Understanding IoT Systems: A Life Cycle Approach

TLDR

IoT systems are complex because of distributed services across many devices, and system requirements for various application domains remain poorly defined, making the life‑cycle view useful for deriving stakeholder‑specific requirements. The study employs the life‑cycle view to understand IoT systems across different application domains. The authors propose a generic life‑cycle model for IoT, derived from observations of existing solutions and generalized to include key functionalities and quality attributes. Such a generic life‑cycle model for IoT was previously non‑existent.

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) systems and the corresponding network architectures are complex due to distributed services on many IoT devices collaboratively fulfilling common goals of IoT applications. System requirements for different types of IoT application domains are still not well-established. The life cycle view is one of the views used for system architecting, showing different stakeholders’ concerns at every stage of the life cycle to derive system requirements. We employ the life cycle view to understand IoT systems in different IoT application domains. Our contribution is the definition of a generic life cycle model for IoT, which is specified by observations on life cycles of existing IoT solutions and generalizations taking into account important IoT functionalities and quality attributes. Such generic life cycle model for IoT was non-existent.