The Future of IoT Depends on Addressing These Challenges

Keysight executives and other industry experts recently explored the possibilities and hurdles of connecting everything and everyone during Keysight World 2021. Several speakers underscored how faster technology adoption, technology dependency, and evolving customer expectations are impacting the design and development of new digital devices.

As devices become more widespread and interconnected, we can capture and apply behavioral data in real-time—enabling every industry to evolve faster. Device makers are now using customer data to improve user experience and product performance. Doctors are using data from medical devices to make more informed medical decisions and save lives. Meanwhile, operations teams are using machine analytics to improve manufacturing efficiency.

Tens of billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices surround us today, and billions more are projected to connect to the internet in the next few years. At the same time, digital devices are becoming more prolific and vital in previously unconnected industries like healthcare, factories, and cities. Addressing common challenges in the IoT ecosystem is key to the future of IoT and ensuring reliable connectivity, high performance, and user security.

While each IoT application faces unique design and test challenges, Keysight has identified their common denominators and is applying those learnings to advance IoT across all industries. Keysight defines the five ‘C’ challenges across the IoT lifecycle as connectivity, continuity, compliance, coexistence, and cybersecurity. In this article, we dive deeper into how these learnings are accelerating all IoT technologies forward.

Improving Power Continuity for Smart Wearables

Wearable IoT devices like smartwatches and fitness trackers are becoming integral in our daily lives. Estimates suggest over 400 million will be sold in 2021 alone. Stylish next-generation smart wearable devices are becoming smaller, while their performance and functionality increase with every new generation. As performance increases, so too does the power the device consumes. Improving power continuity is critical to the success of any wearable IoT device.

Since these devices never shut down and consume power in sleep mode, the design engineer must focus on power consumption and ensure efficiency throughout its operation in any mode of operation.

Keysight is working with its customers to achieve exceptional battery life for their wearables through accurate battery drain testing that employs a patented seamless current-ranging technology. Learn how a world-leading multinational semiconductor company is developing System-on-a-Chip (SoC) for advanced wearable devices with high performance and low power consumption.

Protecting Patient Data as IoT Expands in Healthcare

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is revolutionizing the healthcare industry. Doctors can now diagnose and treat patients better, prescribe targeted and personalized medicine, and improve communication and workflow for hospital staff.

With the number of connected medical devices in a healthcare facility increasing, the flow of health data brings additional risks and vulnerabilities to the healthcare industry. Sensitive health data is a preferred target of hackers.

Several large security breaches and cyber-attacks have demonstrated the challenge many healthcare organizations struggle with over the last few years. Healthcare administrative and healthcare practitioners are taking steps to improve their network security to protect their hospital, their data, and most importantly, their patients. Learn more about the future of IoT in healthcare and the challenges that need to be addressed.

Making Factory Equipment More Effective

IoT will play a significant role in achieving the promises of the fourth industrial revolution — Industry 4.0. The first revolution saw water- and steam-powered mechanization of production. The second revolution shifted to using electricity to power production. The third industrial revolution came with computer-based automation of production. The fourth revolution builds on the third, using data to optimize business processes, massively improve efficiencies, and enable further automation. Factories across the organization are connected to one another along with customers and suppliers-driving efficiency and productivity.

Through systematic analysis of industrial IoT data, factories can understand their systems’ operational state and overall performance. By continuously monitoring and analyzing this data, it is possible to identify machine behavior patterns under varying conditions, helping factories understand how to optimize machine uptime and efficiency to maximize throughput.

Learn how a global Internet of Things (IoT) manufacturer based in Europe improved operational equipment effectiveness by 40%.

Ensuring Reliable Connectivity for Smart Cities

Smart cities are more than just a vision. With one smart city up and running in Korea and more planned elsewhere, it’s quickly becoming a reality. Smart cities bring the IoT to life with a fabric of seamless connectivity that improves quality of life, stimulates economic growth, sustainably manages resources, and reduces pollution. In the smart city, wireless connectivity between all IoT devices and infrastructure is required.

That connectivity must be seamless, reliable, and deliver both high-quality voice and data services. The use of so many wireless connectivity technologies makes the design and test of the IoT devices operating in the smart city challenging. Device connectivity presents new challenges to designers — highly complex systems, evolving wireless standards, and dense device deployments that must work reliably and without fail.

Smart Cities provides an in-depth analysis of the critical issues involved in the development of smart city technologies. The book is divided into four key topic sections — vision and reality, technologies and standards, transportation considerations, and infrastructure and environment — and examines such issues as applications, technologies, and standards related to the smart city. Keysight Technologies is proud to have been a key contributor to the chapter, The Internet of Things: Nervous System of the Smart City.

Enabling Device Coexistence in a Smart Home

The smart home is well on its way to becoming mainstream. IoT devices integrated into new homes are increasingly common, and many homes are being retrofitted too. By as early as 2022, Gartner predicts the average family home could contain hundreds of smart devices.

Consumers expect IoT devices to operate as promised in the home environment, but every home contains a different number and variety of coexisting devices. Coexistence issues impact the performance of IoT devices in a crowded wireless environment. Data can be lost, voice quality may degrade, and your device’s operating range and battery life may decrease. Ensuring reliable wireless network performance in the presence of many smart devices on potentially overcrowded radio bands requires a solid plan for coexistence test.

It is challenging to ensure IoT device coexistence. You cannot have a high degree of confidence about coexistence unless you take appropriate actions during the design process. Learn more about the ways device-makers are ensuring their devices can coexist in the real world.

The Future of IoT

As the world adopts digital devices at increasing speeds, product developers must work smarter to continuously deliver on connectivity, performance, and experience. Sharing knowledge and best practices will enable all industries to take advantage of the benefits IoT promises. Download the 5 C’s of IoT eBook to stay ahead of the curve and bring your IoT device to market on time.

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