Building Blocks: Sensing, Actuating, and Communicating

This chapter reviews fundamental Internet of Things (IoT) building blocks—sensing, actuation, and communication technologies—assessing their relevance and viability for military applications. It surveys diverse sensing modalities (radio frequency, optical, acoustic, environmental, and medical) and actuator types/applications, including smart bases, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) support, as well as autonomous systems and unmanned aerial vehicle swarms. Key communication technologies are detailed, focusing on Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs), such as long-range wide-area network, various satellite communications (SATCOM) constellations, 5G capabilities, the JANUS underwater standard, and physical layer security techniques. Methods for describing (ontologies and SensorML) and discovering (multicast Domain Name System) IoT assets, as well as retrieving data (application programming interfaces and publish/subscribe protocols such as message queuing telemetry transport), are also discussed.