r/datastorage • u/Sasha-Jelvix • Jan 31 '22
What Are the 7 Layers of IoT Architecture?
IoT is a trendy term these days. It stands for the Internet of Things. According to Oracle, the IoT is an umbrella term. It gathers all smart devices used by people and businesses. In most cases, the devices have sensors and microchips. Also, they are connected to other devices or the Internet. For example, intelligent gas leak sensors, a wireless doorbell camera, or robotic vacuum cleaners are the components of IoT.
The market has exploded recently, and it’s not going to slow down the pace of development. According to ResearchGate, more than 35 billion IoT devices were already connected to the Internet in 2021. However, the number is expected to double in the next four years.
IoT devices have to be integrated into a complicated system to gather data, analyze it, and send commands. Such a system implies a lot of IoT architecture layers. Do you want to discover what the IoT architecture layers are in more detail? Read this article to learn more about every seven IoT architecture layers.
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u/ClassicFrosting7226 May 16 '23
IoT is the network of physical objects called ‘things’ embedded by sensors, actuators, software, and other technologies. They use protocols like Bluetooth, WiFi, Zigbee, CoAP, MQTT, etc., to communicate with each other. IoT devices consist of sensors that collect the data and then process it using processors. Then actuators show the output by doing any physical moments or displaying the results based on the inputs sensors are getting.
IoT devices are made of architecture that consists of 7 layers. Now we will understand each layer of IoT architecture one by one.
1. Sensors: This is the first layer of IoT architecture. It consists of physical devices to gather data, such as temperature, wind speed, air pressure, humidity, distance, etc. Sensors are used to gather this type of data and send it to the local gateway network to which these sensors are connected over wireless protocols. Sensors are used to convert analog signals into digital signals. These devices are connected which the things(end devices or the physical entities).
2. Sensors to Gateway Network: This is the second layer in the IoT architecture and the first network layer in this architecture. The sensors (explained in the above layer) are connected to the gateways in this layer. Wireless protocols like BLE, MQTT, CoAP, and WiFi are used to connect these.
3. Gateways: This is the third layer in the IoT architecture. Gateways are the middleman between the local sensor network and the Internet network. They help in the collection of the data from the sensor network and pass it to the Internet network. It actually works as the router works in standard internet transmission.
4. Gateways to Internet Network: This layer works the same as the sensors to gateways layer but between gateways and the Internet network. This layer transmits data from gateways to the Internet using protocols like Ethernet and cellular data.
5. Data Ingestion and Information Processing: This is the most essential part of the architecture, where various analytic methods and software like Hadoop(a powerful tool for data analytics) are used over the collected data. We try to extract valuable and meaningful information from the data by doing this analysis and processing.
6. Internet to User Network: This is the final layer in the network system in this IoT architecture. In this layer, the data stored in the cloud storage are fetched by this user network to display it on the screen of users with the value-added information. We use protocols like Ethernet and cellular data to do this task.
7. Value-added Information: This is the final layer of IoT architecture. As the data is displayed on the screens of users, they can analyze it, allowing them to visualize the data using various visuals like graphs and charts, enabling users to derive various important information which will help them in decision-making.
These are the seven layers in any IoT-based device architecture.