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nternet of Things (IoT)
is not really a market, it
is a catchall term for devices that
connect to the internet, sometimes
via our smartphones. The whole IoT
ecosystem has a cloud backend and
networking to get the data there and
back, but I don't consider that part
of the IoT market, that is part of
infrastructure. And smartphones are
part of mobile.
A typical IoT device contains some
sort of computing element, some
sort of networking, and one or more
sensors. It is battery powered and
those batteries have to last a long
time. For example, at DesignCon
I attended a teardown of a fitness
monitor that can last six months on
a single coin cell. Other applications,
such as sensors out in fields for
agricultural applications, might
need to have power consumption
low enough to last the lifetime of
the product (perhaps the time from
planting to harvest of the crop). Plus
you've probably heard about power
scavenging devices. In Mike Muller's
keynote at ARM Techcon he talked
about a blood glucose monitor that
was powered by removing the cap,
generating 400 uJ of energy, enough
to perform the measurement. Other
experimental devices are powered by
ambient heat.
It remains to be seen which IoT
devices really take off in interesting
volumes. Today we have:
• Fitness monitors like FitBit
• Watches like Pebble and the Apple
Watch
• Thermostats like Nest
• Cameras like GoPro
• Radio-controlled drones, mostly
for recreational use (I don't think
we count a Predator as being an IoT
device)
One of the drivers of IoT is video.
As video has gotten cheap enough
to add to everything, it is becoming
ubiquitous, not just in obvious
places like GoPro cameras, but for
security and to give drones inspection
capability. The key interfaces are
likely to be MIPI for sensor interfaces,
especially the new I3C standard. This
not only supersedes the I2C standard
but is public domain, unlike I2C which
was owned by Philips Semiconductors,
now NXP (and the new standard is
pronounced eye-three-see whereas
the old one was pronounced eye-
squared-see).
The other really important interface
is CSI, the Camera Standard
Interface, actually MIPI's CSI-2 and
I
Internet of Things: How Will They Be Built?
Paul McLellan, Cadence
34 l New-Tech Magazine Europe