The impact of topology on internet of things : a multidisciplinary review

Abstract

The Internet of Things is an emerging new field in the scenario of modern telecommunications. It is expected that by 2020 it will consists of billions of things or objects connected through Bluetooth and wireless connections. This is a huge network consisting of nodes - as sensors, actuators, RFID tags, mobile phones etc.-interacting each other and cooperating to reach common goals. IoT is characterized by a large heterogeneity both of objects and connections. Despite this heterogeneity, different objects interact through their complex architecture of connections (topology). Topology plays a crucial role in main issues of IoT, like traffic, delay, scalability, power consumption, synchronization, error tolerance, automatic search of devices and malware diffusion. The theoretical background to study IoT spans different disciplines, from Engineering to Mathematics (Graph Theory), from Statistical Physics (in particular Complex Networks) to Social Sciences. This paper tries to review the existing literature from different scientific communities and provides main concepts from Graph Theory and Complex Networks to analyze the IoT topology and model its dynamics and evolution. © 2018 IEEE.