Internet of Things (IoT) — Architecture, Protocols, Security, and Applications
A technical survey of IoT device classes, connectivity stacks, edge and cloud interactions, telemetry pipelines, device management, security practices, and industry use cases.
IoT Architecture Overview
IoT systems commonly follow a layered architecture: Devices & sensors → Edge gateways → Connectivity networks → Cloud backends → Analytics & applications. Real-time constraints, intermittent connectivity, and device heterogeneity drive design choices.
Connectivity & Protocols
- MQTT: Lightweight pub/sub for telemetry over TCP/TLS.
- CoAP: Constrained REST over UDP for low-power devices.
- LoRaWAN: Low-power wide-area network for long-range sensor telemetry.
- Bluetooth Low Energy / Zigbee: Short-range mesh/local connectivity.
Gateways
Network
Cloud / Analytics
Device Management & Security
Device lifecycle functions: provisioning, OTA updates, health telemetry, and decommissioning. Security: hardware roots of trust (TPM), mutual TLS, secure boot, signed updates, and least-privilege access. Scale and heterogeneity make key management and fleet-wide policies critical.
Data Pipelines & Edge Processing
Edge processing reduces bandwidth by filtering, aggregating, and running inference locally. Telemetry pipelines include message ingestion, stream processing, time-series databases, and feature stores for ML.
Representative Use Cases
- Industrial IoT (predictive maintenance, digital twins)
- Smart cities (traffic, utilities, public safety)
- Healthcare (remote monitoring, asset tracking)
- Retail (supply chain, cashierless stores)
References
- IETF, OASIS, LoRa Alliance, IEEE and industry whitepapers on protocols and security best practices.
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