Mobile infrastructure must catch up with user needs and demands. Ubiquitous mobile computing is all around us. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. As the power and capability of many mobile devices increases, the increased demand on networks. We watch more videos, and listen to music on our phones. Mobile Data Traffic To Grow 300% Globally By 2017 Led By Video, Web Use. Mobile network operators would have had an easier life if it wasn’t for smartphones and the flood of data traffic they initiated, and soon there will be also very many Internet of Things devices. Businesses and consumers want more bandwidth for less money.
More and more network bandwidth is being used by video: Netflix And YouTube Account For Over 50% Of Peak Fixed Network Data In North America. Netflix remains the biggest pig in the broadband python, representing 31.6% of all downstream Internet traffic in North America during primetime. In other parts of the world, YouTube is the biggest consumer of bandwidth. In Europe, YouTube represented of 28.7% of downstream traffic.
Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2014 expects that Software Defined Anything is a new mega-trend in data centers. Software-defined anything (SDx) is defined by “improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center interoperability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning.” Dominant vendors in a given sector of an infrastructure-type may elect not to follow standards that increase competition and lower margins, but end-customer will benefit from simplicity, cost reduction opportunities, and the possibility for consolidation. More hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical.
Software defined technologies are coming quickly to telecom operator networks with Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV). Intel and rather a lot of telcos want networks to operate like data centres. Today’s networks are mostly based around proprietary boxes designed to do very specific jobs. It used to be that way in the server business too until cheap generic x86 boxes took most of the market. The idea in NFV is that low-cost x86 servers can successfully many of those those pricey proprietary boxes currently attached to base-stations and other parts of the network. This scents a shift in the mood of the telcos themselves. This change is one that they want, and rather a lot of them are working together to make it happen. So the future mobile network will have more and more x86 and ARM based generic computing boxes running on Linux.
With the introduction of Network Functions Virtualisation base stations will have new functions built into them. For example NSN has announced a mobile edge computing platform that enables mobile base stations to host data and run apps. Think of this as an internet cloud server that’s really close to the customer.
Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker are talked about. Telecom companies and cloud service providers are selling together service packages that have both connectivity and cloud storage sold as single service. Gartner suggests that bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is essential.
The type of device one has will be less important, as the personal or public cloud takes over some of the role. The push for more personal cloud technologies will lead to a shift toward services and away from devices, but there are also cases where where there is a great incentive to exploit the intelligence and storage of the client device. Gartner suggests that now through 2018, a variety of devices, user contexts, and interaction paradigms will make “everything everywhere” strategies unachievable, although many would like to see this working.
“Internet of Things” gets more push. The Internet is expanding into enterprise assets and consumer items such as cars and televisions. The concept of “Internet of Things” will evolve a step toward The Internet of Everything. Gartner identifies four basic usage models that are emerging: Manage, Monetize, Operate, Extend. The Internet of Things (IoT) will evolve into the Web of Things, increasing the coordination between things in the real world and their counterparts on the Web. The Industrial Internet of Things will be talked about. IoT takes advantage of mobile devices’ and sensors’ ability to observe and monitor their environments
Car of the future is M2M-ready and has Ethernet. Many manufacturers taking an additional step to develop vehicle connectivity. One such example is the European Commission’s emergency eCall system, which is on target for installation in every new car by 2015.
Smart Home Systems Are on the Rise article tells that most automated technology is found in commercial buildings that feature automated lighting that changes in intensity depending on the amount of sunlight present. Some of these buildings have WiFi incorporated into their lighting systems. There will be new and affordable technology on the market, but people today are still reluctant to bring automation to their homes.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Euro Commission drags Belgium to court over telco regulator’s independence
Ministerial veto must be, er, vetoed, Eurocrats demand
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/16/european_commission_belgium_court_telco_regulator/
The European Commission is taking Belgium to court for not allowing its telco regulator enough independence.
Under EU law, national telecoms regulators must be able to act independently without state interference, but Belgium has a law allowing the Belgian Council of Ministers to suspend the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT)’s decisions under certain circumstances.
Not only can Belgium’s Council of Ministers veto the telecoms regulator’s decisions, the BIPT must also go cap in hand to ministers for approval of its multi-annual strategy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Speeds Keep Going Up
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324280&
Ethernet provides the most cost effective means for data transport. With 10 GbE, 40 GbE and 100 GbE prices coming down, it’s economically feasible for many companies to upgrade their network infrastructure. As I discussed in 400 Gbit Ethernet: The Next Leap about 400 GbE networking, companies are often forced to upgrade as we continue to see a rapid expansion in the number and use of new bandwidth-hogging applications. Surprisingly, we’ve not seen the market for lower and higher speeds grow at the same pace.
From 25 GbE to 100 GbE to 400 GbE
Despite the drop in prices, I believe the 25 GbE market is moving surprisingly slow, but we’ll see the speed of adoption increase with the formation of the IEEE 802.3 25 Gb/s Ethernet Study Group. The group was created with the goal to address 25 Gb/s Ethernet for next-generation data centers. The new IEEE 802.3 group will study standardizing single-lane 25 Gb/s Ethernet interconnect technologies to provide greater server bandwidth to cloud-scale data centers.
Unlike most IEEE standards, which can take four or more years to develop, 25 Gb/s could move more rapidly because the signaling and single-lane technology for 25G was developed during the 100G Ethernet process, which is ten lanes of 10 GbE or four lanes of 25 GbE. All the IEEE has to do is rewrite existing physical layer specs, which could produce a standard in as little as 18 months.
400 GbE development is, however, progressing quickly. Ixia is currently working with several customers who are actively developing products for 400 GbE. Getting beyond 400 Gbits/s to 1 Tbit/s will, however, take some time. Looking at 1 Tbit/s today, it requires moving to SERDES (serializer/deserializer) at 50 Gbit/s or even higher. The networking industry is struggling today to implement commercially viable products using today’s 25 Gbit/s SERDES and it’s not economically feasible to jump from 100 GbE (4×25 Gbits/s) to 1,000 GbE. Such a jump is too far of a component and cost per-port leap. Thus, we have 400 GbE.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet Companies Want Wireless Net Neutrality Too
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/10/16/2152224/internet-companies-want-wireless-net-neutrality-too
As it looks more likely that the U.S. will impose net neutrality rules on landline ISPs, big Web companies are aiming to get wireless data providers under the same regulatory umbrella.
CTIA: Mobile carriers still need lighter net neutrality rules
http://www.itworld.com/article/2834237/ctia-mobile-carriers-still-need-lighter-net-neutrality-rules.html
The FCC shouldn’t hold mobile broadband providers to the same regulations as wired providers, the CTIA chief says
Members of CTIA support net neutrality principles, but mobile broadband providers have limited spectrum that require “dynamic” network management practices, Baker said at a mobile broadband forum in Washington, D.C., hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Even as large broadband providers Comcast and AT&T have voiced support for some basic net neutrality rules, one of the major disputes in the FCC’s ongoing proceeding is over how the rules should treat mobile broadband service. Some U.S. mobile broadband providers boast 4G download speeds peaking at 10Mbps to 12Mbps, matching the speed of some wired broadband services.
The FCC’s 2010 net neutrality rules, partially thrown out by a U.S. appeals court early this year, barred wired broadband providers — but not mobile broadband providers — from “unreasonable discrimination” against Web traffic. Those rules prohibited mobile providers from blocking voice and other applications that compete with their services, but did not prohibit them from blocking other applications.
In comments filed with the FCC last month, the Internet Association, a trade group that counts Google, Facebook, Amazon.com and eBay among its members, called on the agency to “harmonize” the treatment of mobile and wired broadband providers in its net neutrality rules. The Internet Association also called on the agency to keep all its regulatory options open, including reclassifying mobile and wired broadband as a regulated public utility.
While the FCC’s 2010 rules gave mobile broadband providers “significant leeway to block or degrade access” because of network management challenges, mobile carriers have made significant improvements to their networks in the past four years, Internet Association President and CEO Michael Beckerman wrote in the filing.
“The competitive nature of mobile provides an important backdrop for issues like net neutrality,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile carriers keep the promised land on an ever-receding horizon
Nobody – not you, devlopers or carriers – can afford the next generation of mobile services
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/17/mobile_carriers_keep_the_promised_land_on_an_everreceding_horizon/
Upon taking delivery of a new iPhone last month, my mobile carrier informed me that as a special gift, the data fairies had granted me an additional 25 GB of mobile data. The catch: I had to use all of it within 30 days.
That has turned out to be a good thing. If the offer had been spread out over the 24 months of my contract, I’d parsimoniously measure out each extra gigabyte per month, going just up to the limit, but never daring to venture into the dangerous pay-by-the-megabyte realm.
Conditioned by the horror stories of those extra data fees, few of us would ever knowingly violate our mobile data limits. The costs far outweigh any benefits. Caged by our fears, we tend to under-use our mobile data.
These last weeks have been a sort of nerdvana. Do I want to download a 100-megabyte song from iTunes Match? Yes! Watch that streaming high-definition television programme? Sure! Create a 4G WiFi hotspot so I can work anywhere? Please!
This got me to wondering how we might use our mobile devices differently in a world where this kind of mobile bandwidth – at least 10x more than the majority contracts here in Australia offer today – becomes commonplace. Where the extraordinary becomes the everyday.
Perhaps an order of magnitude increase in mobile data traffic would melt some cellular towers. More likely, it’s a business decision calculated to extract the greatest revenue for the least cost.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet finally ready to replace answering machine cassette tape
It’s a simple message and I’m leaving out the whistles and bells
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/17/internet_finally_ready_to_replace_answering_machine_cassette_tape/
2015 will see the internet finally replace an answering machine that uses cassettes as its storage medium, or at least the answering machine used by alt.rock outfit They Might Be Giants’ iconic Dial-A-Song service.
The band tried replacing the answering machine with a computer in the late 1990s, but the PC chosen proved too unreliable.
The service lapsed in 2006, but the duo have now announced it will return online at http://www.dialasong.com in 2015, complete with weekly updates.
To those of you who doubt that internet can take over from legacy applications: here’s your case study.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gartner Research Institute is ranked small mobile cellular equipment vendors ranked. Nokia entered the comparison among the leaders. In the same group are, however, other base stations in the top names. Tip group consists According to Gartner, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Ericsson, NEC, Cisco, and Nokia Networks.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1930:nokia-pienten-solujen-ykkoskastia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung 5G amazing speeds
Samsung has 5G technology in technology tests reached 7.5 Gbp to one point and 1.2 Gbps to 100 km/h speed car. Results were achieved in tests in the open air at (4.35-kilometer race track) at 28 GHz frequency range.
This means that the 5G end to the current context of the LTE speeds compared to 30 fold higher data rates. And because it is only the beginning phase of the study, the final speed improvement can be much larger still.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1926:samsungin-5g-nopeudet-hammastyttavia&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cats went into Internet
The so-called Internet of Things is tweeting cat flap, Pebble-älykello, as well as truck drivers driving habits following the system. Intel is trying to encourage large companies to include almost all of the internet.
- For the last 20 years, the internet has connected into monitors, phones, computers and tablets, but now is the time to other objects, says Philip Mounagh semiconductor manufacturer Intel Internet of Things unit.
The benefits of the Internet of Things Mounagh gives an example of the cat door, which opens only to the owner of the house belonging to the cat. The door and its associated hardware to identify the cat’s collar affixed to a New RFID label. In addition, the cat flap announces the opening to Twitter .
Cat Flap is already true , because it was built by Gustafsson and Penny cats clever hostess Ioan Ghip.
Source: http://www.itviikko.fi/uutiset/2014/10/16/kissat-menivat-nettiin–rekkamiehet-seurasivat-
perassa/201414373/7
Tweeting Cat Door
https://sites.google.com/site/ioanghip/
Tomi Engdahl says:
EdgeRouter Lite
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/edgerouter-lite
nicest router I’ve ever owned. And, it was less than $100!
The EdgeRouter Lite is a business-class router based on the open-source Vyatta system. It has been forked, and as it matures, it will become less and less like the original Vyatta code, but for the present, it works much the same. I purchased the EdgeRouter because my old ATOM-based ClearOS router/firewall couldn’t keep up with the traffic from my home network.
I’ll admit, setting up the EdgeRouter Lite was a pain in the rear end. The basics can be done via the Web interface, but if you want any QOS for your connection, it will be a learning experience trying to figure out the Vyatta command and code (and concepts!) for doing so.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless UART Data Transceiver
Posted Oct 18th 2014
http://www.eeweb.com/news/wireless-uart-data-transceiver
Linx Technologies launched its HumDT™ Series Transceiver. Designed with cost in mind from the start to appeal to OEMs who have a limited budget to incorporate RF for simple wireless data transfer. At below $9 in volume, the Hummingbird platform is the lowest cost complete wideband transceiver with microcontroller module on the market today.
The HumDT™ 900MHz version outputs up to 10dBm, resulting in a line-of-sight range of up to 1,600m (1.0 mile), depending on the antenna implementation. The 2.4GHz version outputs up to 1dBm, resulting in a line-of-sight range of 100m (300 feet).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Taipei Electronics Show: Betting on the Smartphone as the Hub
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324300&
Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 6 last month nudged the smartphone one step closer to becoming the central hub of the Internet of Things.
And with some pundits predicting the demise of the PC in a decade or less, it’s no surprise that Taiwan’s ITC sector is busy seeking to create new growth opportunities beyond the PC and notebook industries that it dominates.
That was clear at last week’s Taitronics Taipei International Electronics Show, which featured an entire pavilion devoted to the Internet of Things, another for Cloud Computing, and a third for SmartLiving — plus scores of new products designed with the smartphone in mind — from a tiny chip antenna to cloud services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ISPs handbagged: BLOCK knock-off sites, rules beak
Historic trademark victory, but sunset clause applies to future blocks
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/20/isps_handbagged_you_must_block_knockoff_sites_rules_beak/
The UK’s biggest ISPs must block websites that flog knock-off goods, after a successful High Court case brought by luxury goods firm Richemonte, the first time trademark pirates have been blocked in the EU.
Judge Arnold did agree with David Allen Green (aka the blogger “Jack of Kent”) for the Open Rights Group that the block should contain information about who asked for the block, and “that affected users should have the right to apply to the Court to discharge or vary the order”.
He also agreed the blocks should have a “sunset clause”, which he thinks should be two years.
VPN blocking
Arnold had to balance the EU InfoSec Directive, limiting liability for service providers, with the EU E-commerce Directive which protects trade.
“Each of the techniques described above can readily be circumvented by users who have a little technical knowledge and the desire to do so,” Arnold added.
Blocks are ineffective against VPN users. However, there’s no burden under Article 3(2) of the Enforcement Directive on rightsholders to establish that they’ll reduce overall infringement — merely that they can be effective against a rogue trader. Arnold agreed with ISPs that effectiveness was as an important factor in deciding on proportionality.
And they’re cheap — one ISPs put the cost at £3,600 per website per year, while Sky and BT’s cost estimates are in the same region. ISPs who blocked sites were briefly attacked (via DDOS or malicious DNS poisoning) but the reprisals weren’t repeated.
Tomi Engdahl says:
No-Power Wi-Fi Connectivity Could Fuel Internet of Things
http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/1198-ntb/news/news/20858
Imagine a world in which your wristwatch or other wearable device communicates directly with your online profiles, storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it, all without requiring batteries. Or, battery-free sensors embedded around your home that could track minute-by-minute temperature changes and send that information to your thermostat to help conserve energy.
This not-so-distant “Internet of Things” reality would extend connectivity to perhaps billions of devices. Sensors could be embedded in everyday objects to help monitor and track everything from the structural safety of bridges to the health of your heart. But having a way to cheaply power and connect these devices to the Internet has kept this concept from taking off.
Now, University of Washington engineers have designed a new communication system that uses radio frequency signals as a power source and reuses existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to these devices. Called Wi-Fi backscatter, this technology is the first that can connect battery-free devices to Wi-Fi infrastructure.
The challenge in providing Wi-Fi connectivity to these devices is that conventional, low-power Wi-Fi consumes three to four orders of magnitude more power than can be harvested in these wireless signals. The researchers instead developed an ultra-low power tag prototype with an antenna and circuitry that can talk to Wi-Fi-enabled laptops or smartphones while consuming negligible power.
The UW’s Wi-Fi backscatter tag has communicated with a Wi-Fi device at rates of 1 kilobit per second with about 2 meters between the devices. They plan to extend the range to about 20 meters and have patents filed on the technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Internet of Things Chip Gets a New Spectrum
October 20, 2014 By Brian Benchoff 36 Comments
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/20/weightless-thing-for-oct-20-0100/
Last year we learned about Weightless, an Internet of Things chip that solves all the problems of current wireless solutions. It’s low power and has a 10-year battery life (one AA cell), the hardware should cost around $2 per module, and the range of the Weightless devices range from 5+km in urban environments to 20-30km in rural environments. There haven’t been many public announcements from the Weightless SIG since the specification was announced, but today they’re announcing Weightless will include an additional spectrum, the 868/915 MHz ISM spectrum.
The original plan for Weightless was to use the spectrum left behind by UHF TV – between 470 and 790MHz. Regulatory agencies haven’t been moving as fast as members of the Weightless SIG would have hoped, so now they’re working on a slightly different design that uses the already-allocated ISM bands.
http://www.weightless.org/
Weightless-N is the new LPWAN global standard for IoT/M2M wireless connectivity over ISM spectrum.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Making the Smart Hat: Part 1
http://www.edn.com/design/led/4436046/Making-the-Smart-Hat–Part-1
http://www.edn.com/design/led/4436046/Making-the-Smart-Hat–Part-1?_mc=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20141020&cid=NL_EDN_EDT_EDN_productsandtools_20141020&elq=93387ac4c64d4defbc5f4ee9fc1514f1&elqCampaignId=19766
In the end, I went with the CC3200 SimpleLink Wi-Fi LaunchPad which includes a fully integrated radio, baseband, and MAC which can support an 802.11 b/g/n Station or Access Point, and a bunch of nice features which made development much easier.
We considered several LED-based alphanumeric displays for the scrolling billboard and eventually settled on Omilex’s 2”x2” LED Matrix sections.
TI’s CC3200 LaunchPad supplies both power and data to both of The Hat’s digitally-controlled LED displays.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Group Turns Off TV Band
Weightless moves up band to 900 MHz
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324319&
The so-called TV whites spaces around 700 MHz appear less fertile a ground for the next-generation of Internet of Things applications for a handful of entrepreneurs who are pulling up stakes, moving up to the 900 MHz band with a new venture called Weightless-N.
The Weightless Special Interest Group behind the effort retains its ambitious goal — to create an open standard for a $2 wireless chipset that can send data five kilometers in cities (20 km in rural areas) and run 10 years on an AA battery. In the 900 MHz unlicensed Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) band the group’s pending specification will get a maximum data rate of just 500 bits per second.
But you can do a lot even with that tiny bit of free bandwidth for sensors such as thermometers, electric meters, alarms, and systems that monitor parking lots, says William Webb, the chief executive of the Weightless SIG. NWave Technologies Ltd. officially joins the group today, donating its ultra narrowband technology as the foundation for the Weightless-N spec the group aims to complete by April.
The NWave approach uses a 200 MHz swath of spectrum tightly filtered to reduce noise so that even a low-power signal has a high link budget and thus a relatively long range. NWave already has products deployed in Russia, the US, and the UK.
Weightless will create and license a standard based on NWave’s technology, giving away for free the spec for end nodes, but charging a royalty still to be determined for base stations. That’s the same model it proposed for its prior effort in TV white spaces.
“Our open standard will gives network operators more freedom,” says Webb. “Once we get a spec up and running, I think it will be hard for them to compete, and I hope they will join us.”
Sigfox is also working with an emerging Low Throughput Networks effort in the ETSI standards group. Chip vendor Semtech and Kimeggi Consulting also participate in the effort, which published a 24-page document describing its protocols and interfaces.
“ETSI wants to have an IoT standard, but it looks to me like Sigfox and others may not be that keen to open up their technologies, so I’d say it could still be two years away,” says Webb.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ETSI GS LTN 003 V1.1.1 (2014-09)
Low Throughput Networks (LTN); Protocols and Interfaces
http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gs/LTN/001_099/003/01.01.01_60/gs_LTN003v010101p.pdf
This Group Specification (GS) has been produced by ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) Low Throughput Networks (LTN).
Low Throughput Network (LTN) is a technology of wide area wireless network with some specific characteristics
compared to existing networks:
LTN enables long-range data transmission (distances up to 40 km in open field) and/or communication with buried underground equipment.
LTN operates with minimal power consumption in the device modems that allows operation on several years even with standard batteries.
LTN implements low throughput along with advanced signal processing that provides effective protection against interferences.
As a consequence, LTN is particularly well suited for low throughput machine to machine (M2M) communication where data volume is limited and latency is not a strong requirement.
LTN could also cooperate with cellular networks to address use cases where redundancy, complementary or alternative connectivity is needed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spansion Expands MCUs With IoT on Its Radar
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324317&
On Monday, October 20, Spansion Inc. unveiled 96 new MCUs, fresh additions to the company’s FM4 family of MCUs based on the ARM Cortext-M4F core.
The new MCUs, running at 200MHz, offer up to 2MB flash memory, 12 different types of communication interfaces, security, and 5V I/O designed for robust environment applications.
The company is targeting these new MCUs for deeper and broader inroads into various markets — ranging from factory automation and machine-to-machine systems to building management systems, smart meters, and multi-function printers.
Since the acquisition of Fujitsu’s MCU business was completed in August, 2013, Spansion has been on a mission to beef up its MCU product portfolio.
Beyond traditional industrial markets such as motor controls and office automation, Spansion is eager to cultivate emerging markets, including “the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor fusion,” according to Handa.
“Industrial IoT” is undoubtedly one of the target markets for the new MCUs.
Spansion is uniquely offering a 5V I/O feature across the board in its different FM families for industrial applications. Compared to MCUs with 2.5V or 1.8 I/O, the 5V I/O can protect a system from breaking down in a harsh environment where it may experience a power surge or other disturbances.
The new MCUs also offer customers a large set of interfaces — as many as 12. They include Ethernet, CAN, USB, Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO), I2S, HDMI, I2C, general purpose serial interface, and others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile phone Internet connection with many other factors as the cell phone processor speed or the distance from the base station. Nokia Networks say they developed a base station software that speeds up Web browsing with a mobile phone up to fifth.
In addition, browsing to consume as much as 40 per cent less power than previous solutions. Readings are tough and based on the new Nokia High Speed Cell FACH software, which allows a mobile phone and the base station between the signaling reduced by 80 per cent. The tests were run in European commercial HSPA + network.
FACH at the Nokia calls technique that combines three separate 3GPP-standardized techniques: the Cell_FACH Enhanced Downlink, Cell_FACH Enhanced Uplink and Enhanced DRX Cell_FACH.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1940:nokia-nopeuttaa-selailua-kannykalla&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world record for wireless data transmission
Chalmers University in Gothenburg has now designed a circuit which broke the previous record for data transfer.
Chalmers chip operates at a frequency of 140 gigahertz. This high-speed signals, the researchers achieved a data transfer rate of 40 Gbps. According to researchers, the pace is more than two times faster than the previous corresponding frequencies achieved data transfer speed.
The transmitter circuit was the size of 1.6 x 1.2 millimeters. It contains an amplifier and a modulator. The next step, the researchers want to take their transmitters from laboratory to field tests.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1939:maailmanennatys-datan-siirrossa&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
The first Wi-Fi certification at the chip level
If one wants their device wireless LAN connection, is required to use moduules, which is ready for certification or self-certify their products. Texas Instruments say they developed the first WLAN radio, which has received a chip level Wi-Fi certification.
SimpleLink family CC3100- and CC3200 chips certification means that the circuits include all the necessary components and software stacks WLAN networks activities.
In June, presented SimpleLink circuits are TI’s version of “the Internet on a single chip.” CC3100 circuit can be used with any of the micro-controller. CC3200-chip can be found in the ARM Cortex-M4 processor, which customers can run their own application code.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1943:ensimmainen-wifi-sertifiointi-piiritasolla&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comms processors match PHYs for faster Ethernet over legacy cable
http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/other/4435985/Comms-processors-match-PHYs-for-faster-Ethernet-over-legacy-cable
Freescale says it is the first to demonstrate 2.5G and 5G performance interoperability between SoC and Aquantia AQrate Copper PHY technology for embedded networking applications
Freescale’s 28-nm QorIQ T1 family of multicore communications processors are the first embedded System on Chips (SoCs) to demonstrate interoperability with the recently-releases Aquantia AQrate 2.5 and 5 Gbps Ethernet PHY products.
Achieving this Ethernet performance over existing Category 5e twisted pair copper cabling means customers for next generation Ethernet switches and appliances, WLAN access points, wireless LAN controllers, small cells and other applications will not incur the added cost of installing updated cable or using multiple twisted pair links to support increased network traffic demands that are pushing data rates beyond today’s 1 Gbps network uplinks.
“It’s clear the demand for higher speed Ethernet will boom over the next several years. For example, in 2015 the market for new 802.11ac enabled access will take off, driving wireless access point backhaul bandwidth well above 1 Gbps. And by 2018, we expect to see more than 20 million new 802.11ac access points shipping each year,”
Freescale’s QorIQ T1 family processors integrate between one and four cores and are designed to deliver two to four times the performance of existing, similar-class devices for 5 to 8 Gbps IP forwarding, all within a low power envelope and housed in cost-effective packaging. These QorIQ T1 series multicore processors offer options supporting 1G, 2.5G, 5G and 10G interfaces, as well as a protocol-offload engine that delivers the higher bandwidth encrypted tunnels that enterprise and wireless customers require.
Aquantia’s AQrate PHY combines 2.5 GbE and 5 GbE, as well as IEEE-compliant 10GBASE-T, 1000BASE-T (1GbE), and 100BASE-TX (100MbE) for transmission over up to 100m of twisted pair cabling. The AQrate PHY family integrates such features as Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE), 1588v2, MACsec and supports all PoE standards up to 60 W.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Warning to those who covet the data of Internet of Precious Things
There’s nothing for you here: it’s personal data – watchdogs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/22/internet_of_things_data_should_be_treated_as_personal_data/
Data generated by devices in the “internet of things” age should be “regarded and treated as personal data”, data protection authorities from across the globe have agreed.
The watchdogs said it is “more likely than not” that such data can be attributed to individuals.
“Internet of things’ sensor data is high in quantity, quality and sensitivity,” a declaration (2-page/87KB PDF) published at the 36th International Privacy Conference last week read.
“This means the inferences that can be drawn are much bigger and more sensitive, and identifiability becomes more likely than not. Considering that the identifiability and protection of big data already is a major challenge, it is clear that big data derived from internet of things devices makes this challenge many times larger. Therefore, such data should be regarded and treated as personal data.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Forget the Internet, Brace for Skynet
http://www.lightreading.com/iot/drones/forget-the-internet-brace-for-skynet/a/d-id/711404
Greetings. I have seen the future of global communications. And because I’m such a nice person, I’ve decided I’m going to share it with you. (You can thank me later.)
It consists of a global network of thousands of ultra-high-altitude (65,000 feet, or 13 miles high) solar-powered drones, equipped with some variation of next-gen microwave wireless equipment, delivering broadband capacity to the entire planet.
Talk about your disruptive technology, eh?
How long will it take for the Skynet vision to become a reality?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hungary To Tax Internet Traffic
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/22/1236221/hungary-to-tax-internet-traffic
The Hungarian government has announced a new tax on internet traffic: 150 HUF ($0.62 USD) per gigabyte. In Hungary, a monthly internet subscription costs around 4,000-10,000 HUF ($17-$41), so it could really put a constraint on different service providers, especially for streaming media. This kind of tax could set back the country’s technological development by some 20 years — to the pre-internet age
Tomi Engdahl says:
Should your company build or buy its IoT infrastructure?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/systems-interface/4436306/Should-your-company-build-or-buy-its-IoT-infrastructure-?elq=06cdd3b281754377b105ebc401218960&elqCampaignId=19802
The IoT is impacting embedded systems design in fundamental ways that extend from the underlying MCU to the infrastructure that joins smart devices. In this guest editorial, Joe Cowan of Arrayent lays out the factors that go into a decision to build or buy the infrastructure itself.
The markets for IoT/M2M are varied (imagine connected home vs factory automation), so the analysis here may not be exactly the same for every IoT project/market, but what is common across all markets is that they all require Internet connectivity, control, security, scalability, reliability, supportability, and more. We will discuss general principles and the pros vs cons of the two approaches, and where possible we will give rough dollar and time costs for certain phases or categories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Will Fiber-To-the-Home Create a New Digital Divide?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/10/22/2140207/will-fiber-to-the-home-create-a-new-digital-divide
Having some type of fiber or high-speed cable connectivity is normal for many of us, but in most developing countries of the world and many areas of Europe, the US, and other developed countries, access to “super-fast” broadband networks is still a dream. This is creating another “digital divide.” Not having the virtually unlimited bandwidth of all-fiber networks means that, for these populations, many activities are simply not possible. For example, broadband provided over all-fiber networks brings education, healthcare, and other social goods into the home through immersive, innovative applications and services that are impossible without it. Alternatives to fiber, such as cable (DOCSYS 3.0), are not enough
Fiber Networks & The New Digital Divide
http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/fiber-networks-and-the-new-digital-divide/a/d-id/1316829
All-fiber networks provide virtually unlimited bandwidth, but fiber-to-the-home services aren’t available in many areas, leaving many people without the high-speed broadband needed for today’s applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hungary intends to charge tax on data transfers
At least the ones it knows about
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2377157/hungary-intends-to-charge-tax-on-data-transfers
THE HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT is considering levying a charge on data transfers, according to a report on Reuters.
The news agency said that a draft bill making its way through parliament concerning taxation charges for 2015 includes a proposed fee of 150 forints (37p) per gigabyte of data traffic.
There is no mention of a limit on the charges that a company could incur, and Reuters reported concerns that the increased charges could ultimately fall on consumers.
Hungarian government figures suggest that the charges could raise around £52m a year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s new iPADS have begun the WAR that will OVERTURN the NETWORK WORLD
It’ll get properly serious once Google comes in
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/17/this_is_war_apples_replaces_telco_choice_with_beauty_contest/
Analysis Well, Tim Cook has cried “havoc” and let slip the SIM dogs of war. For several years Apple has sought to replace the hardware SIM card, and hand itself ultimate control over which mobile network the consumer can choose. With the latest iPads, it has finally implemented the strategy.
It’s a colossal step, and if successful, the transition of the mobile industry will be complete. We’ll have gone from a world where operators choose what devices run on their networks, to a world where device manufacturers choose what network you can use on their devices – from a world where mobile networks were gatekeepers, to one in which Apple and Google are the gatekeepers. Before we examine this, let’s step back a moment and see how this came about.
For decades telephony in most countries was controlled by a state owned monopoly.
Then came deregulation, bringing with it the dangerous notion that the customer should choose what they used, and the equally subversive idea that competition might give the consumer more attractive choices than those a backroom technocrat might come up with. When European countries thrashed out digital mobile standards, device freedom using a SIM card was part of this.
Now let’s see how the world might look with Apple as that sort of gatekeeper.
The key difference in a soft-SIM world is that you select, via a “ballot screen” which network operator you’ll use. Who gets to choose who goes in this list? Apple does, from a pre-approved list chosen by Apple. In short, we’ve replaced the backroom technocrat at the General Post Office or Bell with a backroom technocrat at Apple – or, soon, at Google. But instead of a network monopoly choosing what device you’ll use, a device duopoly will choose what network you use.
So, what criteria will that backroom gatekeeper use? What are the rules of the beauty contest? Apple is fairly apolitical about networks, but Google isn’t: it’s highly political. In fact, it is in the network game itself (with Google Fiber for instance).
Apple just wants to sell you more stuff. Google’s vision is much broader: it wants to see a world where bits can’t be monetised by anyone else and so Google accrues the value of the data flowing over the world’s networks via its giant advertising and data processing business.
Another huge question is – how easily will Apple or Google permit you to switch? Can you switch without registering, which was the idea behind the SIM? Will you be able to switch daily?
The implications are enormous, for both incumbents and regulators. With Apple and Google in charge, telecoms industry best practice and standards could now be driven by two companies. The business of the operators could be completely upended. Their huge investment in retail presence, branding and services (BT, Sky) would potentially count for nothing.
No doubt some will rejoice, because Apple or Google can do no wrong, and every network provider is by definition wicked.
Tomi Engdahl says:
World’s Wireless Record Breaks 40 Gbit/s
Shooting next for 100-Gbit/s wireless record
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324357&
A new world record has been set in wireless data transmission rates — 40 gigabits per second, which is over 40-times faster than the ceiling for Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced of 1 Gbit/s. The breakthrough was announced at the Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Symposium conference in San Diego on Oct. 22, 2014.
The new world’s record is in the 141.5 to 148 GHz band, compared with LTE’s 698 MHz to 1.4 GHz bands (depending on your location). The first application for the new wireless super-speed will be for back haul between cell towers, but many other applications are possible besides mobile phones. Ericsson plans on transmitting signals to and from base stations and cellular towers.
The band from 141.5 to 148 GHz is assigned for fixed and mobile communication by the FCC.
Backhaul and similar cell tower-to-tower applications are served today by transceivers in the 141.5 to 148 GHz band, but at half the speed of Zirth’s invention, which he made at Chalmers in collaboration with researchers Sona Carpenter and Mingquan Bao, along with Simon He, who performed the data-transmission measurements. The chip size is 1.6 x 1.2 square millimeters.
In order to double the speed of backhaul and similar wireless communications gear, the researchers had to resort to exotic indium phosphide transceivers, which is one reason the inventors gave for why they succeeded when all other attempts had failed so far.
“We have designed our circuits with very high bandwidth, greater than 30 GHz, in an advanced semiconductor process — 250 nanometer DHBT [double heterojunction bipolar transistor] with four metal-layers offered by Teledyne Scientific of Thousand Oaks, Calif.,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT Core, ARM SoCs Debut
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324346&
A handful of embedded SoCs, cores, and buses will debut at this week’s Linley Tech Processor Conference where talks will cover the waterfront from carrier networks to the Internet of Things.
The rollout of LTE gave a boost last year to slowly growing embedded markets where Intel’s x86 is the leading architecture, followed by the PowerPC. But multiple vendors are migrating to ARM-based SoCs, chipping away at PowerPC and MIPS-based designs, says Jag Bolaria, a senior analyst at Linley Group.
For example, Freescale added to its Layerscape family of embedded processors a new midrange ARM-based member, the QorIQ LS1043A. The chip, sampling early next year, uses four Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.5 GHz to deliver more than 16,000 CoreMarks at 6 W.
Freescale provides network virtualization software for the chip, which targets branch office and industrial routers and control plane processors. Marvell will compete for sockets in similar systems with its first network search co-processor, the Questflo 98TX1100, sampling now.
Questflo can handle up to 2.4 billion searches per second and 8 million flow entries. It executes one search per clock at a fixed low latency while running at 25 W.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Should your company build or buy its IoT infrastructure?
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/systems-interface/4436306/Should-your-company-build-or-buy-its-IoT-infrastructure-?elq=06cdd3b281754377b105ebc401218960&elqCampaignId=19802
The IoT is impacting embedded systems design in fundamental ways that extend from the underlying MCU to the infrastructure that joins smart devices. In this guest editorial, Joe Cowan of Arrayent lays out the factors that go into a decision to build or buy the infrastructure itself.
So your company wants to join the Internet of Things revolution, and you are trying to figure out if you should build most of the infrastructure on your own, or if you should purchase most of it from an “IoT Platform” provider. This article will help you understand the “build vs buy” analysis as it pertains to creating Internet of Things infrastructure (software, hardware, staffing, and maintenance). We will look at the costs and risks of both approaches, which will include development costs, time to market, expenses, opportunity costs, and more.
The markets for IoT/M2M are varied (imagine connected home vs factory automation), so the analysis here may not be exactly the same for every IoT project/market, but what is common across all markets is that they all require Internet connectivity, control, security, scalability, reliability, supportability, and more. We will discuss general principles and the pros vs cons of the two approaches, and where possible we will give rough dollar and time costs for certain phases or categories.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The future health of the internet comes down to ONE simple question…
Can ICANN be forced to agree to oversight of its decisions?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/23/icann-accountability-internet-health/
When was the last time you gave any thought to how the internet actually works? Despite the extraordinary and never-ending growth in people and devices that connect to the internet every second of every day, we have never seen the equivalent of Twitter’s Fail Whale. The internet, as a whole, just doesn’t go down.
There are two main reasons why. One, a very clever decentralised and lightweight design, and two, an engineer culture focused on the network first and everything else second.
There is one potential flaw, however. In the middle of this vast, global, decentralised network exists a central core around which the internet binds, and without which the network would start to erode and break apart.
And in charge of the upkeep of that core are two organisations: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the United States government.
Since the creation of ICANN in 1999, the US government has overseen the organisation. Uncle Sam was supposed to step away within just a few years but for various complicated reasons, in every one of the 15 intervening years, ICANN’s core – its staff and board – have made at least one fundamentally stupid decision, usually against the explicit wishes of the majority of the organisation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dangers of IoT devices when the makes goes out of business…
Little Printer will stop working next March as its creator shuts down
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/10/little-printer-shutdown/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full&cps=gravity
Bad news if you own Berg’s super-cute, internet-savvy Little Printer: it might not be not long for this world. The company is going into “hibernation” after it couldn’t sustain a business based on connected devices, and its current plan has Little Printer services shutting down on March 31st, 2015.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel, Cisco and co reveal PLANS to keep tabs on WORLD’S MACHINES
Connecting everything to everything… Er, good idea?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/10/ge_intel_cisco_verizon_connected_data_machines_plan/
GE, Intel, Cisco, and Verizon have announced a big data deal to connect Predix — GE’s software platform — to machines, systems, and edge devices regardless of manufacturer.
“By connecting more assets and equipment (to each other and people) at the edge to the cloud, industrial operators gain more insight into the performance of their operations,” said a GE press statement.
In other words, more data will help cut costs.
The platform will be able to connect to everything from railways to electric power grids, air traffic control towers, to hospitals even in the remotest and most severe corners of the globe.
“The platform is designed to connect the 85 per cent of unconnected edge devices to the cloud with common platform to secure and manage devices, as well as capture data,”
The Verizon aspect of the deal will feature an alliance on remote monitoring, diagnostics and the ability to resolve maintenance issues virtually anywhere in the world, according to the statement. GE and Verizon will also enter into discussions to collaborate on a single global SIM for global connectivity.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Getting Creative With the Internet of Things
http://www.saasintheenterprise.com/author.asp?doc_id=274610&_mc=sem_otb_site
much of Northern California woke to its largest earthquake in a couple of decades. It hit the wine industry very hard, with many wineries reporting as much as 50% of their stock stored in their caves and warehouses destroyed.
Thankfully, those bottles of fine wine were the only reported fatalities.
After Californians resisted the urge to go lick the floors of Napa’s wineries, they began to assess the damage. And if you are a fan of the cloud or the Internet of Things you’ll be interested in the new way it was done.
The fitness tracking company Jawbone, which produces the popular Up fitness tracker, found an exciting new way to track the earthquake. The Up system tracks quality of sleep as a fitness indicator, and the band uses sensors to report sleep habits to the cloud for users to track. Jawbone was able to report how powerful, and how far reaching, the quake was by charting how far away from the epicenter people woke up. They published a great infographic.
Clearly, Up was not designed as a seismograph. And we already have seismographs, so on the surface one questions exactly the value of a chart like this. But the value comes in widening the net of data sources in order to gain more insight. Even the US Geological Survey, which we assume owns a lot of seismographs, asks citizens to report whether they felt an earthquake. But just try to get the word out and inspire thousands of people to call or go to a website to help the US Geological Survey. Jawbone has access to a segment of people who may or may not think to opt-in with a US Geological Survey wearing sensors on their arms.
And this is the growing value of the IoT revolution: Sensors everywhere that can report in real time. Of course, enterprises know that. But most of them are trying to use those sensors for what they are intended to do. A smart thermostat reports on the temperature of the room. The Up example is a clever use of existing data in an unintended way — a remix if you will.
Therein lies the real value of the IoT.
As last year’s Gartner CIO Symposium, several keynotes centered around the idea of sensors in clothing, shoes, food containers, and anything else you can imagine.
Not all of the wine lost was from bottles shattered on the floor. Some was discarded because it was assumed spoiled by the shaking, or by condition changes in the storage area caused by power outages.
Tomi Engdahl says:
At Austin airport, Wi-Fi predicts how long the security line will be
Using signals from passengers’ devices, the system collects data that can help travelers plan ahead
http://www.itworld.com/article/2837781/at-austin-airport-wi-fi-predicts-how-long-the-security-line-will-be.html
The Internet can ease travel concerns in many ways, including flight-delay information, maps of road congestion, and ride-sharing apps. But a Wi-Fi network at the Austin, Texas, airport can now answer one of the great unknowns: How long will I have to wait in line at security?
That information is available thanks to fairly simple technology implemented on a Cisco Systems network run by global Wi-Fi provider Boingo Wireless. It’s an early example of how the so-called Internet of Things can make some parts of life easier.
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport got the nation’s first airport Wi-Fi network in 2000, according to Boingo, which has run the airport’s Wi-Fi since 2008. Now it’s become one of the first airports to implement Passpoint, the standard that lets users of some devices get on networks and roam between them without entering a username and password. The Cisco network that supports Passpoint can also use location technologies for additional services.
Travelers don’t even need to get on the network to take advantage of the security-wait warning system.
Here’s how the system works: Wi-Fi devices with standard settings turned on constantly send out signals looking for nearby Wi-Fi devices and access points. Access points near the security checkpoints detect those signals and the unique MAC (media access control) addresses associated with them. Using that data, the system determines when that device entered the area of the queue and when it reached the other end of the checkpoint, after the owner finished with security.
In some areas, the airport does the same thing with beacons that detect Bluetooth signals emitted by users’ devices. The unique Bluetooth ID identifies each device, so it works the same way as a MAC address. In some areas, the system uses both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Despite using a unique identifier for each device, the system doesn’t identify the person carrying that device
Tomi Engdahl says:
Another Internet of Things Board (But This One Has Lisp))
http://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/another-internet-of-things-board-but-this-one-has-lisp/
Using routers as dev boards has been a long and cherished tradition in the circles we frequent, and finally design houses in China are taking notice. There have been a few ‘Internet of Things’ boards in recent months that have taken the SoC found in low-end routers, packaged the on a board with USB, some GPIOs, and a fair bit of memory and called it a dev board. The ZERO Plus is not an exception to this trend, but it does include a very interesting feature when it comes to the development environment: this one uses Lisp as its native language.
The Zero Plus is pretty much what you would expect from a router SoC being transplanted to an Internet of Things board: it uses the Ralink RT5350 SoC, giving it 802.11b/g/n, has 32MB of RAM, 8 or 16 M of Flash, I2C, I2S, SPI, USB, two UARTs, and 14 GPIOs.
Dev boards built around somewhat more esoteric programming language isn’t anything new; The Espruino brings Javascript to ARM microcontrollers, and the MicroPython project is an astonishing undertaking and successful Kickstarter that brings the BASIC for the 21st century to the embedded world.
ZERO plus,Prototype your IOT product in seconds!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/zero-plus-prototype-your-iot-product-in-seconds
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meet Node-RED, an IBM project that fulfills the internet of things’ missing link
https://gigaom.com/2013/09/27/meet-node-red-an-ibm-project-that-fulfills-the-internet-of-things-missing-link/
When you add thousands of devices to a network it’s going to be impossible to program in the same way we program computers today. IBM is working on Node-RED a tool to help “wire” the internet of things.
If you play around with enough connected devices or hang out with enough people thinking about what it means to have 200 connected gizmos in your home, eventually you get to a pretty big elephant in the room: How the heck are you going to connect all this stuff? To a hub? To the internet? To each other?
It’s one thing to set a program to automate your lights/thermostat/whatever to go to a specific setting when you hit a button/lock your door/exit your home’s Wi-Fi network, but it’s quite another to have a truly intuitive and contextual experience in a connected home if you have to manually program it using IFTTT or a series of apps. Imagine if instead of popping a couple Hue Light Bulbs into your bedroom lamp, you bought home 30 or 40 for your entire home. That’s a lot of adding and setting preferences.
The basic idea is to program the internet of things much like you play a Sims-style video game — you set things up to perform in a way you think will work and then see what happens. Instead of programming an action, you’re programming behaviors and trends in a device or class of devices. Then you put them together, give them a direction and they figure out how to get there.
Over at IBM, a few engineers are actually building something that might be helpful in implementing such systems. It’s called node-RED and it’s a way to interject a layer of behaviors for devices using a visual interface. It’s built on top of node.js and is available over on github.
The idea behind the node-RED effort came from playing around with connected devices, and the work it took to make things work together. The engineers behind the code — Nicholas O’Leary, Dave Conway-Jones and Andy Stanford-Clark — are also working with IBM’s MQTT messaging protocol. But with node-RED they aren’t focused on how devices talk to each other, but how they work together.
Node-RED documentation
http://nodered.org/docs/index.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Data Concentrator Reference Design
http://www.eeweb.com/project/design_library/data-concentrator-reference-design
This TI data concentrator reference design
supporting connectivity to more than 1,000 smart meters. Developers can easily plug in different connectivity modules, including Sub-1GHz (LPRF), general packet radio service (GPRS), near field communication (NFC) and TI’s power line communication (PLC) system-on-module robust G3 and PRIME support.
IPv4, IPv6 and 6LoWPAN protocols allow developers to connect their data concentrator products to a wide range of home and building automation applications
Tomi Engdahl says:
National Instruments Joins CROWD for 5G Wireless Networks Research
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324380&
5G wireless networks will represent a major departure from today’s wireless networking structures in terms of bandwidth, management, flexibility, and many other aspects. Currently, the state of 5G technologies is in deeply in the pre-commercial phase. National Instruments (NI) now has joined the EU research project CROWD to define 5G wireless technologies.
CROWD, which stands for Connectivity management for energy Optimised Wireless Dense networks, is one of the European Union’s Framework 7 projects. The consortium researches the combination of small- and large-density cells in a heterogeneous wireless network for an efficient architecture in which small cells meet traffic hotspot needs, while large cells offer reliable coverage for high-mobility users. As a CROWD member, NI will research reliable high-speed data access at all points in dense networks through small cell densification.
NI, one of seven collaborators in the CROWD consortium, leads the testbed activities within the CROWD research project in the domain of future communication and ICT services infrastructures. An NI PXI chassis running FlexRIO FPGA modules, NI 5791 RF front-end modules, and LabVIEW system design software provides the infrastructure for an LTE/WiFi testbed for conducting experiments to showcase software-defined networking concepts proposed by various partners in the project.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UNH-IOL Selected as G.fast Test Lab
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324369&
The Broadband Forum has announced the selection of the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) as the official test lab for the latest upcoming iteration of DSL, known as G.fast. The UNH-IOL is currently the only official test site for G.fast products.
G.fast, based on the G.9701 draft standard, is growing from the need for short range, high-speed data communications over copper to homes and businesses. The grand plans for bringing fiber directly to most homes proved too expensive.
G.fast expands data rates by using wider bandwidth than other forms of DSL, initially up 106 MHz with the possibility of expanding to 212 MHz. UNH-IOL staff engineer Lincoln Lavoie explained the data rates and distances of G.fast.
The target maximum speed of G.fast is aiming for 1 Gbit/s for the combined downstream/upstream rate (the split is configured by the operator, i.e. 80/20).
As for speed and reach, the current draft of the standard is quoting the values below
500 to 1000 Mbit/s on a copper wire pair shorter than 100 m
500 Mbit/s at 100 m
200 Mbit/s at 200 m
150 Mbit/s at 250 m
500 Mbit/s at 50 m, while operating in the band above 17 MHz
The transceivers are able to adapt to the channel and noise conditions, so real hardware rates may vary based on the test conditions. I have seen a demo at Broadband World Forum this week with speeds of 500 Mbps at 100 m.
There are also other factors in play here, such as excluding the 2 MHz to 17 MHz bands to allow co-existence with VDSL2 in the same binders, which will also affect the total bit-rate.
The ITU-T is expecting the final consent of the G.9701 standard to occur in December 2014.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China’s 5-Year Plan Revealed
Analyst gives inside scoop on China’s future
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324373&
“The Chinese government is doing a number of things to promote e-commerse in China,” Kitty Fok, managing director of IDC China, said in a company video posted on YouTube (shown below). “The first thing they have done is create a program called Broadband China the goal of which is to increase broadband access to everyone in the country — with a goal of covering 95 percent of cities whereas today its only 45%.”
Kitty Fok sharing her views of the Chinese government’s strategy to advance the semiconductor industry in China with nationwide broadband and smartphones using local branded components.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How iPad’s soft SIM lets Apple pit carriers AGAINST each other
He who holds the SIM holds the power
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/27/ipads_soft_sim_is_the_thin_end_of_the_wedge_for_carriers/
The SIM card is the most potent instrument of control in the mobile carrier’s hands, controlling the relationship with the customer and giving it unmatched information about how its users behave.
The humble SIM has enabled mobile operators to assert control over important areas which were not initially in their kingdom, such as security, Wi-Fi access (via EAP-SIM authentication) and possibly payments (via integrated NFC). No wonder, then, that Apple has consistently sought to seize some of that SIM-based power for itself – and now it has taken an important step in that direction, with the announcement of its own ‘Apple SIM’, which allows iPad users to switch between operators without juggling multiple SIM cards.
Announced along with the new iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 tablets last week, the soft SIM may seem a matter purely of convenience for consumers, many of which are used to having multiple SIM cards, particularly to get cheaper deals when abroad.
“The new Apple SIM is pre-installed on iPad Air 2 with Wi-Fi + Cellular models,” the company states. “The Apple SIM gives you the flexibility to choose from a variety of short term plans from select carriers in the US and UK right on your iPad.”
This means that, more than ever, the consumer’s primary relationship is with Apple not the cellco. Connectivity can be viewed far more like that in public Wi-Fi – picking the best deal for a particular situation from a menu of scarcely noticed provider logos.
That would seem to be a way to reduce the importance of the cellco channel, by keeping a particularly attractive option exclusive to the Apple stores and websites.
With the multi-operator SIM, Apple could even start to pitch the carriers against one another, presenting special deals at the sign-up stage, suggested one analyst, Ian Fogg from IHS. “The software-managed Apple SIM model moves Apple into a mediation position because for operators to be present on the Apple SIM, operators must negotiate terms direct with Apple, rather than offering their own carrier iPad SIM direct to any end user,” he wrote in a research note.
Apple and Google have both sought to reduce their reliance on operator distribution before, notably when the latter launched its first Nexus model, selling it only via a special website on which customers could choose a carrier plan.
The fear of being left out of an Apple initiative is a powerful way to get operators to swallow bitter medicine, but the iPhone maker is more cautious than it sometimes has been in the past. After all, this scheme only applies to the iPad, not the iPhone (so far), and tablets have always been more about short term data deals than handsets, and are less likely to be subsidized than handsets.
However, outside the US, Apple had underestimated the continuing resilience of the cellcos, a mistake it is not making this time around. Four years ago, it quickly backed away from the embedded SIM idea, before it had even made it official, because MNOs – especially in Europe, where the scheme was expected to appear first – produced their trump card when they threatened to withdraw subsidies and prioritise other smartphones over the Apple device in their marketing.
“Apple has long been trying to build closer and closer relationships and cut out the operators,”
The logical next step, if Apple is brave enough, would be to embed the Apple SIM in all iPads and even iPhones, cutting out the operators’ beloved SIM card and all the business models that drives. Given past history, we would not expect this move to happen in the short term – perhaps not until embedded SIMs are becoming the norm anyway, driven by the very different needs of the internet of things (IoT).
When connected devices number billions not millions, the job of provisioning, authenticating and managing them will be very different, and most of the products will have the SIM cards embedded inside them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
WD Purple range hits 6TB capacity for even more surveillance
Improves playback, reduces judder
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2377986/wd-purple-range-hits-6tb-capacity-for-even-more-surveillance
“Video surveillance has long been a pioneering Internet of Things application,” said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president and general manager of WD’s Storage Technology group.
“Driven by machine-to-machine interaction between high-resolution, high bit-rate video cameras and high-capacity surveillance video recorders, IoT brings access and big data analytics to improve users’ security.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Netscout Acquires Communications Businesses From Danaher
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324394&
Acquisitions let companies accelerate growth by increasing global footprint, product lines, and revenues. Lately, more and more test-equipment companies choose to go the acquisition route rather than grow their businesses organically. This can be attributed to several factors; as the communications market becomes more integrated, it becomes increasingly difficult for manufacturers to provide a product that does it all. Netscout Systems is continuing that trend.
On October 13, NetScout announced its acquisition of the Danaher Corp. communications businesses in a $2.6 billion deal. Businesses to be acquired in this deal are:
Arbor Networks, a provider of security products
Tektronix Communications, a service assurance and monitoring company
Fluke Networks, a network performance monitoring company
This acquisition will significantly increase Netscout’s product line and make it a much larger provider of network performance monitoring, service assurance, and security products.
Fluke Networks alone will increase Netscout’s share in network-performance monitoring equipment for enterprises to more than 20%
Because Tektronix Communications acquired Newfield Wireless in December 2013, the acquisition will make Netscout the leader in VoLTE (voice-over LTE) monitoring with a market share exceeding 50% of the global VoLTE probe-based network monitoring systems.
According to Frost & Sullivan research, Tektronix Communications is the leader in the markets for passive network monitoring and wireless protocol analyzers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco Leads 2.5/5G Ethernet Effort
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1324395&
Aquantia, Cisco Systems, Freescale, and Xilinx have formed the NBASE-T Alliance to develop 2.5 and 5 Gigabit/second Ethernet specifications, plugging a hole between today’s 1 and 10G standards for cost-sensitive enterprise uses.
“The industry is moving to the next generation of [WiFi] 802.11ac – Wave 2 with theoretical data rates of up to 6.9 Gigabit/sec; a 1 Gbit/s [wired Ethernet] link between the access point and switch is not sufficient,” Chris Spain, vice president of product management at Cisco, said in a release. “Our mission [is] to increase network speed without the need to upgrade the cabling infrastructure.”
The NBASE-T Alliance will specify 2.5 and 5 Gbit/s rates over Cat5e and Cat6 cables with power-over-Ethernet
Ethernet PHY specialist Aquantia has 2.5 and 5G silicon in production
The enterprise market truly requires IEEE-based standardization, Wheeler said, and Broadcom made a call for interest to discuss in November a possible IEEE 2.5 and 5G standard.
Indeed the NBASE-T promoters made their case for the new data rates at a recent meeting of the Ethernet Alliance.
The effort is separate from the 25G Ethernet Consortium led by Arista, Broadcom, Google, Microsoft, and Mellanox, championing standards for warehouse-scale data center networks.
NBASE-T Alliance
http://www.nbaset.org/
Tomi Engdahl says:
POWERLINK – One network for all systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxDdnnHAyY&list=PL_prqCg0ThYf7mXZz4oEsQdj4lNvZrSZx&index=5
POWERLINK, the deterministic real-time protocol for standard Ethernet is presented at PACK EXPO. This open source Ethernet protocol can address both data and control needs on a single wire, while reducing design costs, minimizing system jitter, and achieving maximum system performance.
Ethernet Powerlink
http://www.ethernet-powerlink.org/
POWERLINK = CANopen over Ethernet
CANopen is one of the most widely used application protocols today. Key benefits of this protocol include standardized device description files that make status information, parameter configurations, device characteristics and other relevant data available in transparent form on the network. A major decision made by the Ethernet POWERLINK Standardization Group (EPSG) was to define the protocol’s application layer as a carrier of all CANopen mechanisms. CAN in Automation (CiA), the international association of CAN users and manufacturers, was significantly involved in this development.
POWERLINK uses the same device description files as CANopen as well as the same object dictionaries and communication mechanisms, including process data objects (PDOs), service data objects (SDOs) and network management (NMT). As with CANopen, direct cross-traffic is also one of the essential features of POWERLINK. All CANopen applications and device profiles can be directly implemented in POWERLINK environments as well – the applications will not see a difference between the two protocols. For this reason, POWERLINK can also be referred to as “CANopen over Ethernet”.
Unlike other real-time industrial Ethernet systems, POWERLINK is a completely software-based solution that is 100% compliant with the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard.
100 % open technology
The EPSG does not charge any licensing fees to use this technology. POWERLINK is an open technology, which always gives customers the choice among various POWERLINK manufacturers and service providers (see “Technology providers” section) and ensures an optimal price/performance ratio for every application.
openPOWERLINK is a complete protocol solution for masters and slaves. Programmed in ANSI C, this implementation can be easily ported to any target system. openPOWERLINK has been released on the SourceForge code repository under the BSD license, which grants permission for anyone to use, distribute, modify and enhance the software free of charge. It is also possible for developers to integrate the software into retail products and source code for custom modifications without disclosure. Detailed instructions for setting up a system and getting it up and running are available at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/openpowerlink
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ethernet Powerlink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_Powerlink
Ethernet Powerlink is a deterministic real-time protocol for standard Ethernet. It is an open protocol managed by the Ethernet POWERLINK Standardization Group (EPSG). It was introduced by Austrian automation company B&R in 2001.
This protocol has nothing to do with power distribution via Ethernet cabling or power over Ethernet (PoE), power line communication or Bang & Olufsens PowerLink cable.
Ethernet Powerlink expands Ethernet with a mixed polling and timeslicing mechanism. This provides:
Guaranteed transfer of time-critical data in very short isochronic cycles with configurable response time
Time-synchronisation of all nodes in the network with very high precision of sub-microseconds
Transmission of less timecritical data in a reserved asynchronous channel
Modern implementations reach cycle-times of under 200 µs and a time-precision (jitter) of less than 1 µs.
Powerlink was standardized by the Ethernet Powerlink Standardization Group (EPSG) and founded in June 2003 as an independent association.
The original physical layer specified was 100BASE-TX Fast Ethernet.
Repeating hubs instead of switches within the Real-time domain is recommended to minimise delay and jitter.
Since the end of 2006, Ethernet Powerlink with Gigabit Ethernet supported
The standard Ethernet Data Link Layer is extended by an additional bus scheduling mechanism which secures that at a time only one node is accessing the network. The schedule is divided into an isochronous phase and an asynchronous phase.
Tomi Engdahl says:
TIA moving forward with wideband multimode fiber standard
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2014/10/tia-wbmmf-standard.html?cmpid=EnlCIMOctober272014
During its most recent meeting, held the week of October 6-10, the Telecommunications Industry Association’s (TIA) TR-42 Engineering Committee accepted a project request to initiate a standard document to specify a new performance level for multimode fiber. As we reported in late September, CommScope and partner companies are developing a multimode fiber that will support the transmission of 100G over one fiber pair. Such transmission will be possible because the fiber will support wave-division multiplexing (WDM) applications. CommScope is using the term “wideband multimode fiber”—or WBMMF—to refer to this in-development multimode fiber technology.