The industrial IoT marching towards the digital twin and the broad spectrum of applications need the specialized low power protocols for communication and data transfer. This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion on the challenges, opportunities, use cases, platforms, and protocols for the deployment of low power protocols in the context of IoT applications. Moreover, discussion extends to the various custom techniques for energy saving in the communication of sensors to hardware, hardware to Cloud, and deferred data pushing in edge computing. The traditional wireless data transfer and communication protocols are suitable in case of the hardware platforms connected with seamless power supply. However, there is need of low power protocols 6LoWPAN, LoRaWAN, Sub 1, ZigBee, BLE, NFC, and other telecommunication protocols across several IoT applications. The SBCs and micro-controllers are not always equipped with these protocol-enabled hardware. This chapter addresses the suitable hardware and combination with low energy options as per the budget, range, and specifications.
TopIntroduction
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) has brought forth new opportunities by seamlessly integrating the physical world using computing, sensing, and wireless networks, transforming it into a Cyber-Physical System (CPS). An essential building block enabling the IoT is a sensing system. The industrial automation, Machine to Machine (M2M) communication are always there for making the life of the industrial workers more better. However, the use of the energy-saving products in the IoT is an important aspect of the Smart City, Smart Factory, and Digital Twin (DT) creation.
The Cloud Computing enabled by virtualization, Edge Computing and Fog Computing are also energy-saving technologies. Although these technologies are not directly related to the energy harvesting concepts, unlike the generation of the energy for the device to device communication through the motion, pressure, or temperature differences. But indirectly the public Cloud infrastructure solves the energy utilization problem as shared by many users, and reduces the cooling cost. Hence it highly contributes to the energy saving. In case of the edge computing, where the computations are happening near to the data sources like in Micro-controller units or other Single Board Computers. In case of Fog Computing the network devices like routers and gateways having the capability to store some data on the interval basis.
(Tata, Jain, Ludwig, & Gopisetty, 2017) Discusses on the availability of low-cost, low-power SBCs, it is possible to perform certain business logic at the edge of the network utilizing such computers. This way the IoT application is distributed across many devices, some running at or near the edge of the network, at different locations and some running in the public or private Cloud.
The energy consumption rate of one joule per second is called as One watt. One watt is also defined as the current flow of one ampere with a voltage of one volt. (IEA, 2016) Discusses the IoT devices used in the various applications consume the power ranging from the 0.4 to 8.0 watt. The low energy technologies are available for interfacing with the low-cost open source or commercial SBC, micro-controllers. There is need to find the industrial buses interfacing with the different resource constrained situation, and lacking in the main platform facilities. The transfer range may start from the Personal Area Network (PAN) having a smaller range of data communication like creating Piconet or Scatternet, like in Bluetooth or BLE. The communication may range up to the range of the home indoor or outdoor like up to the backyard and garden premises of the home. The normal Wi-Fi is suitable to use in the large range up to few meters, but not specially designed for the low energy needs.
There are wireless technologies related to the concept of ambient intelligence where the home automation is done for the comfort of the human beings. The M2M, CPS, and the IoT are closely related to each other. Most of the wireless low power communication protocols work on IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. Other protocols are used for the communication in various parts of the IoT communication. Few protocols are used in the industrial automation. Like Infrastructure protocols 6LowPAN, IPv4/IPv6, and RPL. The identification protocols like EPC, uCode, IPv6, and URIs, the communication and transport protocols like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and LPWAN. The discovery protocols like Physical web, Mdns, and DNS-SD. The data protocols like MQTT, CoAP, AMQP, and WebSocket. The device management protocols like Technical Report (TR-069), and Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA-DM). Other than this there are some other protocols like Neul, Z-Wave, Sub-1, Zigbee, LORA, LoRAWAN, LORAPAN, RFID & NFC. There are Open Source protocols like WirelessHART, Dash7, and some Proprietary protocols like MiWi, DigiMesh, EnOcean, and ANT & ANT+.