Uncertainty propagation in the internet of things

The Internet of Things (IoT) detects context through sensors capturing data from dynamic physical environments, in order to inform automation decisions within cyber physical systems (CPS). Diverse types of uncertainty in the IoT pipeline can propagate within and across nodes, involving complex interactions with security, privacy, and trust that remain largely unexplored. This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the types of uncertainties in IoT and how they propagate within IoT nodes and networks. We consider adversarial uncertainty in the context of distributed IoT networks to capture perturbations due to malicious actors in the network that can influence IoT security, privacy and trust. We examine the propagation of adversarial uncertainty and well-known uncertainty types, namely aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty, within the five distinct stages of sensing, communication, storage, processing and decision-making in an IoT pipeline, across network layer boundaries, and across nodes within an IoT network. Using this mapping, we analyse the interactions between the uncertainty types and their propagation, and security, privacy, and trust in IoT. Based on this analysis, we discuss guidelines and considerations for mitigating uncertainty in IoT through a smart grid use case study.