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Rethinking the Internet of Things

Apr. 29, 2015, Apr. 29, 2015 – 

As the Internet of Things (IoT) cements itself into place as the mandatory next big thing for 2015, more systems architects are taking a hard look at its underlying concepts. As they look, these experts are asking some hard questions about simplistic views of the IoT structure: the clouds of sensors and actuators attached to simple, low-power wireless hubs, linked through the Internet to massive cloud data centers.

Almost every stage of this description is coming into question. Some experts challenge then notion that a swarm of simple sensors is the right way to measure the state of a system in the first place. Others question the idea of a dumb, inexpensive hub. Network architects are asking about the role of traditional Internet switches, and even the Internet Protocol (IP) itself, in the IoT picture. And data-center architects are taking a hard look at the implications of the IoT for concepts they are exploring: both virtualization and application-specific data centers.

We are a long way from consensus. But the answers that are emerging from these questions could profoundly alter sensing technology, the structure of data centers down to the hardware level, and even the Internet.

Sensible Sensing

Let?s start with the sensor question. The obvious way to measure the state of a system is to identify the state variables, find points at which they are exposed so sensors can measure them, and put sensors there. Then pull the sensor data together at a hub. But the obvious way is not necessarily the best way. All those sensors and links make such an approach expensive to install and inherently unreliable.

Another way is to pick a few critical variables that can be sensed remotely and then used to estimate the state of the entire system. This process may be intuitively obvious, or it may involve some serious mathematics and use of a state estimator such as a Kalman filter. One example on the more intuitive side involves security cameras, traffic, parking, and the idea of the smart city.

A typical smart-city scenario might involve lighting management, parking management, traffic control, and security. A traditional IoT approach would put a light sensor on each street lamp, buried proximity sensors in traffic lanes near each intersection and each parking space, and security cameras at strategic locations well above ground level. Each of these sensors would have a wired connection to a local hub, which in turn would have a wireless link to an Internet access point?except for the light sensors, which would use wireless links from the tops of the lamp posts to their hubs.

Just the installation costs of this system are enough to keep most municipalities from even trying it. But the continuing maintenance costs for the buried sensors, long runs of buried wire, and all those radios could be even worse.

There is another way. An intelligent observer, watching the video from a few of the security cameras, would easily see which street lamps were on, which parking spaces were occupied, and when traffic signals should change. Accordingly, system vendors like SensitySystems, using video analytics algorithms from Eutecus, have been substituting a few high-definition cameras for the whole collection of other sensors, hubs, and wireless links. The result is not only huge savings in total cost of ownership, but improved reliability and additional safety and security features that would not have been available from a swarm of simple sensors


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