According to Satyam and Calzada, the internet of things (IoT) is at the foundation of the Smart concept. Sensors create data elements. Data generated by these sensors are converted to a suitable digital format that can be sent away to another system for processing and analyzing. IoT is a recent paradigm that envisions a near future, in which objects of everyday life will be equipped with microcontrollers, transceivers for digital communication and suitable protocol stacks that will make them able to communicate with one another and with the user, becoming an integral part of the internet. The IoT concept hence aims at making the internet even more immersive and pervasive.

Furthermore, by enabling easy access and interaction with a wide variety of devices such as home appliances, surveillance cameras, monitoring sensors, activators, displays, vehicles and so on, the IoT will foster the development of a number of applications that make use of the potentially enormous amounts and variety of data generated by such objects to provide new services to citizens, companies and public administrations. This paradigm finds applications in many different domains such as home automation, industrial automation, medical aids, mobile healthcare, elderly assistance, intelligent energy management, smart grids, automotive, traffic management and many others.