Getting data from the sensor to the cloud

There are several ways to connect devices( any sensor or mobile) to the cloud. The evolution of various ways of sending data from a device to cloud started from 1970’s. The evolution is still in process and we are approaching better ways of sending data from device to cloud. Given below are some methods of sending data from one device to cloud. The complexity of methodology adopted increases as you read.

Sensor To Cloud Over Ethernet

One of the simplest , rather evolved in the 1970s and 1980s, before the development of all the radio links. The Sensor includes a processor which is tough enough to configure the data uploading to cloud. The Ethernet connection would connect to wired Internet service. The problem: Some places don’t have wired Internet. The processor could also have the ability to update or modify the functions of the sensor. There is no involvement of radio link.

Sensor To Mobile-Phone Network To Cloud

The mobile phone network began to develop in the early 1980s. These early cellular networks were the first widely available radio link for connecting sensors to the cloud. The disadvantages are that

• The sensor still needs a wired connection to a mobile phone or needs an expensive custom radio in the mobile-phone band to connect to the phone tower.
• The uplink (sensor to the phone tower) radio transmitter needs a fair amount of power to reach the tower
• The user needs to pay the mobile network provider for usage.

  Sensor To Long-Range Radio To The Cloud

Regulators established several license free radio bands as early as 1947. But these did not attract much interest until mobile phones really caught on in the late 1990s. IEE 802.15.4 standard has frequencies of two bands at 902-928 MHz and 2400-2483 MHz.(There are other standards, such as Zigbee, in one or both of these bands.)  

One configuration that uses these bands is a mesh network. It consists of many small, low-power radios connected to each other to relay data from remote sensors at the outer edges of an area to radios at a collection point. Each collection point has access to the cloud. This allows for wide-area usage by deploying sensors connected to very low-power radios.

Sensor To Wi-Fi Router To Cloud

The 2400-2483 MHz band and another license-free band at 5130-5835 MHz were the original frequency bands of the 802.11 Wi-Fi Standard (created in 1997). They are used primarily for Wi-Fi access points, which is widely available in cities these days. The largest number of these routers are in homes, businesses, and public gathering places (coffee shops, malls, and airports). 

 Industry and infrastructure used a small number of more specialized routers. This is the most widely-used way today to connect mobile devices (laptops, tablets, smart phones) to the cloud. In fact, most applications in smartphones connect to the cloud primarily through a Wi-Fi router.

Shortly after Wi-Fi-capable smartphones became available, remote sensors that could connect directly to a Wi-Fi router also began to appear. Small sensors with low power Wi-Fi radio are placed within the range of wifi routor. Internet connection is provided later.

Sensor To Mobile Phone To Cloud

The sensor just needs to connect to a mobile phone instead of connecting directly to a Wi-Fi router. The main reason for this is to allow the mobile-phone user to interact directly with the sensor before sending the information up to the cloud.

 These applications are served by the Bluetooth standard, created in 1998. It was added to the 802.15.4 standard in 2003 but continues to maintain its own independent working group. It works in the same 2400-2483 MHz license-free band used by one of the Wi-Fi bands. 

 Recently, a version of Bluetooth called Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was introduced that draws very little power and is well-suited to simple sensors with low data rates or low on-off duty cycles. This has led to a rapid increase in small sensors (like Fitbit fitness trackers and others like it) that connect to mobile phones, which in turn connect to a Wi-Fi router or a mobile network. 

 Another recent development is Wi-Fi routers that contain a Bluetooth radio as well as Wi-Fi. With these, BLE sensors can connect directly to the router and on to the cloud without passing through a mobile phone. 

 The figure above, with three radio links, looks complicated, but it shows that with the choice of radio standards and improvements in processing, there will be more and more configurations to enable the Internet of Things.

Reference: https://readwrite.com/2015/10/13/sensor-data-device-to-cloud/

From Sensor to Cloud: A Plug and Play Approach Evolving

Today, more powerful, evolved gateways, can function either as dedicated devices or as a virtual part of a system. They play a new role in receiving, translating, processing and transmitting data as transparent information to the spectrum of cloud interfaces. So this is enabled by the new cloud API for IOT gateways. It is essentially a middle-ware and glue logic solution to enable simple orchestration of wired and wireless sensor networks as well as embedded system configurations. The cloud API provides application-ready software modules. They act as blueprints for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to develop their own applications. Therefore it helps in removing complexity and creating a smart path to connect all types of sensor networks to any cloud platform.

Amplifying the importance of gateways

Gateways are complex devices with excellent transcoding and decision-making capabilities. Using integrated logic, these collect, analyse and transcode sensor data. Later it determines whether it goes to the field, the cloud or perhaps another gateway. Their secure end-to-end encryption further allows them to structure and move data consistently. For example, enabling bidirectional communication with a specific cloud solution.

Enabled with the new cloud API, the IoT gateway communicates locally with intelligent sensors. Now it is capable of processing and converting the received sensor data. Embedded driver modules (EDMs) interface with hardware and third-party expansion cards, providing the glue logic that translates received data into the semantics of the application-specific IoT gateway logic. This sensor engine, with EDM modules incorporated in its structure, was the first software components which was standardised as a cloud function module. Its critical value is in moving data from local sensors to a generic middleware, independent of protocols.

The EDM for the standardised EAPI interface of computer-on-modules provides such an example of standardisation. This enables key performance information like system temperatures and voltages, CPU utilisation or burglary detection which was transmitted in a standardised manner to any cloud by utilising the new Cloud API logic.

The middleware advantage

Historically, there have been no standardised cloud APIs for IoT gateways. This created a dead zone and gap in compatibility for sensor-to-cloud communication. It’s a challenge to establish smart, efficient methods for receiving and processing data locally, and then forwarding it to the cloud.

Above all, cloud APIs must be not only application-ready but also standards-based, in order to deliver plug-and-play integration for the wide range of wired and wireless sensor connections. With this advantage, even highly heterogeneous protocol configurations can be integrated with reasonable development resources, including wireless options such as Bluetooth LE, ZigBee, LoRa and other LPWANs, as well as wired protocols for building and industrial automation. Cloud communications themselves face the same plug-and-play challenge, fueled by individual requirements for proprietary servers or third-party offers such as the Microsoft Azure, Telekom or Amazon AWS Cloud platforms.

Reference : https://www.electronicsforu.com/technology-trends/tech-focus/iot-gateway-cloud-api