"To assist with this understanding, NIST mapped out five Network of Things (NoT) primitives.4
NoT is a term that applies to both cyber-physical systems and the IoT. The five NIST primitives of all NoT systems include:
sensor (something that measures physical properties),
aggregator (software to transform data from a sensor),
communication channel (data transmission, such as wired or wireless),
e-Utility (software or hardware to execute processes, such as a database), and
decision trigger (produces the final result, such as an output signal to an actuator).
These five primitives define the “Logo-like” building blocks used by any IoT-based system. The primitives are the Ts. The easiest way to think about this is that the “things” are what make up the IoT. That might offer a partial hint into IoT metrology. So, we will explore what metrics and measures we can offer related to these five classes of “things” as well as to their interactions given an IoT architecture (system) operating in real time."