The future is bright and lightning fast

Mark Weiser of Xerox, predicted in 1991, the proliferation of inch-, foot- and yard- size computers  connecting to the Internet. The prediction has come true today with smartphones, tablets and web-enabled tvs, dramatically changing the Internet landscape, giving rise to what is now known as the  Internet of Devices or Things (IoT).

The IoT is growing much faster than the desktop Internet.  More users are connecting to the Internet from mobile and embedded devices than from desktops. It is predicted that by 2020, each person in the UK will own and use 27 internet connected things.  IoT is a term coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999, where data from scientific instruments, embedded sensors, household appliances, ambient devices, actuators, etc., and an assortment of net-connected objects will eclipse information produced by humans.  The Internet growth follows Moore’ Law and is doubling every 5.32 years!  IoT was ‘born’ around 2008, when more devices were connected to the Internet than the population of the world.

Today we talk about the health monitoring bathroom, which has a medicine cabinet, WC sensors, weighing machines, all connected via the IoT to the Hospital, so that information about the person can be sent there directly.  Similarly, Geiger counters in Fukushima continuously measure radiation levels  at the 2011 earthquake site and send data to Tokyo for monitoring.

Thus the Internet of Things (IoT) comprises many billions of Internet-connected objects (ICOs) or "things" that can sense, communicate, compute and potentially actuate, as well as have intelligence, multimodal interfaces, physical/virtual identities and attributes.

Researchers have identified 54 application domains under twelve categories: smart cities, smart environment, smart water, smart metering, security and emergencies, smart clothes, retail, logistics, industrial control, smart agriculture, smart animal farming, domestic and home automation and eHealth. Society-focused applications of IoT include smart cities, telecommunications, medical technology, healthcare, smart buildings, home and office, media, entertainment and ticketing.

Sparked, a Dutch start-up company, has implanted sensors in the ears of cattle. This allows farmers to monitor the cows’ health and track their movements, ensuring a healthier, more plentiful supply of milk and meat for people to consume.  On an average, each cow generates about 200MB of information a year.

IoT requires an integrated fabric of devices, data, connections, processes and people.   Most important of all, it requires the deployment of 5G data connectivity for mobile networks, at speeds of 10-100Gbps, much beyond the 1Gbps that 4G will give by this decade end. Beyond 2020, more capacity will be needed, since mobile data traffic has been forecasted to grow more than 24-fold between 2010 and 2015 and more than 500-fold between 2010 and 2020.  Low-latency systems will be required because 76 per cent of data traffic will be used for streaming video and a large amount of that will be at 4K or even 8K resolutions.

5G will provide unbelievably fast broadband speeds and will have enough capacity to perform every function wherever we want it to, without a drop in speed or connection, no matter how many people are connected at the same time. The aim of 5G is to become invisible, a technology that’s “just there”, like electricity. It will enable device manufacturers to realize the IoT as it will always be on and able to be tapped into without regionalisation.

The future is definitely bright and lightning fast!!