Comprehensive study of self-healing mechanisms in Internet of Things (IoT) Networks

The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to highly distributed, heterogeneous, and large-scale networks consisting of billions of resource-constrained devices. These networks are prone to frequent failures due to hardware faults, software bugs, energy depletion, dynamic topology changes, and security attacks. Manual maintenance and centralized fault management are impractical at this scale. Consequently, self-healing mechanisms have emerged as a critical capability for IoT systems, enabling them to automatically detect, diagnose, and recover from faults with minimal human intervention. This paper presents a comprehensive study of self-healing mechanisms in IoT, discussing fault types, architectural models, key enabling techniques, and recovery strategies. We also highlight current challenges and future research directions toward resilient, autonomous, and trustworthy IoT ecosystems.