Low-power wireless networking use cases

- [Instructor] You've probably heard about Turing, Internet of Things or IoT many times. But International Telecommunication Union, Standardization Sector, IoT can be viewed as a global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting physical and virtual things based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies. Here we can see the communication technologies play a key role in IoT systems. In fact, the number of IoT devices equipped with wireless connectivity options has been growing significantly in recent years, and it is predicted that there will be billions of connected devices around the year 2020. From a communication and networking perspective, data communications for IoT includes the machine-to-human communication, where a communication process is between humans and IoT devices, and the machine-to-machine communication where IoT devices themselves can autonomously exchange data, process data, and then make intelligent decisions with many years of operation without manual assistance of humans. The low power wireless communication and networking technologies can best address the machine-to-machine communication needs while it can meet some machine-to-human communication needs as well. Let's see some use cases under three typical application domains, smart home, smart city, and smart manufacturing. They cover many important IoT applications. The smart home application are shown in this diagram. The low power wireless networks can address the use cases in the following examples. In a smart lighting application the smart lights can be turned on when you enter a home. Smart lights are equipped with sensors and low power radio controller modules that can be turned on or off based on the human presence or vacancy, adjust their illumination based on ambient lights, reporting the status wirelessly to the users, and taking control commands over the air. Without the restriction of the mains power, the low power wireless controller module can also be flexibly installed on many kinds of lights. In a smart metering application it can benefit from the low power wireless networking as well. For example, the thermostats and electricity meters in a home can help monitor the energy consumption and the price during the day, exchange this information with other smart meters, and manage the energy usage of the appliances accordingly. In an access control application the garage door can be remotely opened or it can be automatically locked if we forgot to do it. In a home security application low power wireless sensors deployed around your house can trigger alarm when there is a someone breaking into the windows or doors. With the low power wireless technologies, we can enjoy our living environments better than before. Smart city is another application domain that can benefit from low power wireless networks. For example, we can deploy battery-powered environmental sensors in a city in order to collect the environmental data, such as noise, electromagnetic emissions, air quality, radiation, water quality, etc. These data can help improve our living environment and protect the public's safety and health. Also, the low power wireless sensor devices can be used to control a smart street lighting system where the streetlights can be controlled across a city, and it can automatically respond to the surrounding environment, such as turning the lights on or off, adjusting illumination and optimizing their energy consumption. In a smart parking application parking lot availability can be sensed by an occupancy sensor which can be remotely accessed by people who want to quickly find them. In a smart building application low power wireless sensors can, for example, monitor the indoor environment and control the HVAC system. Other smart city applications such as waste management, gas and water leakage detections can also be enabled by a low power wireless network. The low power wireless networking technologies can be used in many smart manufacturing applications. For example, in a machine condition monitoring system wireless sensors can check the condition states of a machine, and then send these states wirelessly to a base station for further data analysis and intelligent diagnosis. Moreover, in a process automation application the low power wireless sensors come deployed to monitor performance values and a quality of outputs, such as liquid level, temperature, pressure and so on, where this data can be used to optimize a production process. The low power wireless sensor can also be used in a asset management application where the location and environmental data of the items in the factory can be collected and reported wirelessly to a remote applications server. There are numerous use cases that can be enabled by the low power wireless networking technologies. We will introduce more of them when we talk about specific technologies later.