Connectivity Q&A: IoT Networks Standards Explained

事情互联网（物联网）已经在新闻中已经在新闻中几年了，但今天我们在无线电灯泡的帮助下看到了大量的采用率，沟通回声点，连接的恒温器，前门锁，门铃等。市场attatista公司正在投影75.44 billion IoT devicesworldwide by 2025 – a fivefold increase over a ten-year period. Applications span across all industries, including Industry 4.0, otherwise known as Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In this blog post, Tony Testa will provide insight into the IoT landscape, outlining the way in which this market fits and communicates in the wireless world around us.

Tony, what is considered an IoT or smart device?

A smart or IoT device has the capability of connecting to the internet in any way. These devices are also integrated with technology like sensors, functional software and supporting network connections and actuators.

IoT devices extend internet connectivity beyond desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. These devices are embedded with technology to communicate and interact over the internet. They make real-time decisions and interactions with sometimes little or no input from humans. These connected devices create an ecosystem in which every apparatus talks to each other to automate homes, business, and the world around us.

什么技术和市场是IOT智能设备推进？

IoT applications requiring global or mobile coverage will mainly focus on cellular technologies like LTE, NB-IoT and 5G. Others rely on low-power wireless access network (WAN) technologies in unlicensed bands like Sigfox or LoRaWAN (long range WAN). Most will use short-range or midrange wireless technologies with varying data throughput capabilities such as Bluetooth^®，Wi-Fi，ZigBee，线程，超宽带等。

Several factors are influencing market growth, such as the growing importance and use of home monitoring, the growing need for energy-saving low carbon emission solutions, and the expansion of smart home products, to name a few.

虽然COVID-19流行影响on the growth of IoT smart devices in the industry, mostly because of some production slowdown, it has also provided a springboard for some unique new applications. For example, the increase in healthcare remote monitoring, social distance location measuring, and location of essential COVID supplies. Moreover, massive increases occurred in voice/video traffic using Wi-Fi based upon work-from-home (WFH) requirements due to the COVID pandemic. Overall, IoT has gained popularity by connecting products, services, and end-users, enabling smooth data flow and the making of real-time decisions. It has proven its enhancements in efficiency, quality, and consistency of automation systems. Several large, medium, and small-scale global companies are making large investments in deployments in IoT infrastructure. With most of the businesses shifting their traditional processes toward IoT, it is expected to reach many application areas in manufacturing, lighting, HVAC, security, healthcare, and entertainment.

Can you provide some insight into how IoT edge computing works?

For some time now there has been the demand for more capacity and intelligence with our wireless networks. Because of the digital transformation there has been a new IT infrastructure paradigm where capacity, computing, connectivity, and cloud computing technologies are moving closer to the device. Thus, moving closer to the edge of the network – or edge computing.

What are the technology standards used in the IoT network?

IOT广泛多样化，多方面，但没有一种尺寸适合。每个通信解决方案都有其基于应用的优点和缺点。

For example, Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) provide long-range communication on small, inexpensive batteries that last for years. These technologies are built to support large-scale IoT networks reaching vast industrial and commercial campuses. LPWAN connects all types of IoT sensors enabling many applications from remote monitoring, smart metering, building controls, etc. LPWANs are optimized for sending small blocks of data at low data rates, thus are best suited for use cases that don’t require high bandwidth and are not time sensitive.

Cellular networks are not viable for the majority of IoT applications powered by battery-operated sensors. These networks fit well in applications like connected cars, or fleet management in transportation and logistics. Next generation 5G with high-speed mobility support and ultra-low latency is positioned to be the future of autonomous vehicles and augmented reality. 5G and future 6G are also expected to enable real-time video surveillance for public safety, and real time mobile delivery.

ZigBee，螺纹和Z波是短程，通常部署在网状网络中的低功耗无线标准，通过在多个传感器节点上迁移传感器数据来扩展覆盖范围。这些标准具有比LPWAN更高的数据速率，并且具有更高的功率效率。遥控器，照明，家庭监控/传感器，远程锁和远程百叶窗等应用非常适合该技术。他们还为家庭和商业自动化提供了Wi-Fi网状网络 - 通过简化多个系统的网状网络并利用Wi-Fi基础架构的回程启用。

Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy are also short-range communication technologies, which are well positioned for the consumer IoT marketplace. Bluetooth was optimized to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to reduce power consumption to meet the needs of consumer IoT applications. Today BLE is widely used in wearables, smartphones, door locks and health monitoring. Bluetooth Mesh, a newer Bluetooth technology, is a spin-off from existing BLE that is more scalable especially in retail for BLE beacon networks, in-store navigation, and content monitoring.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a technology that uses small amounts of data from an RFID tag to a wireless reader close by. These are heavily used in stock and production planning applications as well as for optimization of business supply chain management. This technology is helping enable and create new IoT applications like smart shelves, self-checkout, and other general retail services.

最后，Wi-Fi全部众所周知，为智能家居和智能商业环境提供高吞吐量数据传输，用于连接智能家用电器，安全摄像头和其他家庭小工具。最新几代Wi-Fi等6和6e正在进一步提高数据吞吐量。Wi-Fi6 / 6e通过每个房间的POD建立潜在的智能家庭连接，允许具有完整家庭覆盖的云的强大回程，同时在其每个节点中的其他本地范围技术进行衬垫 - 提供连接网格。它正在转变游戏，零售，娱乐，企业的用户体验，并很快进入InfoTainment和车载诊断的汽车网络。

Coexistence amongst these systems causes difficult RF and design challenges. To increase multi-standard coexistence, the industry continues to look for ways and implementations to simplify the end user conglomeration of devices into a common ecosystem. Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) led by Amazon, Apple, and Google, aims to deliver specifications and open source code enabling interoperability across multiple ecosystems/technology platforms. This initiative targets one of the longstanding concerns of complexity and multiple protocols in the smart home by simplifying the communication home network to provide easy plug-and-play for consumers.

Tony’s Final Thoughts

IoT is not just a buzzword, it is a key enabler of digital technology. It is already transforming many consumer and businesses including creating entirely new business models and job opportunities. Its pace of implementation is moving quickly, even with the many slowdowns caused by the COVID pandemic. Overall IoT is not a technology on its own, but rather is a compilation of many technologies enabling step-by-step changes throughout our lives. IoT will be a key extension of digital technology into the physical world we live in.

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