**1. Overview of IoT**

In recent decades, due to the developments in wireless and computer technologies, processors and sensors have been embedded into a lot of objects, which are used in our life. To build and design a real smart environment, these advancements are supported by huge developments in many research and industrial areas such as ubiquitous computing, wireless mobile communications, portable appliances and devices, wireless sensor networking, machine learning-based decision-making, agent technologies, IPv6 support, and human computer interfaces. A smart environment has sensor-enabled devices working collaboratively to build a small connected world for making the lives of people more comfortable and adaptable. The term smart refers to

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

the ability to autonomously obtain and apply knowledge, and the term environment refers to the surroundings. Therefore, a smart environment can be adapted by obtaining knowledge and applying it according to its users' requirements to improve their experience of that environment. In addition, the interconnection among different smart objects can enhance their functional capabilities [1]. In this context, IPv6 plays a vital role because of several features, including scalability in the case of billions of connected devices, better security mechanisms, and the elimination of network address translation (NAT) barriers. The "Internet of Things" (IoT) concept was first coined by Kevin Ashton, where smart objects are connected with the Internet.

**2. Challenges of IoT**

ficulty in the adoption of the IoT paradigm [3].

**Figure 2.** IoT communication technologies [7].

There are many open challenges that have been described by various researchers including those related to power supply, enabling a complex sensing environment, evolving architecture, multiple connectivity options, complexity of IoT, security of information exchange within IoT, and privacy [4–6]. Due to the lack of a clear and widely accepted business model that can engage investments to encourage the deployment of these technologies, there is dif-

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To a certain extent, the above-mentioned challenges can be met, with the aid of a variety of wireless and wired connectivity options, such as radio frequency identification (RFID), near-field communication (NFC), Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi. These connectivity options are categorized into three broad types considering their geographical area coverage, that is, personal area network (PAN), local area network (LAN), and wide area network (WAN) [7]. **Figure 2** shows this categorization. The existing Wi-Fi networks should be modified to attain a wider coverage and to support mesh networks [8]. In addition, the confirmation on communication pathway of IoT is very important to understand the information exchange within IoT. It uses various standards, techniques, and protocols to disseminate information. It is essential to support device-to-device (D2D), device-to-server (D2S), and server-to-server communications (S2S) to facilitate information sharing within the IoT [7, 9]. There are multiple standards and protocols involved with IoT communication. Some of these standards and

Nowadays, IoT is receiving attention in many fields such as transport, agriculture, industry, and healthcare [2, 3]. Cisco reports that 50 billion devices and objects will be connected to the Internet by 2020. Also, the Internet of Things (IoT) will contribute \$117 billion to the IoT-based healthcare industry and \$1.9 trillion to the global economy according to Gartner and Forbes. In addition, according to Automotive News, the number of cars connected to the Internet worldwide will increase from 23 million in 2013 to 152 million in 2020. According to another report from Navigant Research, the number of installed smart meters around the world will grow to 1.1 billion by 2022. The prediction of such significant growth shows that IoT will become the umbrella of modern societies to realize the vision of smart environments. A lot of research efforts have been developed to integrate IoT with smart environments. To enable the user for monitoring the environment remotely or from remote sites, the integration of IoT with a smart environment is needed to extend the capabilities of smart objects. Based on the application requirements, IoT can be integrated with different smart environments. So, IoT-based smart environments can generally be classified into the following areas: (a) smart homes, (b) smart buildings, (c) smart cities, (d) smart grid, (e) smart health, (f) smart transportation, (g) smart industry, and (h) smart agriculture. **Figure 1** illustrates the IoT-based smart environments.

**Figure 1.** IoT-based smart environments.
