The Internet of Things to 2020 (GSA white paper, October 2015)

Copyright© GSA 2015 1

The Internet of Things to 2020Over the past 30 years the mobile industry has evolved from a fragmented, vehicle centric, low volume,

high priced, business focused service, into a global mobile broadband business that has created new

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1. Introduction: Faraday’s vision

Inside the Royal Institution at 21 Albermarle Street, London, outside the theatre room named after him, hangs a copy of a lithograph of Michael Faraday delivering a Christmas Lecture in 1856. Many consider Faraday the father of electromagnetism, and those that followed him – Maxwell, Hertz, Thompson and many others – owe some of their success to the experiments Faraday conducted in the nineteenth century.

�� ϐ�� from Faraday’s initial experiments to reach the current mobile broadband connected society, which is about to get a whole lot more connected. Faraday would be astounded to see how far we have taken his initial ideas and how much further we are about to travel.

In this paper, we look at how we have developed the power of electromagnetism to build devices that can communicate with other devices, with each other – in otherwords, the Internet of Things – and how this next phase of connectivity is expected to evolve and develop over the next ϐ��Ǥ2. The Potential for IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT), or the Internet of connected everything, is at the cusp of stella growth, suggesting billions of devices will be constantly connected to the web and potentially every other device. Forecasts for the number of connected things range up to 50 billion by 2020.1 Even estimates from conservative research companies place IoT devices over 25 billion.2 That, is explosive growth.

We should not doubt that we are becoming a totally mobilised and connected society. Without

doubt the driving force behind the IoT is the ��ϐ��ǡ��information to support intelligent decision-making and for some applications, autonomous ��Ǥ��ϐ��to use the IoT concept to develop devices that provide new kinds of services and applications to extend the utility of mobile connectivity.

While some ideas will underpin fast-growing and very large businesses, others may never catch on – as is the nature of technology. Much of the innovation in IoT development is coming from new start-up companies – up to 30% of new IoT products are expected to come from �� ϐ�� Ǥ3 BI Intelligence reported in 2014 that investments in IoT start-ups saw a 77% CAGR between 2010 and 2014, which suggest venture capitalist companies also see opportunities in the IoT space.

2.1. What will the IoT look like?

The real question is not if, or even when, but how the fully connected smart intelligent society will impact our lives. What devices and applications fore instance will be central to this smart connected movement?

The best way to look at this is through examples.

The smart home

A garage or shed door motion sensor that only broadcasts a message when opened would warn the homeowner of access. The idea could be expanded to your wine fridge, your front door, or the windows in your house. A discrete monitoring camera that can be placed anywhere in your home, alarmed via a smartphone app, take images based on a movement sensor and could upload those images to the cloud helping deter burglaries.

1. Cisco IoE Forecast 2015 2. Gartner IoT Forecast 2015 3. https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/funding-for-iot-startups-has-soared-this-year-2014-11


Smart tags on your valuables could warn you if they were moved or left the house, protecting your goods. Smart sensors, for CO2ǡ� �� ǡ�� ǡ� �� ϐ��anywhere, powered by batteries and informing ��Ǧ��Ǥ��ϐ��this kind of application are clear. Every year in the UK around 200 people are hospitalised with suspected carbon monoxide poisoning usually from faulty home heating, leading to about 40 deaths.4

Low-cost smart IoT smoke detectors that can be placed anywhere in the house could warn home owners of their status on a daily basis ensuring they were always fully operational and could send an alarm to one or more smart phones if activated. In the US between 2007 and 2011 �� ͵Ψ� �� ϐ�� ϐ�� present at all and 23% of deaths were caused by ϐ��present but failed to operate.5

Retail and tracking

A network of static, connected ‘beacons’ that can communicate with people or other moving things can form the backbone of a whole range of IoT applications – perhaps initially in retailing. This application area is at the beginning of its growth curve, with multiple retail trials currently in place. Retailers currently don’t know when their customers enter their retail premises, only when then are at the checkout and use their loyalty card. Beacons offer the potential to engage with customers throughout their shopping trip, enhancing the overall retail experience. No more searching for those pesky money-off coupons – the most relevant and up to date offers could be sent to your smartphone as you enter the store and redeemed automatically when you pay, (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: How a beacon-enabled local retail offer service could work

4. http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/carbon-monoxide-poisoning/Pages/Introduction.aspxͷǤ��Ǥ��ǣȀȀ��Ǥ��Ǥ��Ȁ��Ȁ��Ǧ��Ǧ��Ȁϐ��Ǧ��Ǧ��Ȁ��Ǧ��Ǧ��Ǧ��Ǧ��Ǧϐ��


��ǡ� �� ϐ�� and medical garments that are designed to incorporate multiple sensors to track heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and other biometric measurements. These devices will link to a smart device, like a smartphone and then often to the cloud to provide users with intelligent analysis of their data.

These IoT devices could be joined by smart jewellery that could interact with an app on your smartphone: an interesting emerging application. Imagine jewellery that changes based on your biometric activity.

Research from Cisco indicates that the number of wearable devices is already growing rapidly, and that an increasing proportion is expected to have cellular connectivity embedded in the future, (see Figure 2).

Clothing that monitors health and medical conditions is a growing segment that will deliver information that will help us make more intelligent decisions about what we eat and how we live. Letting patients go home early wearing an IoT medical garment will free up hospital beds while still enabling medical staff to monitor their patients remotely.

Wearable technology will be a large market driven in part by the insurance industry that will be looking to manage corporate and individual

Beacons could change the way businesses engage with their customers and this idea extends beyond the retail world into wider tracking and information management. Although some privacy and intrusion questions may still need to be worked out, beacons do have the potential to transform how data is shared in an enhanced smart information society. Did the security guard actually pass this way on his rounds? Which workers are in which areas of the site? When was the last time the washroom was checked? Is an employee entering a hazardous area? Which of my children are at home? Where did my cat go last night?

And those tags that we spoke of in the smart home context? Well, many other applications that emerge if you can tag things that you want to ��ǡ��ϐ��that communicate with a central hub. The hub �� ϐ��ǡ�� things are. Or in a hospital, checking where the nearest vital piece of medical equipment is, or the closest specialist. The possibilities for tags are endless.

Wearable technology

At the personal IoT level, the most popular �� ϐ�� watches usually referred to as the wearable segment. This segment also covers smart

Figure 2: Forecast for the number of connected wearables to 2019 [Source: Cisco VNI 2015]


health policy costs and risks. The car insurance sector is already using in-car monitoring to offer reduced rates for careful younger drivers. It is not a huge leap for insurance companies to want to monitor employee health so they could offer reduced corporate health cover – providing of course that the employee base is above average health.

��ϐ��from adopting wearable health technology in the ��ϐ��Ǥ�Companies would want to promote a healthier workforce to keep health insurance premiums low and reduced days lost to sickness and could provide gym membership support, provide healthy option restaurants, or even order in healthy employee lunches and arrange lunch ��ϐ��Ǥ�Employees would gain from a better ��ϐ��and employees could even pay for or subsidise health-related wearables.

health “status” of the company prior to investing? Possibly. The health of a company could mean more than one thing in the IoT future – and impact valuations.

A smarter, better environment

The smart connected information society is an extension of the mobile broadband network, which in itself has come about due to the success of the World Wide Web. We now have faster access to relevant information (some would suggest lots of trivial information as well). IoT devices will bring an additional layer of information to the Web and mobile internet.

Air quality is one example to consider. Cities like Beijing, London and San Francisco can only deploy a limited number of expensive air quality stations. This equipment does provide very accurate data on a range of pollutants in the air around the station but has to average the data across other dispersed air quality stations. Weather stations suffer from a similar cost-of-deployment issue.

The solution could be small, personal IoT sensors that we carry with us, or attach to our home, or place in our garden, creating a crowd-sourced network of sensors that increases the granularity of the data already collected.

In the weather station scenario, tracking where it is actually raining based on real-time information from garden connected weather sensors could increase the accuracy of weather forecasting. Forecasts could be broadcast via beacons to mobile devices.

2.2. Characterising the opportunities

IoT devices and applications can be divided into two main segments: personal/consumer on the one hand, and business on the other, where applications also revolve around instant access to data or the sharing of relevant data to others. As we have seen above, many interesting applications are emerging that make use of wearable connected devices and beacons.

Figure 3 shows how some of the applications we have described make use of these two enabling technology ideas.

It may sound unlikely, but if companies can reduce insurance costs by providing healthier options for ��ǡ��ϐ��Ȃ��ϐ��Ȃ��ϐ��be reduced. It does sound like a win-win situation.

The wearable technology trend from insurance companies also extends beyond the workforce and into the boardroom. “Key man” insurance premiums may require senior executives to also report on their health and be required to wear health-related products. Will the investment community want companies to report the physical

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3. Technology, cost and deployment considerations

The easier the deployment and use, the better the experience and the lower the total life cost of IoT devices, the more likely large market volumes will be achieved.

The oft-used adage of keep it simple will be paramount for most IoT deployments – especially in terms of the user experience. We have seen how well-designed user interfaces and slick services that “just work” have been the ones that have succeeded. The user experience of the services delivered must take into account all the nuances of privacy, intrusion, personalisation and individual preferences. Some of the use cases for IoT may sound a little like something �� ǲͳͻͺͶǳǡ� �� ϐ��ǡ�IoT services will fail to engage with customers and could potentially turn society against IoT growth.

Cost is going to be a critical factor in determining whether IoT devices reach multiple locations as required for different use cases. Cost is not ��ϐ��– a beacon for instance, or a sensor enabled sports vest. The total cost of ownership will play a major role in IoT adoption.

��ϐ��considered, as we detail below, with particular reference to beacon-enabled and wearables applications.

3.1. Power

If an IoT device needs its batteries changing on a regular basis, or charging via a cable, some IoT applications, especially in the consumer segment, may be slow to grow. An IoT enabled sports vest would require a hermetically sealed battery – possibly using wireless charging or energy harvesting technologies to provide input to the battery system – that could be washed ��Ǣ��ϐ��out or charge barreries. These and other issues need to be addressed for some wearable IoT applications to reach its full market potential.

Beacon companies see huge potential in their IoT segment but generally rely on batteries to power their devices. Batteries can account for up

to 50% of the beacon device bill of materials and may need changing twice a year – which can be a huge manpower cost if thousands of beacons need to have their batteries changed once or even twice a year.

3.2. Connectivity choices

How IoT devices will connect with the mobile broadband Internet will depend on the application. A smart watch currently is an extension of the user’s smartphone, making it easier to check incoming texts, WhatsApp messages and who is calling. Fitness bands also connect to an application on the user’s smartphone so that measurements, such as heart rate or respiration, can be linked to location data for instance. Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is the usual wireless connectivity between these devices. There is a battle going on to be the device on our wrists and there is a reasonable argument that checking your smart watch is more user friendly than pulling your phone out of your pocket every time a message or Facebook ��ϐ��ǤA beacon can also broadcast a message over BLE that is picked up by a smartphone application. Depending on the application settings, different actions are processed.

While BLE is the connectivity choice for many IoT devices, in some situations, WiFi may also be a viable alternative, in a smart home for instance or when HD video needs to be transmitted. These high-data-rate transfers may also require more advanced wireless broadband data connectivity such as 4G or even 5G. The downside here is that these higher-power applications will need mains power, whereas the potential for IoT devices is in their ability to be deployed en masse without the high-cost truck-roll that permanent power entails. Batteries are the current majority energy choice for IoT devices so low-power radio is likely to be the main wireless communications deployed – at least as far as a gateway with a ��ȋ��ϐ��ȌǤ3.3. Data usage

Many IoT devices will only need to transmit small amounts of data. A beacon for instance transmits �� ϐ��


��ϐ��sends heart rate data to a smartphone. An air quality sensor may transmit pollution data that is some tens of bytes in size every few minutes. At the other end of the scale a personal video IoT camera or a home security monitor may need to stream HD, high-audio-quality video whenever activated. In this case BLE or even WiFi may not be the ideal wireless technology due to the lack of quality of service (QoS), opening up opportunities for mobile operators to provide QoS connectivity via small home cells.

3.4. Spectrum

BLE has been designed for IoT but in unlicensed spectrum and can suffer from interference if the �� ϐ�� BLE devices in close proximity to each other.

There has been some industry discussion on ��ϐ�� still a long way from a global or even a regional agreement on this item. For the time being, existing spectrum is likely to be used.

4. Conclusion

We are accelerating headlong into a wirelessly connected smart information society. We will be generating more data, requiring instant analysis of this data and will make more intelligent decisions based on this analysis. But the data must be carefully processed. There will be a growing need to manage and analyse the vast amounts of “big data” we will be producing, and services will spring up to help us distil from our own data the knowledge that will help us make more informed decisions – about what we eat, how we exercise or how to avoid the worst air pollution on our trip to work.

��ϐ��ǡ��start of the slope of the adoption cycle for sensor technology: expect multiple other sectors to join the growth curve in the near future. We can envisage many new ways that IoT applications will impact our lives, but let’s not expect we can see too far into the future.

Over the past 30 years the mobile phone has evolved from a vehicle-centric business phone to the largest consumer electronics device segment in the world spawning the ring tone industry, customisable phone cases, touch screen technology and a multi-billion dollar applications industry along the way. The Internet of Things will be just as powerful in driving new innovation in multiple sectors.

GSA will cover some of those industry sectors in future IoT papers. In-building sensors and the IoT smart home are two examples of the topics to be covered. We will also dig more closely into at least one IoT movement that is just gaining traction.

The Internet of Things to 2020 (GSA white paper, October 2015)

Mobile

Transcript of The Internet of Things to 2020 (GSA white paper, October 2015)