The Next Generation of Connected Devices Needs a Different Approach to Connectivity
Rethinking connectivity for a world of billions of intelligent devices.
For decades, the connected world has been built around a relatively small number of familiar technologies. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transformed the way devices connect, making wireless connectivity inexpensive, accessible and almost ubiquitous. They enabled enormous markets and will continue to play an important role in the connected world.
However, many of the systems now being connected look very different from the consumer applications around which these technologies became established. Smart buildings, smart cities, industrial systems and smart metering increasingly depend on large populations of devices that may need to operate reliably for years, often in difficult environments and with limited access to power.
For these applications, getting a device connected is only part of the problem. Range, reliability, energy consumption, security, network capacity and the amount of infrastructure required to support the network can all have a direct impact on whether a deployment makes economic sense.
A battery-powered sensor installed deep inside a commercial building has very different requirements from a laptop connected to a home router. A utility meter expected to remain operational for a decade presents a different problem from a wearable device. An industrial network containing thousands of sensors cannot necessarily be designed around the same assumptions as a consumer network.
As the applications change, our assumptions about connectivity need to change with them.
Connectivity is becoming an architectural decision
Connectivity has often been treated primarily as a component choice: select a radio and protocol that meet the specification, integrate them into the product and provide a path to the network.
For the next generation of commercial and industrial systems, that decision increasingly needs to be made in the context of the complete system. The energy consumed by communications affects battery life. Radio range affects the number of gateways or access points required. Network capacity affects how many devices can be deployed. Reliability affects maintenance and service requirements, while the amount of information transmitted can affect everything from network loading to cloud processing and storage costs.
These factors are interconnected, which means the economics of connectivity cannot always be understood simply by looking at the cost or performance of the radio itself. A more expensive device that eliminates infrastructure, reduces maintenance or extends battery life may result in a substantially less expensive system.
This is one reason purpose-built connectivity technologies are becoming increasingly interesting.
Connectivity designed for a different problem
NR+ by DECT Forum is a good example. It is a non-cellular 5G radio technology designed specifically for large-scale IoT networks, with characteristics including long range, low power consumption, large network capacity and resilient communications. It can operate in spectrum specifically allocated for DECT technologies, rather than relying on the shared ISM bands used by many other wireless technologies.
This avoids the congestion associated with the heavily used 2.4 GHz band, while also providing a more consistent regulatory environment than sub-GHz ISM technologies can experience across different regions. For example, the spectrum and operating rules available around 915 MHz in the United States can permit significantly greater network capacity than the more constrained 868 MHz allocations available in Europe. The result is that a system using the same sub-GHz ISM technology can offer quite different performance characteristics depending on where in the world it is deployed.
Those characteristics matter when the objective is to connect thousands of devices across a building, factory, utility network or city rather than a collection of consumer products within a home.
Consider a large commercial building containing sensors and control devices across multiple floors, plant rooms, basements and external areas. The cost of connecting those devices is not simply the cost of putting a radio into each sensor. Gateways, installation, power, cabling, commissioning and ongoing maintenance all contribute to the economics of the network. A connectivity technology that changes the amount of supporting infrastructure required can therefore change the economics of the entire deployment.
The same principle applies across industrial, municipal and utility networks. Connectivity needs to be evaluated as a system rather than simply as a bill-of-materials item.
Intelligence changes the equation again
At the same time, connected devices themselves are becoming more capable. Sensors are generating increasing quantities of information, while advances in edge processing make it practical to analyse more of that information locally.
This creates an important relationship between intelligence and connectivity. A device that can determine locally whether something significant has happened does not necessarily need to transmit everything it observes. Instead of continuously sending raw sensor data to the cloud for analysis, it can process that information at the edge and communicate the useful result.
That can reduce radio activity and therefore power consumption, while also reducing network traffic, cloud processing and storage requirements. In applications such as monitoring and detection, local intelligence can also help eliminate irrelevant information or false positives before they ever enter the network.
Edge intelligence therefore has implications beyond the application running on the device. It can change how the communications system itself is designed.
Moving the information that matters
Much of the history of connectivity has been about moving increasing quantities of data at increasing speeds. That remains important, particularly for consumer and high-bandwidth applications, but it is not necessarily the defining requirement for billions of devices being deployed throughout the physical infrastructure around us.
For many of those devices, the more useful objective is to move the right information, reliably, when it matters. Achieving that will require more than a new wireless technology. Some connections will be wireless and others wired. Sensors will become more capable of understanding their surroundings, while local intelligence will increasingly determine what information needs to be communicated at all.
The result is a broader view of connectivity in which communications, sensing and intelligence increasingly become parts of the same system architecture.