Low‐Latency, Low‐Power technologies and communications devices are required for IoT Networks

The Internet-of-Things is an emerging revolution in the ICT sector under which interconnecting physical objects communicate with each other and/or with humans over internet in order to offer a given service.  The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. These objects can be anything from large buildings, industrial plants, planes, cars, machines, any kind of goods, and even to human beings, animals and plants.

 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding rapidly, creating an environment of devices and sensors that in many cases will function entirely on batteries. In some use cases where batteries are difficult or even impossible to change (environmental sensors, etc.), the length of the battery life may determine the useful life of the device.

 

However battery life has often been dictated by how long the device stays “awake.” The longer the device sleeps, the longer the battery lasts, but at the expense of performance. A new technology is required that extends battery life without affecting performance. These devices will have many applications, including smart homes, smart warehouses, wearable health monitors, logistics and transportation, and many, many more. It is estimated that companies will spend close to $5 trillion on the IoT over the next five years.

 

Currently, the majority of Internet of Things devices rely on cellular networks. The vast amount of data on these networks, however, slows the rate at which it is processed. According to Shields (2017), “That also creates high latency – the amount of time between when data is sent from a connected device to when it returns to the same device – which in turn limits IoT solutions’ effectiveness.” Low latency is ideal for devices to work efficiently.

 

Low latency often comes at the price of high power usage, however. Faster data transfer usually requires devices to expend more energy. As a result, we need a mechanism for reducing latency while conserving power. Recharging and replacing batteries for the multitude of IoT devices will become extremely cumbersome. According to Maria Guerra (2017), “Designers of IoT solutions are relying on power management solutions to efficiently handle the power needed to energize a wide range of IoT devices, as maintenance and battery replacement are not cost-effective approaches.”

 

There is great potential for IoT technologies to revolutionize modern warfare, leveraging data and automation to deliver greater lethality and survivability to the warfighter while reducing cost and increasing efficiency.

 

IoT will impact military operations in the very near future, raising many challenges but also providing many potential benefits. However, determining how to integrate IoT technologies into the military ecosystem and how to efficiently leverage them still requires addressing many research challenges due to constraints such as intermittent links, low bandwidth, differing levels of security classifications, and low power of mobile devices.

 

Communication of data between devices is a power consuming task, specially, wireless communication. Therefore, we need a solution that facilitates communication with low power consumption. Routing protocols with low memory requirement are required.

 

Many applications in, for example, the automotive industry, health care and manufacturing are mission or safety critical and have stringent deadlines. In cooperative driving, for example, autonomous vehicles have to wirelessly coordinate their planned trajectories within milliseconds when approaching an intersection or changing a lane. Such applications demand reliable wireless networking at a message latency and energy efficiency that today’s approaches cannot provide.

 

Communication technologies are required that are robust to signal interference and/or loss of network operation. The utility of emerging civilian mobile waveforms such as 4G/5G LTE for military applications need to be explored.