The Five Most Popular Operating Systems For The Internet Of Things

Connecting every ‘thing’ that we see around us to the Internet is the fundamental idea of the Internet of Things (IoT). There are many operating systems to get the best out of the things that are connected to the Internet. This article explores four popular operating systems for IoT — Ubuntu Core, RIOT, Contiki and TinyOS.

- Dr K.S. Kuppusamy

To say that life is running on the Internet these days is not an exaggeration due to the number and variety of services that we consume on the Net. These services span multiple domains such as information, financial services, social networking and entertainment. As this list grows longer, it becomes imperative that we do not restrict the types of devices that can connect to the Internet. The Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates connecting various types of ‘things’ to the Internet infrastructure. By connecting a device or thing to the Internet, these things get the ability to not only interact with the user but also between themselves. This feature of a variety of things interacting among themselves to assist users in a pervasive manner constitutes an interesting phenomenon called ambient intelligence.

IoT is becoming increasingly popular as the types of devices that can be connected to it are becoming more diverse. The nature of applications is also evolving. Some of the popular domains in which IoT is getting used increasingly are listed below

Smart homes

Smart cities

Smart agriculture

Connected automobiles

Smart shopping

Connected health

As the application domains become diverse, the need to manage the IoT infrastructure efficiently is also becoming more important. The operating systems in normal computers perform the primary functions such as resource management, user interaction, etc. The requirements of IoT operating systems are specialised due to the nature and size of the devices involved in the process. Some of the important characteristics/requirements of IoT operating systems are listed below

A tiny memory footprint

Energy efficiency

Connectivity features

Hardware-agnostic operations

Real-time processing requirements

Security requirements

Application development ecosystem