This article introduces IoT basics: what is IoT, and the 7 common IoT protocols.
What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) should not be new to readers. The concept of the Internet of Things was first introduced in 1999, and it has been called the third wave of the world’s information industry development after computers and the Internet and has been developed for more than 20 years.
Nowadays, in our daily life, we have access to many IoT products, such as various smart home appliances, smart door locks, etc. These are the more mature applications of IoT technology.
The earliest definition of IoT is to connect all items to the Internet through information-sensing devices such as radio frequency identification to achieve intelligent identification and management. Of course, with the development of the Internet of Things today, its definition and scope have been extended and changed, the following are the characteristics of the modern Internet of Things.
1. Internet of Things is also the Internet
The Internet of Things, or the Internet of Things, is part of the Internet. IoT uses the infrastructure of the Internet as a carrier for information transfer, i.e., modern IoT products must be things that are connected to the Internet in some way, and things upload/download data through the Internet as well as interact with people.
This is a typical IoT scenario, which is one of the Internet applications. Things are connected to the Internet, and data and information are interacted through the Internet, while data are aggregated to the cloud like other Internet applications.
2. The main body of IoT is things
It was said earlier that modern IoT application is a kind of Internet application, but there is another big difference between IoT application and traditional Internet application, that is, the subject of traditional Internet producing and consuming data is human, while the subject of modern IoT producing and consuming data is a thing.
In modern IoT application scenarios, the producer of data is a thing, such as smart devices or sensors, and the consumer of data is often a thing.
In the application of smart agriculture, the temperature sensor in the incubation room uploads the temperature of the incubation room to the control center periodically. When the temperature falls below a certain threshold, the center remotely turns on the heating equipment according to preset rules.
In this scenario, the producer of the data is the temperature sensor and the consumer of the data is the heating device, both of which are things, and people are not directly involved.
The biggest difference between IoT and traditional Internet: the producers and consumers of data are mainly things, and the content of data is also closely related to things.
3. Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest words in the IT field in recent years. Looking at the development of artificial intelligence, we can see that the development of artificial intelligence has been able to advance by leaps and bounds for two main reasons.
The development of hardware makes the learning time of deep learning neural networks rapidly shorten. In the era of big data, the cost of acquiring large amounts of data has become low.
In fact, the second reason is particularly important. Neural networks, by their very nature, require massive amounts of data for learning, and the amount of effective data available for learning often determines the effectiveness of the final trained neural network, and even the importance of algorithms can be ranked after the amount of data.
IoT devices, such as smart home appliances and wearable devices, are generating a huge amount of data every day, which can be used as good training data to feed the neural network after processing and cleaning.
At the same time, the trained neural network can be reapplied to IoT devices, thus forming a virtuous circle.
IoT is a very good application scenario for AI to be landed. With the rapid development of AI, IoT, a theory and technology that was also proposed many years ago, will also usher in a new spring.
At present, the Internet data entrance gradually converges towards several giants (such as Ali, and Tencent), and the cost of obtaining data for smaller companies is getting higher and higher, so the IoT, a data area that has not been fully developed, is particularly important.
The front-end devices will eventually tend to be the same and there will be homogeneous competition, while how to collect and use the massive data generated by the devices well is the decisive factor in whether you have a competitive advantage.
4. Current situation and the prospect of IoT
With the advent of the 5G era, the development of IoT will be very rapid. Meanwhile, the new financing in the direction of IoT has been on an upward trend. Here we will talk about the prospect of the IoT industry from the perspective of application scenarios.
The application scenarios of IoT are very wide, including
Smart City Smart Building Telematics Smart Community Smart Home Smart Medical Industrial IoT In different scenarios, IoT applications are very different, with strong heterogeneity of terminals and network architectures.
This means that there are enough market segments in the IoT industry that it is difficult to have one company that is dominant in terms of market share while being large enough to allow enough companies to survive because the market is large enough.
This is not common in the Internet industry, where the head effect is very obvious and the majority of the market share is often occupied by the top two or three companies.
The IoT model is a bit more important than the Internet model. IoT applications are always accompanied by front-end devices, which means the switching cost for users is relatively high. After all, removing and reinstalling a device is much more complicated than downloading an application again with a single finger.
This also means that the capital drive is relatively weaker in the IoT industry. If you get the first mover advantage, then the latter wants to catch up or push you out of the market by the power of capital alone, then he has to pay a much bigger price than in the Internet industry.
The IoT industry is still a blue ocean, and small-scale companies are perfectly capable of competing with large-scale companies in this industry.
After the heat of AI and blockchain cools down, IoT is likely to be the next windfall. As a programmer, it is very necessary to make some knowledge base in advance before the windfall comes.
7 common IoT protocols
Here we introduce 7 common IoT protocols.
1. MQTT protocol of the 7 common IoT protocols
What is the MQTT protocol?
MQTT protocol (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) was developed by Andy Stanford-Clark of IBM and Arlen Nipper of Arcom in 1999 for a project to connect oil pipelines via a satellite network. Designed to meet the needs of low power consumption and low network bandwidth, the MQTT protocol of the IoT protocols was designed from the outset to include the following features.
Simple implementation to provide QoS for data transmission Lightweight, low bandwidth consumption to transmit any type of data Maintainable session.
As it has evolved over the years, the focus of the MQTT protocol is no longer just on embedded systems, but on the broader world of the Internet of Things.
In brief, the MQTT protocol of the IoT protocols has the following features.
TCP-based application layer protocol using a C/S architecture using a subscribe/publish model to decouple the sender and receiver of messages providing 3 types of message QoS (Quality of Service): at most once, at least once, only once sending and receiving messages are asynchronous and the sender does not need to wait for the receiver to answer
The architecture of the MQTT protocol of the IoT protocols consists of a Broker and multiple Clients connected to the Broker
MQTT protocol of the IoT protocols can provide communication security for a large number of low-power, unreliable working network environments of IoT devices. And it also has a big role in the field of mobile Internet, many Android apps’ push function is based on the MQTT protocol implementation, and some IM implementation is also based on the MQTT protocol.
2. MQTT-SN protocol of the 7 common IoT protocols
What is the MQTT-SN protocol?
MQTT-SN (MQTT for Sensor Network) protocol is the sensor version of the MQTT protocol of the IoT protocols.
Although the MQTT protocol is a lightweight application layer protocol of the IoT protocols, the MQTT protocol runs on top of the TCP stack, and the TCP protocol is less suitable for certain devices with very limited computing power and power, such as sensors.
MQTT-SN runs on top of the UDP protocol while retaining most of the signaling and features of the MQTT protocol, such as subscription and publishing.
The MQTT-SN protocol introduces the role of the MQTT-SN Gateway, which is responsible for converting the MQTT-SN protocol to the MQTT protocol and communicating with the remote MQTT Broker. the MQTT-SN protocol supports the automatic discovery of gateways.
3. CoAP Protocol of the 7 common IoT protocols
What is the CoAP protocol?
CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) protocol is a protocol that runs on resource-constrained devices. CoAP protocol of the IoT protocols usually also runs on UDP protocol.
The CoAP protocol is designed to be very small, with a minimum packet size of 4 bytes, and uses a request-response interaction model similar to the HTTP protocol.
A device can identify an entity by a CoAP-like URL and use HTTP-like PUT, GET, POST, and DELETE request commands to obtain or modify the state of this entity.
At the same time, CoAP of the IoT protocols provides an observation mode in which an observer can indicate the entity object to be observed to the CoAP server via the OBSERVE directive.
When the state of the entity object changes, the observer can receive the latest state of the entity object, similar to the subscription function in the MQTT protocol of the IoT protocols.
4. LwM2M Protocol of the 7 common IoT protocols
What is LwM2M protocol?
The LwM2M (Lightweight Machine-To-Machine) protocol is a lightweight protocol for the Internet of Things defined by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). It uses a RESTful interface to provide access, management, and communication of devices and is also suitable for resource-constrained devices.
The underlying LwM2M protocol uses the CoAP protocol of the IoT protocols to transmit data and signaling. In the LwM2M protocol architecture, the CoAP protocol can run on top of UDP or SMS (Short Message Service) to enable secure data transmission via DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security).
The LwM2M protocol of the IoT protocols architecture consists of 3 main entities – LwM2M Bootstrap Server, LwM2M Server, and LwM2M Client.
The LwM2M Bootstrap Server is responsible for guiding the LwM2M Client to register and access the LwM2M Server, after which the LwM2M Server and LwM2M Client can interact through the interfaces specified in the protocol.
5. HTTP Protocol of the 7 common IoT protocols
What is HTTP protocol?
As we mentioned before, IoT is also the Internet. HTTP, a protocol widely used on the Internet, can be applied to the IoT under the right circumstances.
In some devices with abundant computing and hardware resources, such as those running Android OS, it is perfectly possible to use the HTTP protocol of the IoT protocols to upload and download data, just like developing mobile applications.
Devices can also use WebSocket running on HTTP protocol to actively receive data from the server.
6. LoRaWAN protocol of the 7 common IoT protocols
What is the LoRaWAN protocol?
LoRaWAN protocol is a low-power WAN protocol proposed and promoted by LoRa Alliance, which is different from several protocols we introduced before.
MQTT protocol and CoAP protocol all run on the application layer, the underlying layer uses TCP protocol or UDP protocol for data transmission, and the whole protocol stack runs on the IP network.
LoRaWAN protocol of the IoT protocols, on the other hand, is a physical layer/data link layer protocol, which solves the problem of how devices access the Internet and do not run on the IP network.
Lora (Long Range) is a wireless communication technology, which has the characteristics of long-range usage and low power consumption. In the above scenario, users can then use LoRaWAN technology for networking and install LoRa-enabled modules on engineering equipment.
The LoRa relay device sends data to the LoRa gateway located outside the tunnel with Internet access, and the LoRa gateway then encapsulates the data into data protocol packets that can be transmitted in IP networks via TCP protocol or UDP protocol (such as MQTT protocol) and then sends it to the data center in the cloud.
7. NB-IoT Protocol of the 7 common IoT protocols
What is the NB-IoT protocol?
The NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) protocol, like the LoRaWAN protocol, is a protocol of IoT protocols that connects devices to the physical/data link layer of the Internet.
Unlike LoRA, the NB-IoT protocol is built and runs on cellular networks, consumes less bandwidth, and can be deployed directly to existing GSM or LTE networks.
Devices install NB-IoT-enabled chips and corresponding IoT cards and then connect to NB-IoT base stations to access the Internet. Moreover, the NB-IoT protocol does not require a gateway for protocol conversion like the LoRaWAN protocol, and the accessed devices can directly use the IP networks for data transmission.
The NB-IoT protocol of IoT protocols improves the gain by about 20dB compared with traditional base stations and can cover places where the signal was difficult to cover before, such as underground garages, pipes, and basements.
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