Intelligence at the Edge: Realities of the Digital Transformation 

by Alon Segal

Regardless of industry, two words stand out as the sign of a new dawn: Digital Transformation. It’s a topic that has commanded headlines for several years now, with countless books, blogs, presentations, events and bylines devoted to it. While it comes as no surprise many claim that 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) will lead to transformation, some of the conversation is fueled by hype. In the months and weeks leading up to 2019’s premier industry events — Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona and Embedded World in Nuremburg, Germany — the buildup around 5G and IoT was palpable.

Demonstrations from exhibitors at MWC provided tangible evidence of the progress being made at a network level to enable some of the most promising innovations. At the Vodafone booth, for example, attendees had the opportunity to drive an 11-ton truck over 5G. The simulation, which took place on an airfield in Germany, was remarkably real and demonstrated low latency, with the truck responding to every turn of the wheel just the same as if the driver had been sitting in the cab. In Nuremberg, several companies, including my own, lifted the lid on how the industry is enabling the necessary technical advances by building very low-powered IoT edge devices that can deliver atomized intelligence and processing power required for future deployments.

Many demonstrations were possible thanks to organizations such as the GSMA (Groupe Spéciale Mobile Association), 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) and the mobile operator community that worked tenaciously to define and standardize 5G network technologies. Imagined and developed to enable compatibility among the many and varied machine-related applications, 5G was intentionally designed to allow multiple access technologies such as satellite, Wi-Fi, fixed line and other 3GPP innovation to work in tandem in order to serve its many diverse use cases. That, in turn, paved the way for 3GPP technologies such as Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and machine-type communications over LTE networks (LTE-M) to become part of the 5G family. It’s worth noting that 3GPP now recognizes the 5G Mobile IoT as Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technologies using licensed spectrum bands such as LTE-M and NB-IoT. 

It’s not just the network operators and standards bodies at the forefront of the revolution. As IoT edge computing emerges, increasing interest in IoT hardware from software giants reflects the true importance of this technology as they look to capitalize on the shift of intelligence from the core network to the edge devices.  At Embedded World in particular, it was clear that this focus on the edge is being driven by vendor innovation in IoT intelligence, with control transferring to the “things” themselves and breaking down the conventional cloud model.

The evolution of the mobile infrastructure is not just about adding the bandwidth and capacity necessary for mass market deployments; it is also about being able to support billions of things that have different characteristics and different profiles of data behavior. This is all leading to a re-balancing of the IoT where the connected ‘things’ at the edge must become smarter, do more of the work, be more autonomous and work smoothly with the various network technologies. This will help stop the deluge of unfiltered data being pumped to a remote cloud because the information sent from the edge device will be locally processed and analyzed. For example, a HVAC controller does not need to constantly update an ambient temperature reading; instead it should only communicate triggers—thereby conserving the energy of any battery-operated devices and making best use of constrained bandwidth such as NB-IoT.  The GSMA has stated that it wants LPWA networks to support devices where a single battery charge can last several years.

This emerging intelligent edge has been created by the combination of an increase in the computational power of edge devices, advances in distributed software technologies, tools and standards and the ability to bring these all together in future mass-market connected products. These products will not only meet the required small size and low-power consumption targets but also use economies of scale to hit the price point necessary to fulfil the IoT industry’s vision of connectivity manufactured into everything. This, in large part, was what attendees witnessed in Germany at Embedded World. The digital transformation hype ultimately points to the reality of having “atomized” intelligence at the edge. When raw data has already been transformed—in near-real time—into actionable insights rather than a deluge of data, networks are more efficient and businesses are more efficient, increasing their chances to successfully undergo that elusive digital transformation.

Alon Segal is senior vice president, Software and Services, at Telit.


IoT Innovator Newsletter

Get the latest updates and industry news in your inbox! Enter your email address and name below to be the first to know.

Name