Internet of Things: Device Capabilities, Architectures, Protocols, and Smart Applications in Healthcare Domain

Nowadays, the Internet has spread to practically every country around the world and is having unprecedented effects on people’s lives. The Internet of Things (IoT) is getting more popular and has a high level of interest in both practitioners and academicians in the age of wireless communication due to its diverse applications. The IoT is a technology that enables everyday things to become savvier, everyday computation toward becoming intellectual, and everyday communication to become a little more insightful. In this article, the most common and popular IoT device capabilities, architectures, and protocols are demonstrated in brief to provide a clear overview of the IoT technology to the researchers in this area. The common IoT device capabilities, including hardware (Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and ESP8266) and software (operating systems (OSs), and built-in tools) platforms are described in detail. The widely used architectures that have recently evolved and used are the three-layer architecture, service-oriented architecture, and middleware-based architecture. The popular protocols for IoT are demonstrated which include constrained application protocol, message queue telemetry transport, extensible messaging and presence protocol, advanced message queuing protocol, data distribution service, low power wireless personal area network, Bluetooth low energy, and ZigBee that are frequently utilized to develop smart IoT applications. Additionally, this research provides an in-depth overview of the potential healthcare applications based on IoT technologies in the context of addressing various healthcare concerns. Finally, this article summarizes state-of-the-art knowledge, highlights open issues and shortcomings, and provides recommendations for further studies which would be quite beneficial to anyone with a desire to work in this field and make breakthroughs to get expertise in this area.