A Survey on the Internet of Things Patterns and Their Classification Schemes

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) patterns are the best practices used to solve common recurring problems in the IoT paradigm. Due to its scope and magnitude, the IoT consists of many patterns which are used by IoT practitioners to design and build ubiquitous smart objects for various IoT use cases. At the moment, finding appropriate classification schemes for these patterns is still an obstacle encountered by many IoT architects and practitioners. Existing classification schemes are either arbitrary, incomplete, or use overlapping categorisation domains. This paper conducts a survey on some of the known IoT patterns and their classification schemes, and systematically review the literature to show commonalities and prime focus areas in the IoT pattern literature. A shift in focus towards using a collaborative IoT pattern language and an ontology to organise the IoT patterns is recommended.