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Alliance Touts IP for Smart Sensor Networks
The next wave of innovation in asset management will be led by "smart objects" -- items that are able to communicate their location and condition through a combination of sensors, wireless technology (like RFID or Zigbee), and computational power. But as sensor networks expand in the marketplace, getting them to communicate openly with each other and other networked devices has presented a challenge.
The Internet Protocol for Smart Objects Alliance (IPSO) is promoting the use of Internet Protocol (IP) as a standard communication method for these types of networks, and has completed several rounds of interoperability testing. The group was formed to complement the efforts of standards-making bodies like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) through testing, marketing activities, and by providing information for end users.
The alliance, formed in September 2008, now boasts 50 members and has scheduled three large-scale interoperability test events for 2009. The first, which took place on March 4, tested end-to-end IP-based interoperability across the Internet via the new IPv6 protocol over local and wide-area communication media.
Members include Atmel, Cisco, Duke Energy, Dust Networks, Ericsson, SAP, Sun Microsystems, and Texas Instruments.
Smart sensor networks can be used in a variety of applications, including asset management and tracking, building automation, utility metering, safety, healthcare and compliance assurance.
In asset tracking applications, items tracked with RFID tags or smart sensors could broadcast their location and some condition data (such as temperature) using IP, making it much easier to integrate sensor networks with other networks and devices.
According to the alliance, using standard Internet protocols for low-power, embedded devices will greatly simplify development and deployment of new applications based on sensor networks. Currently, smart sensor networks use a variety of communication technologies, and the upper layers of the communication stack are often based on proprietary technology. This makes interoperability between networks difficult, and complicates the integration of these networks with existing IP networks.
"The market for wireless sensors is fragmented," says Patrick Wetterwald, IPSO president and engineering manager in charge of innovation and advanced technologies at Cisco. "It's very difficult to deploy a complete solution because there are numerous proprietary technologies and you have to have multiple gateways. IP will completely change the game, making these systems manageable and scalable."
"In recent years IP has emerged as the most efficient and scalable networking technology, not just in the traditional IT realm but in scenarios with low power, restricted memory, rugged surroundings and tens of thousands of often unattended devices," says Geoff Mulligan, IPSO Alliance chairman and industry consultant. "Users are recognizing that the proven, ubiquitous IP standard is a much better alternative to using a patchwork of proprietary protocols that have no guarantee of scalability or interoperability, and require complex gateways that are difficult to deploy and manage."
Using IP to connect wireless or wired smart objects was previously viewed as impractical because of the memory and energy requirements of the devices. But new "lightweight" IPv6 stacks have been developed that can be used with these sensor networks, which overcome the memory and power constraints. (IPv6 is the next-generation Internet Layer protocol, although it is not yet widely deployed.)
"We thought it was really important to show to the industry that we could implement IP with these small devices and interoperate between them, so you could have one sensor going directly to the actuator using IP without gateways or a Web server," Wetterwald says.
Cisco, Atmel and the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, for instance, collaborated on uIPv6, a small open-source IPv6-ready stack designed for sensor network applications.
According to Wetterwald, some key technological developments that will make all of this possible are coming from the IETF's 6loWPAN and Routing over Low Power and Lossy Networks (ROLL) working groups. 6loWPAN working group is developing protocols to support IPv6 on IEEE 802.15.4 low-power personal area networks by providing an adaptation layer that enables efficient IPv6 communication over loWPAN links. The ROLL group is focused on routing solutions for low power networks, and Wetterwald expects the first protocol to emerge from that group by the end of the year.
Other IPSO interoperability tests scheduled for 2009 (which will take place at the Interop conference in May and at Sensors Expo in June) will demonstrate multi-vendor devices communicating within a sensor network using the IETF 6LoWPAN standard for IPv6. Each subsequent test will increase the scope of the vendors and the diversity of media types (Wi-Fi, WiMAX, etc.) interoperating.
"The progress we've made is great," Wetterwald says. "Open standards are where we ought to go with this technology. We think this will change the world by simplifying smart object deployments."
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