Unified Architecture For Cross-Layer Application

Abstract

Modern Internet of Things (IoT) platforms are typically built as a chain of loosely coupled layers embedded hardware, device firmware, cloud-hosted software services, field-facing mobile applications, and, increasingly, an AI-driven visual analytics layer each engineered, released, and secured on its own schedule. This independence is manageable for a single application pattern, but it becomes a liability once a platform must support several distinct cross-layer application patterns for example, real-time visibility versus predictive condition monitoring each with different reporting cadence, retention, and reasoning requirements, and once an agentic visual-intelligence layer is added on top and needs trustworthy, cross-layer context to be useful rather than cosmetic. This paper proposes a unified cross-layer reference architecture for IoT platforms. We define five engineering layers: hardware, firmware, software services, mobile application, and agentic visual intelligence and three cross-cutting contracts that bind them: identity and tenancy, a unified telemetry/digital-twin data model, and security and observability. We instantiate the architecture against three representative cross-layer application patterns real-time asset visibility, predictive condition monitoring, and compliance/custody-chain tracking and discuss the engineering trade-offs power and compute asymmetry, end-to-end latency budgeting, and the autonomy-versus-governance tension introduced by agentic components that the unified design surfaces. The contribution is a reference architecture and a vocabulary for reasoning about cross-layer trade-offs, not a benchmarked implementation.