Top Internet of Things Research Frontiers of the Leaders

Top Internet of Things Research Frontiers of the Leaders

Over the past years, the Internet has redefined Business to Business (B2B) industries. The evolution of technology will dramatically alter manufacturing, energy, agriculture, transportation and other industrial sectors of the economy. It is already transforming how people work through new interactions between humans and machines. Dubbed the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), this latest wave of technological change will bring opportunities, along with many risks, to business and society. Universities are already challenged to adopt a new way of penetrating the market and researching the latest trends, that is why I think is important to know what are the top Internet of Things research frontiers topics at this moment and how companies can leverage them.

IoT Research Topics Overview

In March 2014, five big companies cofounded the Industrial Internet Consortium. As it is specified on IIConsortium website, the main objective of this entity is to bring together the organizations and technologies necessary to accelerate the growth of the Industrial Internet by identifying, assembling and promoting best practices. Membership includes small and large technology innovators, vertical market leaders, IoT researchers and top AI leaders, universities and government organizations.

From my perspective, it is imperative that in this relatively young research field there are involved not only companies but IoT researchers, leaders and universities too because, all these entities, working together, are the primary drivers of innovation and evolution.

As businesses are trying to leverage every opportunity regarding IoT by trying to find ways to partner with top universities and research centers, here is a list of the Top 20 co-occurring topics of the Top 500 Internet of Things Authors in the academic field. This gives an idea of the IoT research frontiers of the leaders.

Almost one in three IoT researchers are interested in cloud computing and wireless sensor networks. Only one in 13 are interested in mobile computing, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning; one in 14 – in Cybersecurity and even less, one in 20 are interested in smart cities (this data represents explicit interests expressed via keywords used within the published research to date of the top500 researchers & leaders in IOT). 

Top Internet of Things Research Frontiers Topics

Research interests of World’s Top 500 IoT Scholars.

1. wireless sensor networks 30%
2. cloud computing 27%
3. big data 12%
4. ubiquitous computing 12%
5. distributed systems 10%
6. cyber physical systems 9%
7. pervasive computing 8%
8. embedded systems 8%
9. mobile computing 8%
10. artificial intelligence 8%
11. machine learning 8%
12. security 7%
13. semantic web 7%
14. network security 6%
15. sensor networks 6%
16. wireless networks 6%
17. rfid 6%
18. smart cities 5%

The statistics and the image were provided by Paul X McCarthy, Co-founder and CEO of League of Scholars.
The tool ranks scholars around the world not simply on their citations or H-Index but also by a new proprietary ranking that takes into account a range of quality and relevance factors such as the impact factor and influence of the venue, industry collaboration and public engagement via high profile media.

Using the Leagues of Scholars’ algorithm, we are planning to publish in the next weeks Top Cybersecurity and Top Industrial Automation Research Institutions and also Top Researchers in the same fields.

Check out the lists of industrial IoT companies and startups present at Web Summit 2021 and the startups we spotted at Web Summit this year, focused on clean energy and renewable energy.