Systematic methods for organising patterns for the internet of things: A preliminary exploration

Most popular industry verticals such as smart health, smart mining, smart agriculture, etc. fail to map clearly the solution patterns used in the Internet of Things (IoT). This causes a disconnection in our understanding of the implementation approaches and solutions used in the IoT paradigm. Nonetheless, there is another way of subdividing this space - decoding the building blocks of the IoT architectures, with a focus on common components and patterns for interoperability. The IoT presents us with several design challenges at all architectural levels. This ranges from the overall architecture at the highest level to device connectivity at the lowest level. In this complex design, it is easy to get lost in the forest of the latest IoT offerings without understanding the underlying solution patterns. In this study, we have mapped several IoT architectural patterns, spanning several industry verticals, by analysing the literature that report on real-world IoT implementations to identify common, recurring solution patterns. In the spirit of the Gang-of-Four(1) and Christopher Alexander's pattern language, as well as some recent advances in the IoT space, we have identified some systematic methods which are used to organise the IoT patterns. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.