The IoT can be seen as a combination of sensors and actuators providing and receiving

information that is digitized and placed into bidirectional networks able to transmit all
data to be used by a lot of different services and final users.

Different Layers of IoT Architecture

A four-layer architecture is the standard and most widely accepted format.

Perception/Sensing Layer

The first layer of any IoT system involves “things” or endpoint devices that serve as a
channel between the physical and the digital worlds. Perception refers to the physical
layer, which includes sensors and actuators that are capable of collecting, accepting,
and processing data over the network. Sensors and actuators can be connected either
wireless or via wired connections. The architecture does not limit the scope of its
components nor their location.

Network Layer

Network layers provide an overview of how data is moved throughout the application.
This layer contains Data Acquiring Systems (DAS) and Internet/Network gateways. A
DAS performs data aggregation and conversion functions (collecting and aggregating
data from sensors, then converting analog data to digital data, etc.). It is necessary to
transmit and process the data collected by the sensor devices. That’s what the network
layer does. It allows these devices to connect and communicate with other servers,
smart devices, and network devices. As well, it handles all data transmissions for the
devices.

Processing Layer

The processing layer is the brain of the IoT ecosystem. Typically, data is analyzed, pre-
processed, and stored here before being sent to the data center, where it is accessed by
software applications that both monitor and manage the data as well as prepare further
actions.
Application Layer

User interaction takes place at the application layer, which delivers application-specific
services to the user. An example might be a smart home application where users can
turn on a coffee maker or AC system by tapping a button in an app or a dashboard that
shows the status of the devices in a system. There are many ways in which the Internet
of Things can be deployed such as smart cities, smart homes, and smart health.

What is Internet Gateway ?

Sensors collect and analyze data from the environment in order to make it usable for
further analysis. Actuators are involved in measuring the change recorded by the
sensors. Local Area Networks (LANs) and Personal Area Networks (PANs) can be used
for connecting sensors and actuators.

The next step that needs to be done is to set up an internet gateway. As the sensors and
actuators collect data in analog form, we must have a means of converting the analog
data into digital data in order to process it. We use the internet gateway to accomplish
this task. In the internet gateway stage, raw data will be received from the devices and
pre-processed before being sent to the cloud.

Data Acquisition Systems can be used to convert analog data into digital forms.
It connects to the sensors and actuators and gathers all data, converting it to digital
form so that it may be routed over the network by the internet gateway. It is
responsible for data aggregation and conversion. We can also add additional features,
such as analytics and security, to increase performance and efficiency.

IoT Protocols
1. Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)

CoAP is an internet utility protocol for constrained gadgets. It is designed to enable

simple, constrained devices to join IoT through constrained networks having low
bandwidth availability.
This protocol is primarily used for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and is
particularly designed for IoT systems that are based on HTTP protocols.

CoAP makes use of the UDP protocol for lightweight implementation. It also uses
restful architecture, which is just like the HTTP protocol. It makes use of dtls for the
cozy switch of statistics within the slipping layer.

What is REST ?
REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer and API stands for
Application Program Interface. REST is a software architectural style that
defines the set of rules to be used for creating web services. Web services
which follow the REST architectural style are known as RESTful web services.

2. Message Queue Telemetry Transport Protocol (MQTT)

MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) is a messaging protocol developed with

the aid of Andy Stanford-Clark of IBM and Arlen Nipper of Arcom in 1999 and is
designed for M2M communication. It’s normally used for faraway tracking in IoT.
Its primary challenge is to gather statistics from many gadgets and delivery of its
infrastructure. MQTT connects gadgets and networks with packages and middleware.
All the devices hook up with facts concentrator servers like IBM’s new message sight
appliance. MQTT protocols paintings on top of TCP to offer easy and dependable
streams of information.
These IoT protocols include 3 foremost additives: subscriber, publisher, and dealer.
The writer generates the information and transmits the facts to subscribers through the
dealer. The dealer guarantees safety by means of move-checking the authorization of
publishers and subscribers.
3. Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP)

This was evolved by John O’Hara at JP Morgan Chase in London. AMQP is a software
layer protocol for message-oriented middleware environment. It supports reliable
verbal exchange through message transport warranty primitives like at-most-once, at
least once and exactly as soon as shipping.
The AMQP – IoT protocols consist of hard and fast components that route and save
messages within a broker carrier, with a set of policies for wiring the components
together. The AMQP protocol enables patron programs to talk to the dealer and engage
with the AMQP model.
This version has the following three additives, which might link into processing chains
in the server to create the favored capabilities.
 Exchange: Receives messages from publisher primarily based programs and
routes them to ‘message queues’.
 Message Queue: Stores messages until they may thoroughly process via the eating
client software.
 Binding: States the connection between the message queue and the change.

4. Data Distribution Service (DDS)

It enables a scalable, real-time, reliable, excessive-overall performance and

interoperable statistics change via the submit-subscribe technique. DDS makes use of
multicasting to convey high-quality QoS to applications.
DDS is deployed in platforms ranging from low-footprint devices to the cloud and
supports green bandwidth usage in addition to the agile orchestration of system
additives.
The DDS – IoT protocols have fundamental layers: facts centric submit-subscribe
(dcps) and statistics-local reconstruction layer (dlrl).
Dcps plays the task of handing over the facts to subscribers, and the dlrl layer presents
an interface to dcps functionalities, permitting the sharing of distributed data amongst
IoT enabled objects.

Five-layer IoT Architecture

Another architecture which is five-layers IoT architecture is proposed by the

researchers who were worked on IoT. In this five-layer IoT architecture, the three-
layers which are the application, network, and perception layers are having same
architecture like three-layer IoT architecture. Additionally, the Business layer,
Transport layer, and processing layer are the new one.
 5-layer-iot-architecture

Business Layer: This layer is the head of the IoT architecture. It manages the
complete IoT system even applications, user’s privacy, profit models, etc.