controls, among others. Smart cities promote the development of a sustainable environment by making efficient use of resources and taking care of the environment. Health well-being involves independent living and health care. IoT technology for independent living assists people with a physical disability to improve their quality of life. Nowadays, for example, there are health care centers that provide services based on IoT to remotely take care of patients at their homes.
In these scenarios, it is possible to observe how IoT is a pervasive technology that encompasses a growing range of human activities. This phenomenon is integrating and fusing processes and devices to create cyber-physical systems (CPS) (Vincentelli, 2015). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) has polled more than 150 IoT scenarios that involve diverse CPS (“IoT scenarios”, 2019) domains. In the near future, governments, industries, and societies will depend on these systems to perform daily activities.
A CPS fuses physical processes and information technology to optimize the use of resources needed to accomplish certain goals. These systems gather heterogeneous electronic devices that interact to perform actions on the environment where they operate based on sensed data or preset settings. The interaction among devices is supported by a communication infrastructure such as the Internet.
The deployment and interaction of CPSs involve a large number of devices sending and receiving messages over the Internet. In this scenario, the communication infrastructure must deal with requirements such as scalability, interoperability, and integration of diverse protocols.
IoT emerged from the evolution of the Internet, as a consequence it has developed an important dependency between IoT technology and the underlying communication systems. Although it is unlikely that the Internet infrastructure collapses at a global scale, it is feasible that failures of lower scale occur. For example, smart cities built on seismic zones are prone to failures after an earthquake. In such a case, there might be an important social and economic impact on the citizen's lives.
In this work, the dependency between IoT applications and the communication systems is stated as a problem. In order to address this problem, an autonomous communication model is proposed. The main goal of this model is to set the basis to build an autonomous communication system capable of operating in IoT domains such as a smart city. An autonomous system could provide basic messages exchange services that can be crucial, for example in catastrophe scenarios.
The contributions of this work are the following. First, the definition of an autonomous communication model that can be applied in IoT domains. Second, the estimation of the number of devices required to communicate certain areas autonomously. Finally, the analysis of how the number of devices within an area affects the communication routes between two random devices.
The content of this chapter is organized as follows. First, the background that supports the model is presented. Second, the proposed model is introduced. Third, results about the number of devices required to communicate autonomously in an area are discussed. Fourth, an analysis of how the number of devices within an area alters the communication route between nodes is analyzed. Finally, future research directions and conclusions are presented.