Data Collection in Studies on Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), and Sensor Cloud (SC): Similarities and Differences

Data collection is an essential part of sensor devices, particularly in such technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), wireless sensor networks (WSN), and sensor cloud (SC). In recent years, various literature had been published in these research areas to propose different models, architectures, and contributions in the domains. Due to the importance of efficient data collection regarding reducing energy consumption, latency, network lifetime, and general cost, a momentous literature volume has been published to facilitate data collection. Hence, review studies have been conducted on data collection in these domains in isolation. However, a lack of comprehensive review collectively identifies and analyzes the differences and similarities among the data collection proposals in IoT, WSN, and SC. The main objective of this research is to conduct a comprehensive survey to explore the current state, use cases, contributions, performance measures, evaluation measures, and architecture in the IoT, WSN, and SC research domains. The findings indicate that studies on data collection in IoT, WSN, and SC are relatively consistent with stable output in the last five years. Nine novel contributions are found with models, algorithms, and frameworks being the most utilized by the selected studies. In conclusion, key research challenges and future research directions have been identified and discussed.