IoT - Internet of things can make a lot of difference to our day-to-day life.

Let us see how IoT

can change our lives in the following situations.

Case Study: Cold Chain storage

Problem Statement
ABC Beverages is a food & beverage chain. They produce cool drinks and packaged foods.
They also transport all their items to outlets/retailers present in various cities across India.

These beverages and food items require to be kept in temperature less than 2 degrees. Also,
the packaged food items should be stored at humidity less than 10%. In few instances, when
the temperature and humidity was not maintained appropriately, the items were found to be
spoilt.

Solution
The company has to ensure the following in order to solve the above problem:

1. Maintain the temperature inside the trucks at less than 2 degrees

2. Maintain humidity inside truck at 10%

Solution Approach
CASE STUDY 2 - URBAN FARMING

Problem Statement
One of the most important factors for plant growth in gardens, large farms or fields is water
levels of the soil, also called as soil moisture. Checking the soil moisture manually by crude
human feel is subjective. The grower's experience is valuable but sometimes this method to
check soil moisture is not very precise and can lead to the sensitive plants being damaged, or
plants being infected. Plant’s growth along with the soil moisture is also affected by the
surrounding atmospheric temperature and luminosity.

Solution Overview
In order to solve the above mentioned problem, farms have to ensure the following for better
irrigation:

1. Maintain soil moisture level at 40%

2. Monitor atmospheric temperature

3. Monitor luminosity

*At present, the atmospheric temperature and luminosity is monitored to build a multi variant
equation in future to calculate rate of soil moisture loss.

Solution Approach
IoT ecosystem – as we have seen in the prior case studies – consists of several heterogeneous
components and technologies as below:

 Things
 Sensors and Actuators 
 IoT Gateways
 IoT Communication Technologies
 IoT Platform

Let’s have a look at the above components and technologies in detail in this section.

Sensors

When sensors and actuators are put on a device/thing, that device/thing will be called a Node in IoT.
Node is capable of

 Gathering & transmitting data from sensor.

 Communicating with other connected nodes in the network.

The hardware of a sensor node consists of

 Power and power management module

 Sensor
 Microcontroller
 Wireless Transceiver

•A sensor is in charge of collecting and transforming  the signals, such as light, vibration and
chemical signals, into electrical signals and then transferring them to the Microcontroller. The
Microcontroller receives the data from the sensor and processes the data accordingly. The
Wireless Transceiver then transfers the data, so that the physical realization of
communication can be achieved.

•The power module offers the reliable power needed for the system

 
Do you know that your Smartphone also has many built-in sensors and actuators?

See the below image that enlists some of the sensors and actuators on a mobile phone.

To find all the sensors on your Android smartphone, you can install some cool Apps such as
"Sensor Box for Android” and many other similar apps from “Google Play Store”!

See the below image that enlists some of the sensors and actuators on a Connected car

So, how do we choose a sensor?

The table below lists the various factors you should consider while buying a sensor.

What are Gateways?

IoT Gateway sits at the intersection of Nodes and Cloud. It aggregates and processes the
information from multiple Nodes and facilitates the data flow to the cloud.

IoT Gateway is capable of

 Connecting to the nodes via specific protocols (Communication between Node and
Gateway)
  Storing and parsing the information from the nodes

 Sending information over to cloud servers for processing (Communication between

Gateway and Cloud)

 Helping in real time control over the devices in the field.

Communication between Nodes and

Gateways
WPAN protocols are used to exchange information between Nodes and Gateways. 

A Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) is a network for interconnecting devices

centered on an individual person's workspace, in which connections are wireless. Unlike
wireless networking standards like Wi-Fi, for IoT applications which has “less range”
requirements like connecting peripherals wirelessly to a mobile device or home automation
systems, transferring files or data transfer between various  devices under vicinity, WPANs
are the perfect fit. They have signal ranges in the neighborhood of 1m to 100m, variety of
data rates and most importantly low power consumption.

Bluetooth, BLE, Zigbee and Z-wave are popular WPAN protocols used between Node to
Gateway.

However, in Cold-Chain and Urban Farming case studies, this communication is done by
directly connecting Gateway with the Node through GPIO pins, thereby bypassing Protocols.

Communication between Gateway and

Platform
An IoT Gateway provides the means to bridge the gap between

1. Devices in the field (factory floor, home, etc.)

2. Cloud - where data is collected, stored and manipulated by enterprise applications 

 3. User equipment (smart phones, tablets etc.).

To achieve sustainable interoperability in the IoT ecosystem today, data exchange protocols

used are bus-based data-centric REST, XMPP etc. and broker based message centric CoAP,
MQTT etc.

In the context of the Urban Farming use case, we are using HTTP REST to send data to the
cloud.

Below table shows the various communication protocols (between nodes & gateways and
gateway & cloud) that can be adopted for IoT solutions.

11 Internet of Things (IoT) Protocols You

Need to Know About
 There exists an almost bewildering choice of
connectivity options for electronics engineers and application developers working on
products and systems for the Internet of Things (IoT).

Many communication technologies are well known such as WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee and
2G/3G/4G cellular, but there are also several new emerging networking options such as
Thread as an alternative for home automation applications, and Whitespace TV technologies
being implemented in major cities for wider area IoT-based use cases. Depending on the
application, factors such as range, data requirements, security and power demands and battery
life will dictate the choice of one or some form of combination of technologies. These are
some of the major communication technologies on offer to developers.

Bluetooth

An important short-range communications technology is of course Bluetooth,

which has become very important in computing and many consumer product markets. It is
expected to be key for wearable products in particular, again connecting to the IoT albeit
probably via a smartphone in many cases. The new Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) – or
Bluetooth Smart, as it is now branded – is a significant protocol for IoT applications.
Importantly, while it offers similar range to Bluetooth it has been designed to offer
significantly reduced power consumption.

However, Smart/BLE is not really designed for file transfer and is more suitable for small
chunks of data. It has a major advantage certainly in a more personal device context over
many competing technologies given its widespread integration in smartphones and many
other mobile devices. According to the Bluetooth SIG, more than 90 percent of Bluetooth-
enabled smartphones, including iOS, Android and Windows based models, are expected to be
‘Smart Ready’ by 2018. 

Devices that employ Bluetooth Smart features incorporate the Bluetooth Core Specification
Version 4.0 (or higher – the latest is version 4.2 announced in late 2014) with a combined
basic-data-rate and low-energy core configuration for a RF transceiver, baseband and
protocol stack. Importantly, version 4.2 via its Internet Protocol Support Profile will allow
Bluetooth Smart sensors to access the Internet directly via 6LoWPAN connectivity (more on
this below). This IP connectivity makes it possible to use existing IP infrastructure to manage
Bluetooth Smart ‘edge’ devices. More information on Bluetooth 4.2 is available here and a
wide range of Bluetooth modules are available from RS. 

 Standard: Bluetooth 4.2 core specification

 Frequency: 2.4GHz (ISM)
 Range: 50-150m (Smart/BLE)
 Data Rates: 1Mbps (Smart/BLE)

Zigbee

ZigBee, like Bluetooth, has a large installed base of operation, although perhaps traditionally
more in industrial settings. ZigBee PRO and ZigBee Remote Control (RF4CE), among other
available ZigBee profiles, are based on the IEEE802.15.4 protocol, which is an industry-
standard wireless networking technology operating at 2.4GHz targeting applications that
require relatively infrequent data exchanges at low data-rates over a restricted area and within
a 100m range such as in a home or building.

ZigBee/RF4CE has some significant advantages in complex systems offering low-power

operation, high security, robustness and high scalability with high node counts and is well
positioned to take advantage of wireless control and sensor networks in M2M and IoT
applications. The latest version of ZigBee is the recently launched 3.0, which is essentially
the unification of the various ZigBee wireless standards into a single standard. An example
product and kit for ZigBee development are TI’s CC2538SF53RTQT ZigBee System-On-
Chip IC and CC2538 ZigBee Development Kit. 

 Standard: ZigBee 3.0 based on IEEE802.15.4

 Frequency: 2.4GHz
 Range: 10-100m
 Data Rates: 250kbps

Z-Wave

Z-Wave is a low-power RF communications technology that is primarily

designed for home automation for products such as lamp controllers and sensors among many
others. Optimized for reliable and low-latency communication of small data packets with data
rates up to 100kbit/s, it operates in the sub-1GHz band and is impervious to interference from
WiFi and other wireless technologies in the 2.4-GHz range such as Bluetooth or ZigBee. It
supports full mesh networks without the need for a coordinator node and is very scalable,
enabling control of up to 232 devices. Z-Wave uses a simpler protocol than some others,
which can enable faster and simpler development, but the only maker of chips is Sigma
Designs compared to multiple sources for other wireless technologies such as ZigBee and
others. 

 Standard: Z-Wave Alliance ZAD12837 / ITU-T G.9959

 Frequency: 900MHz (ISM)
 Range: 30m
 Data Rates: 9.6/40/100kbit/s 

6LowPAN

A key IP (Internet Protocol)-based technology is 6LowPAN (IPv6 Low-

power wireless Personal Area Network). Rather than being an IoT application protocols
technology like Bluetooth or ZigBee, 6LowPAN is a network protocol that defines
encapsulation and header compression mechanisms. The standard has the freedom of
frequency band and physical layer and can also be used across multiple communications
platforms, including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, 802.15.4 and sub-1GHz ISM. A key attribute is the
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) stack, which has been a very important introduction in
recent years to enable the IoT. IPv6 is the successor to IPv4 and offers approximately 5 x 1028
addresses for every person in the world, enabling any embedded object or device in the world
to have its own unique IP address and connect to the Internet. Especially designed for home
or building automation, for example, IPv6 provides a basic transport mechanism to produce
complex control systems and to communicate with devices in a cost-effective manner via a
low-power wireless network.

Designed to send IPv6 packets over IEEE802.15.4-based networks and implementing open IP
standards including TCP, UDP, HTTP, COAP, MQTT, and websockets, the standard offers
end-to-end addressable nodes, allowing a router to connect the network to IP. 6LowPAN is a
mesh network that is robust, scalable and self-healing. Mesh router devices can route data
destined for other devices, while hosts are able to sleep for long periods of time. An
explanation of 6LowPAN is available here, courtesy of TI. 

 Standard: RFC6282
 Frequency: (adapted and used over a variety of other networking media including Bluetooth
Smart (2.4GHz) or ZigBee or low-power RF (sub-1GHz)
 Range: N/A
 Data Rates: N/A
Thread

A very new IP-based IPv6 networking protocol aimed at the home automation environment is
Thread. Based on 6LowPAN, and also like it, it is not an IoT applications protocol like
Bluetooth or ZigBee. However, from an application point of view, it is primarily designed as
a complement to WiFi as it recognises that while WiFi is good for many consumer devices
that it has limitations for use in a home automation setup. 

Launched in mid-2014 by the Thread Group, the royalty-free protocol is based on various
standards including IEEE802.15.4 (as the wireless air-interface protocol), IPv6 and
6LoWPAN, and offers a resilient IP-based solution for the IoT. Designed to work on existing
IEEE802.15.4 wireless silicon from chip vendors such as Freescale and Silicon Labs, Thread
supports a mesh network using IEEE802.15.4 radio transceivers and is capable of handling
up to 250 nodes with high levels of authentication and encryption. A relatively simple
software upgrade should allow users to run thread on existing IEEE802.15.4-enabled
devices. 

 Standard: Thread, based on IEEE802.15.4 and 6LowPAN

 Frequency: 2.4GHz (ISM)
 Range: N/A
 Data Rates: N/A

WiFi

WiFi connectivity is often an obvious choice for many developers, especially

given the pervasiveness of WiFi within the home environment within LANs. It requires little
further explanation except to state the obvious that clearly there is a wide existing
infrastructure as well as offering fast data transfer and the ability to handle high quantities of
data. 

Currently, the most common WiFi standard used in homes and many businesses is 802.11n,
which offers serious throughput in the range of hundreds of megabit per second, which is fine
for file transfers, but may be too power-consuming for many IoT applications. A series of RF
development kits designed for building WiFi-based applications are available from RS. 

 Standard: Based on 802.11n (most common usage in homes today)

 Frequencies: 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands
 Range: Approximately 50m
  Data Rates: 600 Mbps maximum, but 150-200Mbps is more typical, depending on channel
frequency used and number of antennas (latest 802.11-ac standard should offer 500Mbps to
1Gbps) 

Cellular

< Any IoT application that requires operation over longer distances can take
advantage of GSM/3G/4G cellular communication capabilities. While cellular is clearly
capable of sending high quantities of data, especially for 4G, the expense and also power
consumption will be too high for many applications, but it can be ideal for sensor-based low-
bandwidth-data projects that will send very low amounts of data over the Internet. A key
product in this area is the SparqEE range of products, including the original tiny CELLv1.0
low-cost development board and a series of shield connecting boards for use with the
Raspberry Pi and Arduino platforms. 

 Standard: GSM/GPRS/EDGE (2G), UMTS/HSPA (3G), LTE (4G)

 Frequencies: 900/1800/1900/2100MHz
 Range: 35km max for GSM; 200km max for HSPA
 Data Rates (typical download): 35-170kps (GPRS), 120-384kbps (EDGE), 384Kbps-2Mbps
(UMTS), 600kbps-10Mbps (HSPA), 3-10Mbps (LTE) 

NFC

NFC (Near Field Communication) is a technology that enables simple and

safe two-way interactions between electronic devices, and especially applicable for
smartphones, allowing consumers to perform contactless payment transactions, access digital
content and connect electronic devices. Essentially it extends the capability of contactless
card technology and enables devices to share information at a distance that is less than 4cm.
Further information is available here. 

 Standard: ISO/IEC 18000-3

 Frequency: 13.56MHz (ISM)
 Range: 10cm
 Data Rates: 100–420kbps
Sigfox

An alternative wide-range technology is Sigfox, which in terms of range

comes between WiFi and cellular. It uses the ISM bands, which are free to use without the
need to acquire licenses, to transmit data over a very narrow spectrum to and from connected
objects. The idea for Sigfox is that for many M2M applications that run on a small battery
and only require low levels of data transfer, then WiFi’s range is too short while cellular is
too expensive and also consumes too much power. Sigfox uses a technology called Ultra
Narrow Band (UNB) and is only designed to handle low data-transfer speeds of 10 to 1,000
bits per second. It consumes only 50 microwatts compared to 5000 microwatts for cellular
communication, or can deliver a typical stand-by time 20 years with a 2.5Ah battery while it
is only 0.2 years for cellular. 

Already deployed in tens of thousands of connected objects, the network is currently being
rolled out in major cities across Europe, including ten cities in the UK for example. The
network offers a robust, power-efficient and scalable network that can communicate with
millions of battery-operated devices across areas of several square kilometres, making it
suitable for various M2M applications that are expected to include smart meters, patient
monitors, security devices, street lighting and environmental sensors. The Sigfox system uses
silicon such as the EZRadioPro wireless transceivers from Silicon Labs, which deliver
industry-leading wireless performance, extended range and ultra-low power consumption for
wireless networking applications operating in the sub-1GHz band. 

 Standard: Sigfox
 Frequency: 900MHz
 Range: 30-50km (rural environments), 3-10km (urban environments)
 Data Rates: 10-1000bps 

Neul 

Similar in concept to Sigfox and operating in the sub-1GHz band, Neul

leverages very small slices of the TV White Space spectrum to deliver high scalability, high
coverage, low power and low-cost wireless networks. Systems are based on the Iceni chip,
which communicates using the white space radio to access the high-quality UHF spectrum,
now available due to the analogue to digital TV transition. The communications technology is
called Weightless, which is a new wide-area wireless networking technology designed for the
IoT that largely competes against existing GPRS, 3G, CDMA and LTE WAN solutions. Data
rates can be anything from a few bits per second up to 100kbps over the same single link; and
devices can consume as little as 20 to 30mA from 2xAA batteries, meaning 10 to 15 years in
the field. 
  Standard: Neul
 Frequency: 900MHz (ISM), 458MHz (UK), 470-790MHz (White Space)
 Range: 10km
 Data Rates: Few bps up to 100kbps

LoRaWAN

Again, similar in some respects to Sigfox and Neul, LoRaWAN targets wide-
area network (WAN) applications and is designed to provide low-power WANs with features
specifically needed to support low-cost mobile secure bi-directional communication in IoT,
M2M and smart city and industrial applications. Optimized for low-power consumption and
supporting large networks with millions and millions of devices, data rates range from 0.3
kbps to 50 kbps. 

 Standard: LoRaWAN
 Frequency: Various
 Range: 2-5km (urban environment), 15km (suburban environment)
 Data Rates: 0.3-50 kbps.

What are IoT Platforms?

We need Platforms to connect devices to the cloud, to provide with the services and
applications. They are a complex heterogeneous aggregation of components which overlays
from device connectivity, data aggregation, transformation, analytics and visualizations.

Main features of IoT Platforms:

 It is a framework for data integration

 It is designed to build and run the applications of the connected world

 It manages devices, perform analytics and create workflow

Data on Platform, collected from various devices need to undergo analytics, to uncover
hidden patterns, trends, correlation from huge amount of data. Analytics is required for

1. Cost reduction

2. Faster & better decision making

3. Creating new products/services
 4. Make accurate predictions

Below are few popular Platforms in the industry. In any solution, we need to either leverage
existing platforms or we can develop our own platform

 GE Predix

 PTC ThingWorx

 BOSCH IoT Suite

 IBM Watson

 AWS IoT

 Xively

 IFTTT

 ThingSpeak

 Axelta Osmosis

 Carriots

 Microsoft Azure IoT Suite

 Google cloud Platform

 Samsung Artik

 CISCO Iot cloud Connect

 HPE Universal of Things 

 Salesforce IoT

 Datav by Bsquare

 Siemens Mindsphere 

 Ayla IoT Platform

 Oracle Integrated Cloud

 Arm MBED device platform

 Mosaic LTI

 Mocana 
  Kaa

ARDUINO INTRODUCTION

Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and

software. Arduino boards are able to be programmed to light on a sensor, activating a motor,
turning on an LED, publishing something online.

The boards are equipped with sets of digital and analog input/output (I/O) pins that may be
interfaced to various expansion boards or breadboards  and other circuits. Arduino board
designs use a variety of micro controllers.

Arduino UNO is one of the variant of Arduino board, which is based on Microchip
ATmega328. The microcontrollers are typically programmed using the programming
languages C and C++.

The Arduino project provides an integrated development environment (IDE) software, which

is easy to use. Arduino boards are relatively inexpensive  and are used to do interesting DIY
projects

Simple program in Arduino ide

INTRODUCTION TO INFOSYS IOT CASE STUDIES

Infosys Remote Equipment Monitoring Solution helps monitor the vitals of machines in
real time. This is achieved by deploying sensors for critical parameters and the data is
transmitted to the enterprise data store. Dashboards are built over these data which help check
the condition of the equipment in real time. Early warning system integrated to this
monitoring system raise alerts when tolerance levels are reached and thereby help prevent
breakdown. Infosys Remote Equipment Monitoring Solution helps increase operational
efficiency reduce downtime, reduce cost, help realize new revenue streams and increase life
span of equipment.

The impact of unplanned downtime and breakdowns of critical assets can cost millions.
Infosys Asset Efficiency Solution uses IoT to manage the high value assets efficiently. This
helps maximize productivity and avoid any unplanned downtime. The solution provides
diagnostic and prognostic analysis and helps predict failure and manage assets better. This
solution can be used across various industries including automotive, aviation, mining,
aerospace and Oil and Gas to monitor, control and optimize management of assets.

Infosys Entertainment Experience Platform gives a one stop holistic solution for
entertainment needs. Taking the example of a sports stadium, the solution can help in
parking, finding access points, sending contextual ads, giving information on Wifi access
points, venue maps and also information on the available food or beverage options nearby.
The solution also can help connect with other nearby friends who are in the same stadium.
The in-stadium experience also can be made better, by providing instant replays, different
views of the stadium and closer shots of the game. Real time and offline reports are also
available for better management of the entertainment experience.

CURRENT CHALLENGES OF IOT

you have seen how IoT Solutions can be implemented, but yet there are some challenges, that
need to be addressed while implementing IoT Solutions.

Let’s look at some of the current challenges of IoT.

Security Concerns
 In July 2015, Wired magazine broke the story that hackers had taken control and
killed the accelerator of a Jeep in motion on the freeway

 In September 2015, search engine, email provider and one-time Google rival
Yahoo was hit by what was later described as the ‘biggest data breach in history’.

 The company was forced to admit that up to 500 million customers may have had data
stolen, including sensitive details such as names, email addresses, phone numbers and
hashed passwords. While the size of attack was significant, it was notable too that
fingers were being pointed at a state-sponsored actor.
  In October 2016, cyber criminals launched major DDoS attacks, disrupting a host of
websites, including the likes of Twitter, Netflix, PayPal, Pinterest and the PlayStation
Network, amongst many others. The attack was staggering for its size, at one time
measuring close to 1 petabyte per second. The group behind the attack did this by
compromising thousands of endpoint IoT devices (initially thought to be 100,000 –
later down scaled to nearer 20,000 by security researchers), transforming them in a
botnet and essentially flooding traffic to DNS hosting provider Dyn (recently acquired
by Oracle).

These incidents make it clear that Internet of Things introduces all the vulnerabilities of the
digital world into our real world. Measures need to be taken during design,development  and
testing stages

of IoT Solutions to avoid the vulnerabilities