‘Thin IoT’ Will Accelerate Connected Devices in Future

According to new research, the future growth of the Internet of Things will be accelerated by the use of a set of enabling technologies that work best in constrained environments: the ‘Thin IoT’ stack, explains Matt Hatton, founding partner, Transforma Insights. 

In August 2021, we published a report entitled “What is the ‘Thin IoT’ stack and why do I need it?” which examined the availability of a set of technologies spanning hardware, software and connectivity that are individually optimised for constrained environments and collectively will help to drive enormous growth in the market. The report considers them collectively under the name ‘Thin IoT’ because they are all developed to be as lightweight and undemanding on resources as possible.

The constraints that these technologies need to work under is a combination of limited access to power, low bandwidth connectivity, and limited processing and memory. In some cases, these limitations are in part due to the nature of the applications, for instance being located in a remote place with no ready access to power. 

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For the most part, however, the constraints are self-imposed, required in order to ensure that the application is as cheap to deliver as possible at the required scale. Many of the IoT applications with the greatest potential (in terms of volume of devices) are viable only if they can be delivered at very low cost. A good emerging example is the provision of printable smart labels for asset tracking as developed by Altair Semiconductor, ARM, Murata and Vodafone, and deployed by Bayer.

To a great extent, the ‘low hanging fruit’ of applications with ready access to power, processing and the other elements, and limited price sensitivity, have already been quite effectively addressed. The arguments over whether to connect aeroplanes, wind turbines and industrial compressors, for instance, have already been won. While not all have necessarily been connected yet, inertia being what it is, the argument over the value of doing so has certainly been overwhelmingly established. 

What is required for the IoT market to boom is the expansion to new mass-adoption high volume applications where the use of IoT has been limited to date. To do that requires the simplification of the process of deploying IoT and a reduction in cost. This combination will open up a lot of new applications. That is where the Thin IoT Stack comes in. It is collectively aimed at reducing the complexity (by using off-the-shelf elements) and, particularly, the cost, of deploying IoT. In the case of cost, in large part this is by way of reducing the IoT application’s need for power, processing, memory and so forth. 

Also Read: The State of IoT Edge Devices and the Case for IoT Security Updates

The below graphic  illustrates the five tiers of the Thin IoT stack, comprising (from the bottom up) device hardware, device software, networking, middleware and edge computing/machine learning. At each level there are either relatively mature or newly emerging technologies that are optimised for working in constrained environments. The characteristics of each are discussed in depth in the report. 

Source: Transforma Insights, 2021

There is little doubt that the impact of these technologies collectively will be substantial. They are the main driving force behind the expected trebling of IoT connected devices from 9 billion in 2020 to 27 billion in 2030, as illustrated in the new Transforma Insights Forecast Highlights page. Just one example is the availability of Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks which sit within the ‘Networking’ element of the Thin IoT stack. These technologies have been optimised for running on battery-powered devices. They will grow more than ten-fold over the next decade to reach 4 billion connections in 2030.

Also Read: 4 Must Haves of an IoT Connectivity Solution for Enterprises

It should be noted that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. The arrival of a thin stack does not mean that any given IoT application will only want the thin elements, or will not be viable without them. Many applications will not be constrained, for instance, by lack of access to power, but might be required to be optimised to be cheaper or smaller devices. There is no obligation to use the entirety of the stack. Furthermore, compromising in one area may result in a requirement for higher functionality in another (as illustrated in Figure 2). For instance, using lower bandwidth connectivity might mean more requirement for edge processing which might necessitate more capabilities on the device and therefore costlier components.

Source: Transforma Insights, 2021

Nevertheless, the thin stack provides a set of options, some of which might be appropriate for a given application. Overall, as a trend these thin layers reduce the barriers to viability for lots of applications and allow many to be more efficiently delivered.

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