Scope

The IoT Program has defined a number of work packages (WPs) with dedicated work package teams. Teams are led by representatives from the industry with support from representatives from academic institutions.

Identified activities with impact on all work packages are handled by the Cross-Workpackage”  (XWP)”. That combines the following issues:

• Security, Privacy and Trust
• Energy Efficiency
• Standardization and Architectural Issues

Overview of teams:

WP 1 – Networking and Communications

The main objective of WP1 is to work on the underlying communications and networking technology. The goals include improving the scalability and the energy efficiency of the existing wireless and wired communication networks and networking mechanisms in order to enable secure connectivity for the large amounts or small battery powered devices.

WP 2 – IoT Management

The purpose of WP2 is to propose and solve those technical issues which are important for the management of the IoT. The important architecture issues include the infrastructure for device monitoring and control, the infrastructure for network management and configuration, security, and object identification and discovery. Besides new technologies, the application of existing technologies such as LTE in certain application scenarios will also be evaluated. WP2 is tightly coupled with the trials and demonstrations suggested in WP6, and a large set of the results developed in WP2 will be demonstrated in WP6.

WP 3 – Services and Applications Development Support

The main objective of WP3 is to bridge the gap between the underlying infrastructure, including a plethora of IoT devices and networks and the Internet’s dominant information-level infrastructure, i.e. the Web. When IoT devices are connected to Web, the first challenge is to adjust the basic connectivity and Web technologies to the characteristics of IoT. On the protocol level, the state of practice is for applications to control IoT devices through RESTful versions of HTTP POST and PUT, and query them through HTTP GET. However, CoAP is a RESTful protocol designed specifically to address issues with resource-constrained links. The mapping between RESTful protocols for constrained things like CoAP and protocols used in the Web like HTTP is a particular question that will be addressed. On the data formats level, similarly, a particular question is mapping between data formats used for constrained devices and data formats used in the Web like XML, JSON, and RDF. Attaching machine-processable semantics to IoT data is an issue pertaining to both the protocol and the data format levels.

WP 4 – Human Interaction

This work package concentrates on end-user aspects. IoT enables tangible and ubiquitous interaction between people, objects, locations and services. The first focus is on transferring from graphical user interfaces to direct interaction with the real physical environment and its everyday objects. This kind of interaction has a significant potential in enabling easy-to-use services that intertwine into our everyday life. The second focus is on communicating to users the state of complex, distributed IoT systems and on efficient ways on controlling such systems.

WP 5 – Ecosystem

The main objective of the WP5 is to support Finnish firms in forming a successful IoT ecosystem by identifying their role in the ecosystem and developing suitable business models, and to support these firms in making informed decisions based on understanding the costs and benefits of available or upcoming IoT technical alternatives. Starting 2013 we will proceed with the analysis of the cost-efficiency and other properties of the platforms and standard protocols targeting IoT applications, the assessment of the current and emerging ecosystems and their properties, and the analysis of the business models and the roles of partner organizations in the emerging ecosystems.

WP 6 – Trials and Demos

The purpose of WP6 is to link IoT technology research and development and the business domains needing and utilizing IoT: WP6 links research and development to innovation. Trials and demos are the means to achieve this. In the trials, or verticals, we extract requirements from real-life IoT application domains, so that the requirements can be used in technical WPs to find the common denominators and needs and thus guide the planning; when the technical WPs produce solutions they are experimented and tested in the trials to give further feedback for research and development and to verify or falsify the assumptions made. Thus this WP is an important part of the iterative development process.

XWP – Cross Issues

The main objective is to address overall issues in IoT environments that are common to many work packages, or that would not fit into the specific goals of any single work package, but are vital for the overall environment.  Security, privacy and trust (SPT) issues are relevant for many work packages and are handled by them from a certain angle. The same holds for the energy issues and standardization.  Overall architecture issues are related with standardization, but reach beyond individual standards.  XWP will follow the SPT work and also look into the architectural, standardization and energy efficiency issues and follow the relevant work in the individual work packages and outside the project.  Based on these activities maintains awareness of these issues inside the project. Overview deliverables will be produced for the three tasks corresponding to the above issues.