ns RFID tags for facilitating routing, inventorying, and loss prevention Supply-Chain Helpers Source: SRI Consulting Business Intelligence Figure 3-8. Roadmap of the future of the Internet of Things As can be seen in Figure 3-8, Supply Chain management and inventory applications have already started using IoT to manage their products using RFID-based solutions. What is interesting in this roadmap is that positioning applications are about to get more traction toward the middle of this decade. But the real growth of IoT will come when teleoperation and the telepresence of objects become enabled as it would mean decisions on the following: How the objects would access the Internet: Would they directly access the Internet or would they talk to a local information collector that would bridge the Internet? What would be the power consumption of the objects? What would be the form factor of such objects? What kind of data would need to be transmitted and received? How often would such data transmission need to happen? Would the objects communicate directly to other objects or people also? What would be the protocol followed in such communications? Would there be only data communicated or some form of voice communication also posited? What would be the number of such objects on the network? What is the cost of failure to the objects and to the applications? CHAPTER 3 DEPLOYMENT CHALLENGES IN EVOLVING 4G We will address these questions later in this section in the context of their impact on 4G for such Internet of Things. Also, we will define the traffic profile for the IoT in that same discussion. The following section will focus more on the top impediments to the IoT as of now so you get an idea as to the state of practice of the IoT. Top Challenges for Internet of Things Standardization Standardization has been identified as one of the key challenges facing a larger adoption of the IoT by a ITU-T report on this in 2007, and it is still one the major concerns in further development of the IoT. Even a recent consortium 