The Future Internet of Things: Secure, Efficient, and Model-Based

The Internet of Things' (IoT's) rapid growth is constrained by resource use and fears about privacy and security. A solution jointly addressing security, efficiency, privacy, and scalability is needed to support continued expansion. We propose a solution modeled on human use of context and cognition, leveraging cloud resources to facilitate IoT on constrained devices. We present an architecture applying process knowledge to provide security through abstraction and privacy through remote data fusion. We outline five architectural elements and consider the key concepts of the “data proxy” and the “cognitive layer.” The data proxy uses system models to digitally mirror objects with minimal input data, while the cognitive layer applies these models to monitor the system's evolution and to simulate the impact of commands prior to execution. The data proxy allows a system's sensors to be sampled to meet a specified quality of data target with minimal resource use. The efficiency improvement of this architecture is shown with an example vehicle tracking application. Finally, we consider future opportunities for this architecture to reduce technical, economic, and sentiment barriers to the adoption of the IoT.