There has been much hype about the “Internet of Things”. The idea of a globally interconnected continuum of devices, objects and things in general emerged with the RFID technology, and this concept has considerably been extended to the current vision that envisages a plethora of heterogeneous objects interacting with the physical environment.
Today, a large number of different means are used to enable communication between heterogeneous devices. We see these as "Intranet of Things", representing vertical silos that do not support interoperability. However, this balkanisation of efforts will lead to a predictable slowdown in devising a viable global solution. Furthermore, existing solutions do not address the scalability requirements for a future Internet of Things, they provide inappropriate models of governance and fundamentally neglect privacy and security in their design.
IoT-A, the European Lighthouse Integrated Project addressing the Internet-of-Things Architecture, proposes the creation of an architectural reference model together with the definition of an initial set of key building blocks. Together they are envisioned as crucial foundations for fostering a future Internet of Things. Using an experimental paradigm, IoT-A will combine top-down reasoning about architectural principles and design guidelines with simulation and prototyping to explore the technical consequences of architectural design choices.