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Review
. 2017 Jun 14;17(6):1379.
doi: 10.3390/s17061379.

Tracking the Evolution of the Internet of Things Concept Across Different Application Domains

Jorge E Ibarra-Esquer  1 , Félix F González-Navarro  2 , Brenda L Flores-Rios  3 , Larysa Burtseva  4 , María A Astorga-Vargas  5
Affiliations
Review

Tracking the Evolution of the Internet of Things Concept Across Different Application Domains

Jorge E Ibarra-Esquer et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Both the idea and technology for connecting sensors and actuators to a network to remotely monitor and control physical systems have been known for many years and developed accordingly. However, a little more than a decade ago the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) was coined and used to integrate such approaches into a common framework. Technology has been constantly evolving and so has the concept of the Internet of Things, incorporating new terminology appropriate to technological advances and different application domains. This paper presents the changes that the IoT has undertaken since its conception and research on how technological advances have shaped it and fostered the arising of derived names suitable to specific domains. A two-step literature review through major publishers and indexing databases was conducted; first by searching for proposals on the Internet of Things concept and analyzing them to find similarities, differences, and technological features that allow us to create a timeline showing its development; in the second step the most mentioned names given to the IoT for specific domains, as well as closely related concepts were identified and briefly analyzed. The study confirms the claim that a consensus on the IoT definition has not yet been reached, as enabling technology keeps evolving and new application domains are being proposed. However, recent changes have been relatively moderated, and its variations on application domains are clearly differentiated, with data and data technologies playing an important role in the IoT landscape.

Keywords: Internet of Things; application domains; definition; things capabilities.

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Conflict of interest statement

This authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart for the search stage of the SLR.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Three main visions of the IoT. Adapted from [16].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Capabilities of Internet connected devices as sets. The shaded area represents the set of Things in the IoT.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Subsets of the IoT.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Interaction between IoC and IoT devices.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Orientation of the definitions and visions of the IoT.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Concepts and notions used by authors in presenting their visions of IoT.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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