# A Review on Internet of Things for Defense and Public Safety
## 6 Main Challenges and Technical Limitations  
There are significant challenges in the development and deployment of existing and planned military IoT systems. Nowadays, only a small number of military systems leverage the full advantages of IoT. Ongoing NATO Research Task Group (RTG) 'Military Applications of Internet of Things'(IST-147) is examining a number of critical issues identified by the recommendations from two previous exploratory team activities: IST-ET-076, 'Internet of Military Things' which examined topics relevant to the application of IoT technologies, and IST-ET-075, 'Integration of Sensors and Communication Networks', which addressed networking issues. The deployment of IoT-related technologies is in segregated vertical stovepipes making it difficult to secure them, and limiting the ability to communicate across systems and generate synergies from different data sources. Main defense concerns include the dependence of manual entry, the limited processing of data, the lack of automation, and the fragmented IT architecture [168]. Furthermore, nowadays the military does not have sufficient network connectivity on the battlefield to support broader IoT deployment. It will require key investments in several technical enablers according to its information value loop [33]. The roadmap for near-future research and technology developments is depicted in Table 2. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{p{142.3 pt} p{142.3 pt}} \hline \hline
**Research** & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Timeframe 2016–2020**} \\ \hline \multirow{7}{*}{Identifification} & • Identity management & \\  & • Open framework for the IoT & \\  & • Soft Identities & \\  & • Semantics & \\  & • DNA identifiers & \\  & • Convergence of IP and IDs and addressing scheme: unique or multiple IDs & \\  & • Extend the ID concept (more than ID number) & \\  & • Electro Magnetic Identification (EMID) & \\  & • Multi methods, one ID & \\ \hline \multirow{7}{*}{Architecture} & • Network of networks architectures & \\  & • Adaptive and context based architectures & \\  & • Self-managing properties (they include self-configuring, self-healing, & \\  & self-optimizing, self-protecting, self-awareness, self-adaptation, self-evolving and self-anticipating) & \\  & • Cognitive and experimental architectures & \\  & • Code in tags to be executed in the tag or in trusted readers with global applications, adaptive coverage, & \\  & universal authentication of objects, recovery of tags following power loss, more memory, less energy & \\  & consumption, 3-D real time location/position embedded systems & \\  & • Cooperative position cyber-physical systems & \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Infrastructure} & • Cross domain application deployment & \\  & • Integrated IoT, multi-application and multi-provider infrastructures & \\  & • General purpose IoT: global discovery mechanism & \\ \hline \multirow{7}{*}{Applications} & • IoT device with strong processing and analytics capabilities & \\  & • Handling heterogeneous high capability data collection and processing & \\  & • Application domain-independent abstractions and functionality & \\  & • Cross-domain integration and management & \\  & • Context-aware adaptation of operation & \\  & • Standardization of APIs & \\  & • Mobile applications with bio-IoT-human interaction & \\ \hline \multirow{7}{*}{Communications} & • Wide spectrum and spectrum aware protocols & \\  & • Ultra-low power system on chip, multi-protocol chips & \\  & • Multi-functional reconfigurable chips & \\  & • On-chip antennas & \\  & • On-chip networks and multi-standard RF architectures & \\ \cline{1-1}  & Seamless networks & \\ \cline{1-1}  & • Gateway convergence & \\ \cline{1-1}  & • Hybrid network technologies convergence & \\ \cline{1-1}  & • 5G developments & \\ \cline{1-1}  & • Collision-resistant algorithms & \\ \cline{1-1}  & • Plug-and-play tags, self-repairing tags & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Roadmap for technologies and ongoing research.