The Embedded Internet

Nearly every post in this Embedded Internet blog is implicitly or explicitly about Device Networks, so we offer this definition:

Device Networks are communication networks that link unattended physical objects to each other and to other networks and allow us to sense, control, identify or locate those objects.

It is easier to discuss Device Networks after describing two other familiar networks: Computer Networks and Voice Networks.

Computer Networks

Nearly everyone understands what we mean by computer networks — these are the high-speed digital networks that link our laptops, desktop computers and file servers. Computer Networks carry the massive torrents of data that serve us our e-mail, web pages, streaming audio and YouTube posts of chihuahuas on skateboards. In computer networks, TCP/IP and UDP are the dominant communication protocols and speed is the most important figure of merit: faster is always better.

Voice Networks

We are all equally familiar with voice networks, which link everything that starts or ends at a telephone handset. Back in the 20th century, most voice networks were made of copper wires carrying circuit-switched analog signals, but those have largely been replaced by packet-switched digital signals carried over wires and fiber optic cables or, increasingly, carried over wireless cellular networks.

We are seeing a wonderful blurring of voice networks and computer networks: Office buildings are now outfitted with telephone systems that use VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), in which voice traffic is stuffed into TCP/IP packets and shunted over standard computer networks. And content originating from file servers — such as web pages, digital music, satellite radio — is being delivered directly to our mobile handsets The dominant figure of merit for voice networks is availability — you want your handset to be connected no matter where you are.

Device Networks

Which brings us to our definition of device networks: Device Networks are communication networks that link unattended physical objects to each other and to other networks, allowing us to sense, control, identify or locate those objects. Device networks are often wireless, but there are many examples of wired device networks.

Device networks have gone by many names including: Wireless Sensor Networks; Active RFID; Machine-to-Machine (M2M); the “X-Internet”; Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS); Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA); Real-Time Process Control and a host of others. The label of choice depends upon the application or upon market researcher discussing it.

Device Networks normally have neither the high-bandwidth requirements of Computer Networks nor the low-latency requirements of Voice Networks. But all Device Networks, regardless of application or underlying technology, must be unimpeachably autonomous and able to function dependably under a broad range of conditions without human intervention. Device Networks must either never break, or if they do break, they must have the means to repair themselves.

---

copyright © 2008 nbt ventures, all rights reserved

---

share the love: | | | | | | | | |