Green Internet of Things: A Study of Technologies, Challenges and Applications

The recent developments pertaining to computer hardware and software, communication networks and miniaturization of components have led to the rise of a new evolutionary and dynamic computing paradigm, known as the internet of things, striving to transform trivial objects into smarter ones by integrating sensors, actuators and communication facilities in them. However, the smart connected world envisioned by the Internet of Things may result in high utilization of energy resources, severe increase in global warming and high-energy consumption necessitating the development of Green Internet of Things which is comparatively an efficient, sustainable and eco-friendly technology based on low energy consumption. Despite being a challenging technique, it brings with it enormous promising advantages and unique features such as self-sustainable capability, reduction in emission of CO2, minimizing the dependence on non-renewable energy resources and increased use of the renewable energy resources. This paper presents a study of low energy variants of some underlying technologies of the Internet of Things such as Radio Frequency Identification, Machine to Machine, Cloud Computing, Data Centers and Wireless Sensor Networks that make the Internet of Things Green. Further, various emerging challenges of Green Internet of Things such as privacy, security, scalability, interoperability, trust and failure handling that warrant immediate attention, have been identified and discussed. In addition, the paper profiles some vital application areas of Green Internet of Things.