Architecture is a description of relationships between the conceptual elements and target-system elements, and design principles. Reference architecture is a model of the elements and their relationships. The IoT domain covers an extremely wide range of technologies.
The architectural views in IoT consists of four views namely functional view, information view, deployment view and operation view. Following are the various ways of viewing the architectural elements in a IoT reference architecture:
| View Name | Description |
| Functional view | Gives the view of functions in a system. These functions can be further divided into function groups (FGs). A FG can be further divided into function components (FCs). |
| Information view | Gives the view of information. The information can be divided into different information groups (IGs) |
| Deployment view | Gives the view of deployments of FCs. |
| Operation view | Gives the operations of the deployed FCs. |
Functional View
The functional view contains information about different functional components. Related Functional Components (FCs) are grouped together in Functional Groups (FGs). Following are some of the functional groups in a functional view.
| Name of Functional Group (FG) | Description |
| FG Device | Physical objects and their network |
| FG Communication | Edge computing and communication gateway functions |
| FG Network | Protocols, Internet, firewall and network |
| FG SW_Entities | Modules, libraries, and APIs |
| FG Device_Management | Device configuration, device identity management |
| FG Security | System identity management, authentication, authorisation, key exchange, key management, trust and reputation |
| FG Service_Managing_Functions | Service Oriented Architecture (SoA), etc. |
Information view
Description of conceptual elements in IoT framework: objects, software entities, gateways, firewall, network protocols.
Processing/handling information: compaction, averaging, pooling, fusion, stamping with time and/or location, filtering, cleaning (removing noise, outliers, redundancy).
Flow of information between the FGs using the FCs: flow can be intra FG or inter FG.
Information life cycle.
Deployment view
Physical object deployments, such as sensor and actuator nodes.
Communication gateway deployment.
Firewall and network protocols deployment for Internet connectivity.
Management and service FCs deployment at the server.
Operational view
Physical object or device operations such as sensing and actuation.
Edge device operations, such as for object connectivity with the Internet or an edge server.
Gateway operations, such as Internet firewall and Internet connectivity using the protocols.
Server operations like pushing, subscribing, pulling, notifying, or requesting by a client and responding back.
Suryateja Pericherla, at present is a Research Scholar (full-time Ph.D.) in the Dept. of Computer Science & Systems Engineering at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. Previously worked as an Associate Professor in the Dept. of CSE at Vishnu Institute of Technology, India.
He has 11+ years of teaching experience and is an individual researcher whose research interests are Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Computer Security, Network Security and Blockchain.
He is a member of professional societies like IEEE, ACM, CSI and ISCA. He published several research papers which are indexed by SCIE, WoS, Scopus, Springer and others.
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