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agnostic to the form factor, operating
system or service provider.
The member companies are
contributing software and engineering
resources to the development of a
protocol specification, open source
implementation, and a certification
program, all with a view of
accelerating the development of the
IoT.
What makes this slightly different is
that it is intended to cover a range
of existing and emerging wireless
standards and be compatible with a
variety of operating systems, rather
than just being one radio technology.
The OIC is competing directly with
the AllSeen Alliance that is backed by
chip giant Qualcomm, Microsoft and
also networking giant Cisco. This is
built around the AllJoyn open source
technology developed by Qualcomm
and now has 50 companies signed
up, including Sharp, D-link and
Wilocity. The aim of AllJoyn is that
the core building blocks and services
for discovery of new devices, how
they connect and security can be
used across both wireless and wired
networks for connecting up devices.
The aim is to standardize the approach
at a higher level to allow devices with
different technologies to interact,
so the focus is on service-level
discovery, capabilities broadcasting,
remote procedure calls, interface
sharing and message handling, along
with the ability to react to dynamic,
ad-hoc network changes.
AllSeen is probably slightly ahead of
other consortia such as OIC and the
Thread Group with more members
and a software development kit to
allow applications developers and
end customers to work with the
technology. However the amount
of software development needed to
bring different technologies together
with a low power implementation may
be a challenge for many customers,
along with the focus mostly on the
US.
Conclusion
Low power is becoming a driving
force behind the development
of technology for the Internet of
Things. Trading off data rate, packet
complexity and wireless duty cycle to
reduce the power requirements and
extend battery life is leading to a split
of protocols and standards, backed
by a range of different consortia.
It is now down to the different
applications, particularly in the
smart home, and the cooperation of
different suppliers that will determine
the protocols with the critical mass
and so the cost effective solution.
IoT
Special Edition
New-Tech Magazine Europe l 43