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11 Two Breakout Stars Two IoT connectivity solutions have recently shaken up the industry: • Bluetooth • 6LoWPAN Bluetooth Bluetooth 5, the latest version of the standard, builds on its predecessor, Bluetooth Low Energy (Versions 4.0 and 4.2), while doubling maximum data rate to 2Mbs, increasing distance from about 30m to about 120m under ideal conditions, and adding mesh networking capability. With these improvements, Bluetooth has all the trappings now to serve almost any application. It also has the benefit of being, along with Wi-Fi, the most widely used short-range connectivity standard in the world with massive industry support and integration within every smartphone, tablet, newer laptop, and hundreds of other types of products. Bluetooth also has a feature offered by no other solution: Beaconing. Beacons are tiny short-range transmitters that send short messages to smartphones whose owners have installed beaconing apps. The Bluetooth receiver on the phone receives the messages, and the app places notifications on the display for coupons, reward points, or almost anything. Beacons are so small and inexpensive they can be deployed throughout a location, from display cases to checkout lanes. Retailers can use the information gathered by beacons to determine what products shoppers like and whether they buy something. Museums, zoos, and similar organizations can place beacons at every painting, display, or creature someone is viewing. Similarly, attendees at trade shows and other events can register automatically, and airports can help visually impaired people identify their surroundings. The potential applications are practically limitless. 6LoWPAN The other solution getting more attention recently is the awkwardly-named 6LoWPAN, which stands for IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks. 6LoWPAN is usually referred to as a competitor to Zigbee and Z-Wave because they are the industry leaders and all three are based on the 802.15.4 standard. But 6LoWPAN has advantages over ZigBee, Z-Wave, and other options as well. For example, while ZigBee devices can interoperate with other ZigBee devices, 6LoWPAN can interoperate with any solution based on 802.15.4 using a very simple IPv6-enabled bridge or any other devices in an IP-based network. This also includes Bluetooth, so-called sub-1 GHz solutions, power lines, and even Ethernet. To achieve the same capability, ZigBee and Z-Wave require more complex application layer gateways. With 6LoWPAN, every node in the network has its own IPv6 address, so it can be directly connected to the Internet using open standards. Because 6LoWPAN has the other ingredients to make it well suited for IoT and is unique in its ability to interoperate with other IP-based standards, it solves one of the thorniest problems facing developers. In short, 6LoWPAN and Bluetooth are the new players to watch as IoT evolves in the coming years. The Challenges for IoT System Manufacturers Although 6LoWPAN is a highly appealing answer to the problems of having too many competing standards, manufacturers of end-user solutions still face the issue of which standard to choose today that will hold up as new solutions emerge. The home automation market provides a good example of these challenges. A "typical" home has many types of devices that can be connected wirelessly, from door locks to lights, HVAC systems, surveillance cameras and alarm systems, entertainment suites, and even appliances. An "ideal" connectivity solution would be able to serve both wall-powered and battery-operated devices, communicate at both low and high speeds (and, thus, use both narrow and wide bandwidths), and work with products from different manufacturers that use different connectivity solutions. Perhaps needless to say, this is not the current situation, and manufacturers use multiple connectivity solutions to meet market product demands. For example, manufacturers of smart lighting use Bluetooth, ZigBee, or Z-Wave to connect the lights to each other and use another solution to connect to the Internet. A manufacturer that has committed to say, ZigBee, is effectively stuck with it if a better solution comes along. The company could choose to update to the newer solution but would still need to support its legacy devices, so its products would now have to support two solutions along with the connection to the Internet. It's also conceivable that this could happen again, presenting an even more vexing problem. As the emergence of Bluetooth 5 and multi-solution capabilities of 6LoWPAN illustrate, this is more than a hypothetical situation. Conclusion Currently, designers have at least seven different solutions to choose from in connecting IoT devices over short distances: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Thread, 6LoWPAN, and ANT+. Nearly all of these solutions are incompatible and offer various advantages and disadvantages as they continue to evolve. In several market sectors, especially home automation, manufacturers have been forced to employ more than one connectivity solution in their products, and they may ultimately may need to include even more, as this is far from a "one size fits all" environment. The problem hasn't been lost on manufacturers of devices such as IoT radios, RF front-ends, controllers, and other components that increasingly support multiple standards. This allows designers to use a single device or set of devices to support multiple product lines, and enables manufacturers of end-user systems to more easily and cost-effectively "future-proof" their products. What it does not do is completely simplify the design process, as some solutions are inherently better suited for specific applications and each connectivity solution must typically be configured differently. But in today's current massively-fragmented IoT connectivity environment, any new technology that partially solves interoperability problems is a welcome sight. Short-Range Connectivity Solutions for Specific Use Cases EnOcean: A spin-off from Siemens, EnOcean GmbH is located in Germany, and its wireless modules are built and marketed by the company. It's primary claim to fame is the energy harvesting, which enables devices to work without a battery. It has a range of 300m in free space, has data rates below 125kbs, and optimizes the amount of power required to transmit a given amount of data. EnOcean operates at 902, 928.35, 868.3, and 315MHz depending on the country. Insteon: This solution from Smartlabs enables IoT devices to communi- cate wirelessly or through power lines in a dual-band type of mesh networking and is compatible with the X10 wired network standard. It has considerable support from industry including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Logitech, and others. Maximum sustained data rate is 180bs, free-space range is up to about 45m, and operating frequency is 902 to 924MHz. Microchip Wireless Networking (MiWi): This Microchip-proprietary protocol is based on the 802.15.4 standard, operates at 2.4GHz or below 1GHz, is compatible with ZigBee, and can be configured in star, cluster, mesh, and tree network topologies. Wireless Highway Addressable Remote Transducer Protocol (WirelessHART): Designed to serve process field device networks in process automation, this open standard developed by the HART Communication Foundation uses a time-synchronized, self-organizing, self-healing mesh architecture, and it operates at 2.4GHz using 802.15.4 radios.

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