State-of-the-Art and Research Opportunities for Next-Generation Consumer Electronics

The tremendous advancement of Internet-of-Things (IoT) has proliferated the interaction between the physical and cyber worlds. Consumer electronics, as the first tier in the physical world, would play a crucial role to enable ubiquitous information exchange. The adoption of IoT technologies will inevitably enhance the maturity of consumer products and services, proliferating the market of consumer electronics. Nonetheless, the ever-growing number of uncoordinated connections and unregulated integrations of technologies would pose various challenges and threats, resulting in vulnerability to consumer electronics. Thus, there is an urgent need for defining the trusted infrastructure and research directions for consumer electronics. In this paper, the next-generation (next-gen) consumer electronics would be defined for the first time. Also, the state-of-the-art architecture of next-gen consumer electronics would be presented, in compliance with the emerging IoT standard IEEE 2668. To address the underlying challenges in next-gen consumer electronics, this paper will classify the essential research topics for consumer electronics and present future research opportunities, such as the exploitation of complex network analysis, cybersecurity measures, etc., to foster the development of consumer electronics in a reliable, efficient, safe, and secure manner.