Architecture
Tier 1 of the IIoT architecture consists of networked things, typically
sensors and actuators, from the IIoT equipment, which use protocols such
as Modbus, Zigbee, or proprietary protocols, to connect to an Edge
Gateway. Tier 2 includes sensor data aggregation systems called Edge
Gateways that provide functionality, such as pre-processing of the data,
securing connectivity to cloud, using systems such as WebSockets, the
event hub, and, even in some cases, edge analytics or fog computing.
Tier 3 includes the cloud application built for IIoT using the
microservices architecture, which are usually polyglot and inherently
secure in nature using HTTPS/OAuth. Tier 3 also includes storage of
sensor data using various database systems, such as time series
databases or asset stores using backend data storage systems such as
Cassandra or Postgres. In addition to the data storage, we analyze the
data using various analytics, predictive or threshold-based or
regression-based, to get more insights on the IIoT equipment.
Building on the Internet of things, the web of things is an architecture
for the application layer of the Internet of things looking at the
convergence of data from IoT devices into Web applications to create
innovative use-cases. In order to program and control the flow of
information in the Internet of things, a predicted architectural
direction is being called BPM Everywhere which is a blending of
traditional process management with process mining and special
capabilities to automate the control of large numbers of coordinated
devices.
The Internet of things requires huge scalability in the network space to
handle the surge of devices. IETF 6LoWPAN would be used to connect
devices to IP networks. With billions of devices being added to the
Internet space, IPv6 will play a major role in handling the network
layer scalability. IETF’s Constrained Application Protocol, ZeroMQ, and
MQTT would provide lightweight data transport.