Powering the future Internet Of Things

An article by Dr. George Minassian, Co-founder and CEO of Crossbar, Inc., Aug. 03, 2016 – 

The internet of things (IoT) has the potential to drive applications worth trillions of dollars - from consumer wearables and household appliances, to industrial equipment and automobiles.

According to IDC, close to 30 billion devices may be part of the IoT ecosystem by 2020, generating as much as 40 zettabytes of cloud-based data.

Several factors are driving the rapid growth of IoT. Moore's law is still at work creating faster, smaller, cheaper devices. Other technological advancements like low power and lower cost communications that can interconnect tiny sensors with cloud-based applications enable new business models that harvest greater value from sharing information.

But there are obstacles. More connected devices means more data is created every second that is stored, processed, uploaded and shared. The abundance of sensors including temperature, pressure, direction, speed, weight, paces, heart beats, light intensity, etc. will generate a flood of information to transmit. And continuous wireless data transmission is a power-hungry operation requiring far too much energy for battery-powered applications.

Next generation IoT devices will be low-cost, highly integrated systems requiring specialized SoCs with more functions on chip. Most will need to run on a single battery charge for years, or even harvest energy from their environment. This is particularly critical in remote applications, such as smart sensors deployed across wide areas like cities, where regular battery changes would be impractical.

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