2. Architecture of IoT

2.1. Three- and Five-Layer Architectures

The most basic architecture is a three-layer architecture as shown in Figure 1. It was introduced in the early stages of research in this area. It has three layers, namely, the perception, network, and application layers.

(i)The perception layer is the physical layer, which has sensors for sensing and gathering information about the environment. It senses some physical parameters or identifies other smart objects in the environment
(ii)The network layer is responsible for connecting to other smart things, network devices, and servers. Its features are also used for transmitting and processing sensor data.
(iii)The application layer is responsible for delivering application specific services to the user. It defines various applications in which the Internet of Things can be deployed, for example, smart homes, smart cities, and smart health.


Figure 1 

Architecture of IoT (A: three layers) (B: five layers).


The three-layer architecture defines the main idea of the Internet of Things, but it is not sufficient for research on IoT because research often focuses on finer aspects of the Internet of Things. That is why, we have many more layered architectures proposed in the literature. One is the five-layer architecture, which additionally includes the processing and business layers. The five layers are perception, transport, processing, application, and business layers (see Figure 1). The role of the perception and application layers is the same as the architecture with three layers. We outline the function of the remaining three layers.

(i)The transport layer transfers the sensor data from the perception layer to the processing layer and vice versa through networks such as wireless, 3G, LAN, Bluetooth, RFID, and NFC.
(ii)The processing layer is also known as the middleware layer. It stores, analyzes, and processes huge amounts of data that comes from the transport layer. It can manage and provide a diverse set of services to the lower layers. It employs many technologies such as databases, cloud computing, and big data processing modules.
(iii)The business layer manages the whole IoT system, including applications, business and profit models, and users' privacy. The business layer is out of the scope of this paper. Hence, we do not discuss it further.

Another architecture proposed by Ning and Wang is inspired by the layers of processing in the human brain. It is inspired by the intelligence and ability of human beings to think, feel, remember, make decisions, and react to the physical environment. It is constituted of three parts. First is the human brain, which is analogous to the processing and data management unit or the data center. Second is the spinal cord, which is analogous to the distributed network of data processing nodes and smart gateways. Third is the network of nerves, which corresponds to the networking components and sensors.