Internet of Things and M2M Communication Technologies: Architecture and Practical Design Approach to IoT in Industry 4.0

By Veena S. Chakravarthi

This book provides readers with a 360-degree perspective on the Internet of Things (IoT) design and M2M communication process. It is intended to be used as a design guide for the development of IoT solutions, covering architecture, design, and development methods. This book examines applications such as industry automation for Industry 4.0, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), and Internet of Services (IoS) as it is unfolding. Discussions on engineering fundamentals are limited to what is required for the realization of IoT solutions. 
Internet of Things and M2M Communication Technologies: Architecture and Practical Design Approach to IoT in Industry 4.0 is written by an industry veteran with more than 30 years of hands-on experience. It is an invaluable guide for electrical, electronic, computer science, and information science engineers who aspire to be IoT designers and an authoritative reference for practicing designers working on IoT device development.

• Provides complete design approach to develop IoT solutions;
• Includes reference designs and guidance on relevant standards compliance;
• Addresses design for manufacturability and business models.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Sep 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9783030792725

Book preview

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

V. S. ChakravarthiInternet of Things and M2M Communication Technologieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79272-5_1

1. Internet of Things: An Introduction

Veena S. Chakravarthi¹  

(1)

Sensesemi Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Keywords

IoTIIoTI4.0. IoSSensorActuatorM2M communicationsInternet technologiesCloud technologiesIntegrated development environment (IDE)

1.1 Industry 4.0

The objective of science and technology is to improve the standard of living, by improving economies of societies. In that regard, ongoing fourth generation of the Industrial revolution draws relevance to maximize the benefits of technologies and avoid potential risks. This ongoing revolution was named Industry 4.0 or I4.0 by the World Economic Forum in the year 2016. Internet technology is responsible for this growth and is the key technology enabler which has propelled innovation and economies over the past few decades. It still continues to be the primary enabling technology for the current and the future advancements.

1.2 A Brief History of Industrial Revolutions

Invention of steam engine triggered the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. It gave birth to mechanization of production which was earlier done manually. What was produced manually by spinning wheels were automatically produced using steam engines, and the productivity was found to be eight times higher. Development of steam locomotives further triggered movement of people and goods to longer distances increasing the reach.

The Second Industrial Revolution was due to the invention of electricity. This began in the nineteenth century through the use of electricity and assembly line production. The part processing at each stage was adopted in sequence till the entire process was completed. This reduced cost of production drastically and made it faster.

The Third Industrial Revolution was due to memory-configured automation and computer controls without human intervention. This automated the entire production. Few examples of this are robots, Computer numerical control (CNC) machines, etc. with no or minimum human intervention.

The ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution (I4.0) is due to amalgamation of information and communication technologies, which is being built over the Third Industrial Revolution. The production systems with computers are inter-networked to communicate and collaborate to achieve complete automation, the next step in production automation. The networking of all systems leads to cyber-physical production systems, and therefore, smart factories, where production systems, components, and people communicate via a network to make autonomous production. I4.0 is predicted to have the capability to foresee possible future risky scenarios and act upon them with artificial intelligence (AI) to mitigate them. Figure 1.1 shows the history of Industrial Revolutions. Industry 4.0 creates rapid and disruptive changes in every line and sector.

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Fig. 1.1

History of Industrial Revolutions

1.3 Technology Enablers

In I4.0 , the machines manage and control themselves in a production process. The machines are computer controlled, communicating with each other to make intelligent decisions. This advanced technology is called Internet of Things. Other enabling technologies responsible for I4.0 revolution apart from the Internet of Things are artificial intelligence and machine learning , sensor technologies , MEMs and nanotechnologies , and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication technologies.

1.4 Internet of Things

All of us interact with the physical world to make it comfortable so that people are more productive at work, happier, and smarter at all times. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the many means which is technology driven to achieve this.

Examples are:

1.

If you feel hot in summer, there should be a means to automatically sense it, control the temperature of the surroundings, and make it cooler. This, in conventional systems, makes the fans or air conditioning systems smarter to sense the surroundings and control them such that the surrounding environment is made cooler and comfortable.

2.

When you decide to go shopping, a car awaiting outside opens the door for you, controls the inside of the car to suit your mood, plays a soothing song of your liking, and drives to drop you near the shopping mall.

3.

When you step into a dark room, the device senses your entry and turns on the light and, as you leave the room, automatically switches off the lights.

4.

The water level controller of overhead tank senses the water level had gone lower in the tank and turns on the motor to fill the water on the overhead tank.

Few of the Internet of Thing (IoT) device applications are shown in Fig. 1.2.

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Fig. 1.2

IoT applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a physical device, which communicates with other physical devices on the Internet. This technology enables communication of the information across devices for better control or derives greater meaning from the individual device information. In short, IoT connects any physical thing, people, animal, processes, and plants, through the Internet, without the need for people to constantly maintain the connection or transfer of data manually. It is in a way automatic information transfer. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a key enabler for many emerging and future smart applications and technology in various technology markets. This ranges from the connected consumer to smart home and buildings, e-health, smart grids, next-generation manufacturing, and smart cities. It is therefore predicted to be one of the significant drivers of growth.

1.5 IoT Concept

IoT is a concept viewed differently depending on perspectives but depending on integration of multiple technologies can become the smart solution to a challenge in any domain. The IoT concept is shown in Fig. 1.3.

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Fig. 1.3

IoT concept (Courtesy: IEEE-SA ETSI M2M Workshop Sophia Antipolis, France 10, December 2014)

IoT Analytics Research 2018 predicts that by 2025, the number of things connected will exceed 20 billion and the data generated by these connected things will exceed the data generated by connected people as shown in Fig. 1.4.

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Fig. 1.4

IoT connectivity trend (Source: IoT Analytics Research 2018)

1.6 Characteristics of Internet of Things

The main characteristics of IoT devices are to capture or collect the data needed, capable of process the collected data them, and derive meaningful information from the collected and processed data, communicate to the other devices on the network to collaborate or process them further, extract control or output parameters, and control the devices or display the processed data as the case may be.

The Internet of Things are characterized by the following features:

IoT device can sense/capture and monitor physical parameters.

IoT device can sense/capture and monitor body vital parameters.

IoT device can sense/capture and monitor activities of the subject (humans or animals).

IoT device is an easy to use, install, or deploy on body or on field depending on applications.

IoT devices can process the raw data captured/monitored to derive meaningful information.

IoT device can aggregate related parameters to derive bigger sense out of the information aggregated.

IoT device can identify, analyze, and process using historical data of similar nature.

They can predict trend of the aggregated data analyzing the current and historical data set.

IoT device can alert or communicate to the stakeholder about the data set quality and sometimes suggest corrective action depending on the knowledge base they have gathered earlier on similar data set.

IoT device can automatically control the surroundings or related parameters to make the data set normal.

All of the above activities in IoT device can happen with or without human intervention.

A few examples of IoT devices are shown in Fig. 1.5.

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Fig. 1.5

IoT devices

Some examples of IoT devices include smart watch, Fitbit, Google Glass, smart energy meters, smart home appliance controllers, smart home automation systems, smart city devices like traffic controllers, smartphones with health trackers, health watches, smart street light controllers, smart software laptop/mobile applications, smart footwears, smart wearables, and environment trackers. Table 1.1 shows the feature map of some of the commercially available IoTs with their characteristic features listed in this section.

Table 1.1

Feature map of commercially available IoTs with characteristic features

1.7 Industrial Internet of Things

Many industries, namely, chemical, energy, food and beverage, infrastructure, marine, mining, power and utilities, water and wastewater industries, can benefit from Internet of Things technology by monitoring the workflows to improve productivity and yield. It ensures safe and reliable operations. IoT helps actively drive value and sustainability to continuously improve manufacturing, provide more flexible and agile production capabilities, and optimize energy consumption and emissions. The Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices can monitor resources and idling times and help plan such that these dead times are reduced and productivity is increased. A typical IIoT solution is shown in Fig. 1.6.

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Fig. 1.6

IIoT system solution [1]

Both IoT and IIoT devices consist of process/parameter capturing devices and control the surrounding subject of interest. The subject of interest could be us, processes, surroundings, and appliances which are controlled for their best performances.

1.8 Scope of Internet of Things (IoT) Technology

IoT and IIoT technologies have the potential of making everything smart and intelligent. Thing is used to mean anything controllable based on the conditions, automated, accessed anywhere and anytime. So, anything or any process which can be adjusted by sensing it is suitable for automatic adjustment. The scope of IoT and IIoT depends on one’s imagination, and hence, there is a huge scope for new inventions, innovations, and research. For example, things like windows, doors, chairs, tables, fans, lights, shoes, watches, and clothes can be made smart using sensors, actuators, and smart materials. Also, these devices need the Internet for accessing them anytime and anywhere to control them anytime. There are a lot of challenges to address while adopting these technologies onto these devices. Few challenges are focused on sensor and actuator technology that forms part of the devices, and others are communication technology challenges. IoT and IIoT devices use communication technologies to send/receive data sets or for further processing to analyze the information. Some of the challenges in devices are in signal capturing, processing, sensor and actuator designs. Main challenges in communication in these devices are in establishing reliable link with other devices through different media and accessing right data set in the most accurate and timely manner.

1.9 IoT Technologies

Different technologies involved in making IoT or IIoT systems or devices are listed below:

Sensor technology

Actuator technology

Signal and data processing

User interface and machine learning (UI and ML)

Artificial intelligence

M2M communication technology

Internet technology

Embedded system/PCB/system design

Integrated development environment for system software development

The complexity of the IoT system depends on the application.

1.9.1 Sensor Technology

Most of the IoT and IIoT devices sense some physical parameters or capture an image or video or sound in some form. Sensors are specialized electronic devices which are used for this purpose. These devices capture physical parameters, which are processed further to extract the required information from the analog form. There are three types of sensors. The first type of sensors are pressure sensors, temperature sensors (thermistors, thermocouples, PRT), fuel gauge, etc. These are the devices that sense and convert the physical parameters to electrical signals for processing and control. These are also called transducers. The second type of sensors are cameras, accelerometers, proximity sensors, GPS, etc. which give out the parameters in the digital form which can be processed directly. The third type of sensors are electrodes, which directly receive electrical signals from surroundings or contact surfaces, like ECG probes. Figure 1.7 shows some commercially available sensors. Sensor technologies are a crucial technology to realize IoT