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IoT 21 Reliable Communication is a Key to IoT Growth By Michael Dalton, Analog Devices, Inc. According to technology industry researcher Gartner, the number of things in the Internet of Things (IoT) increases by 5.5 million each day. By 2020, the total number is expected to be 20.8 billion. Given that explosive growth, it's imperative to examine the internet that will connect and enable communication among all the things. Creating reliable wireless connectivity among these devices is proving to be one of the great challenges in IoT. The reliability of the communications system can be defined by the performance of two critical components: A radio transceiver and communications microcontroller. This article discusses how components and solutions from Analog Devices can maximize system-level reliability, enabling high impact applications where the quality, integrity of data, and insights are mission critical. What's Good Now Is Not Good Enough Existing wireless connectivity technologies for consumer devices do not always satisfy the performance demands of industrial and healthcare systems. The different priorities in these systems— including safety, accuracy, and time sensitivity—heighten the need for increased reliability. Cellular systems come close to this but are often unsuitable in terms of battery, cost, and data throughput requirements. Extremely reliable systems exist today for niche industrial and military applications. However, these are designed with reliability being the top priority, and cost appearing further down the list. With industrial IoT, the challenge becomes delivering the same high level of reliability at a much lower system cost. Let's consider some scenarios where wireless capability has been added to enhance the effectiveness of a system, and where reliability of connectivity can be mission critical. Smart Factory: Production Process Control for Industry 4.0 IoT