NTNU's Internet Of Things Laboratory at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology is dedicated to research and development of technologies supporting the engineering and deployment of systems based on the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things (IoT) combines embedded systems devices with existing network infrastructure. Applications based on this technology will play an ever increasing role and are likely to change both industry and society dramatically in the near future. The pervasive nature of their use demands not only functional correctness, robustness, safety, and efficiency of IoT systems but also close protection of their users, so that security and privacy are crucial.

A typical IoT system consists of a vast number of embedded devices and the cooperation between devices may change dynamically according to the current system state. Moreover, many of them will be small and based on limited battery power. This requires novel approaches for realizing the systems:

• Traditional communication protocols are often too heavyweight and not flexible enough to handle the communication of IoT systems efficiently. Evidence of this is the emergence of new protocols like MQTT and CoAP, which allow more lightweight communication.
• Today's authentication-based security mechanisms do not seem suited to the modular and dynamic nature of IoT systems, while many encryption mechanisms will overstress the energy limitations of many embedded devices.
• Most current engineering techniques are not optimal for the development of functionally correct, secure, safe, robust, efficient, and energy preserving IoT systems because they do not offer means to handle the complexity caused by the plethora of parallel and dynamically changing behaviour occurring in a system.

The goal of the lab is to research and develop technologies supporting the practical usability of embedded computing devices in existing and future network infrastructures in everyday life. In particular, the lab will research methods to solve the above-mentioned shortcomings with respect to networks, security, and engineering. A goal of the lab is to develop test-beds and experimental facilities, demonstrating the effects of ubiquitous IoT technology.