The internet of things: a survey Shancang Li & Li Da Xu & Shanshan Zhao # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract In recent year, the Internet of Things (IoT) has drawn significant research attention. IoT is considered as a part of the Internet of the future and will comprise billions of intelligent communicating ‘things’. The future of the Internet will consist of heterogeneously connected devices that will further extend the borders of the world with physical entities and virtual components. The Internet of Things (IoT) will empower the connected things with new capabilities. In this survey, the definitions, architecture, fundamental technolo- gies, and applications of IoT are systematically reviewed. Firstly, various definitions of IoT are introduced; secondly, emerging techniques for the implementation of IoT are discussed; thirdly, some open issues related to the IoT appli- cations are explored; finally, the major challenges which need addressing by the research community and corresponding potential solutions are investigated. Keywords Literature Review . IoT . Internet of Things . RFID . Wireless Sensors Network . Service Oriented Architecture 1 Introduction Pretz has indicated that the Internet of things (IoT) is a things- connected network, where things are wirelessly connected via smart sensors (Pretz 2013); IoT is able to interact without human intervention. Some preliminary IoT applications have been already developed in healthcare, transportation, and au- tomotive industries (He et al. 2014; Joshi and Kim 2013; Pretz 2013). Currently, IoT technologies are at their infant stages; however, many new developments have occurred in the inte- gration of objects with sensors in the cloud-based Internet (Hepp et al. 2007; Joshi and Kim 2013; Pretz 2013). The development of IoT involves many issues such as infrastruc- ture, communications, interfaces, protocols, and standards. We are motivated to summarize the research progress achieved so far in the development, standardization, and se- curity assurance of IoT enabling technologies, and to identify critical research topics and future research directions of IoT. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 1 mainly provides an overview of the definitions, current re- search, standards, and future research of IoT. In Section 2, the current research on IoT system architecture is discussed. In Section 3, the enabling technologies of IoT are investigated. In Section 4, the applications of IoT are reviewed. Finally, some emerging research issues are identified and the future research directions are discussed. 1.1 The concept of IoT Kevin Ashton firstly proposed the concept of IoT in 1999, and he referred the IoT as uniquely identifiable interoperable con- nected objects with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. However, the exact definition of IoT is still in the forming process that is subject to the perspectives taken (Hepp et al. 2007; Joshi and Kim 2013; Pretz 2013). IoT was generally defined as “dynamic global network infrastructure S. Li Faculty of Engineering, University of Bristol, Clifton BS8 1UB, UK e-mail: shancang.li@bristol.ac.uk L. D. Xu (*) Department of Information Technology and Decision Science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA e-mail: lxu@odu.edu S. Zhao School of Computing, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley PA1 2BE, UK e-mail: sszhao.uk@gmail.com DOI 10.1007/s10796-014-9492-7 Published online: 26 April 2014 Inf Syst Front (2015) 17:243–259