# A Comprehensive Review on Network Protocol Design for Autonomic Internet of Things
###### Abstract  
The autonomic Internet of Things is the creation of self-management capability in the Internet of Things system by embedding some autonomic properties, with the goal of freeing humans from all detail of the operation and management of the system. At same time, this provides a system to always operate on the best performance. This paper presents a review of the recent studies related to the design of network communication protocol, which can support autonomic Internet of Things. Many of the studies come from the research and development in Wireless Sensor Network protocols, as it becomes one of the key technologies for the Internet of Things. The identified autonomic properties are self-organization, self-optimization, and self-protection. We review some protocols with the objective of energy consumption reduction and energy harvesting awareness, as it can support the self-energy-awareness property. As the result, the protocol designs are mapped according to each autonomic property supported, including protocols for MAC layer, protocols for clustering, protocols for routing, and protocols for security. This can be used to map the advances of communication protocol research for the autonomic Internet of Things and to identify the opportunities for future research.  
Internet of Things; autonomic computing; protocol design; self-organization; self-optimization; self-energy-awareness; self-protection +
Footnote †: journal: Information  
the safety and the quality of information are important. It will be related to some aspects of security, privacy, and trust. These challenges urge more research and development in IoT.  
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is one of the key technologies for IoT implementation. Research and development in IoT are progressing from the research and development in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET), but still have some specific differences. Compared to WSN and MANET, IoT has a wider scope that includes the device, the communication infrastructure, and the cloud. IoT applications are more diverse. They are different from the WSN and MANET applications, which are domain specific. IoT always involves the internet (IP based network) as the point of interest, so that it often requires multiple network interfaces on the gateway side. IoT also tends to use the existing standard of communication technology infrastructure, which is already available for the internet network.  
Recent research and development of IoT seek answers for the challenges faced by the IoT network through the design and the algorithm of the communication protocols. Various protocol designs were proposed to establish an intelligent system. Some of them are inspired by natural and biological systems, that can make the system self-manage the complexity based on the objectives and the rules set by humans. These protocols embedded the autonomic property into the system for various tasks and activities, such as network adaptation, network organization, energy management, network optimization, and network protection.  
This paper presents a review of the studies related to the design of the network communication protocol which can support the autonomic IoT. The discussion is organized into five sections. Section 1 gives the introduction to the topic. Section 2 explains characteristics of an autonomic IoT system. Section 3 reviews the protocol designs from various research that can support the autonomic property of the IoT system. Section 4 discusses the identification of the protocol designs related to the implementation layer and the autonomic property supported. Section 5 provides the conclusion and the identification for future research opportunity.