What is an end to end IoT solution

By : Mehul Gupta

  • An end to end IoT solution consists of multiple layers not just an online platform for viewing information in a grid or a chart. These layers include device and connectivity layer, application layer, analytics layer and lastly visualization layer.

 

 

  • The device and connectivity layer, this layer consists of devices, machines, equipment, equipment systems, SCADA, PLC, Enterprise systems and business systems. These things require a mechanism to facilitate the transfer of data to the platform. Therefore, specialised drivers would be needed to extract data from these systems. Some of these drivers may be required to communicate with proprietary systems while the rest use traditional industrial standards drivers for communication with these things. Depending upon individual thing requirements with regards to speed & amount of data generation, accessibility to the thing, the location of thing and bandwidth available different transmission techniques would need to be used. Hence the platform would need to support multiple forms of transmission techniques, such as SigFox, LoRa and TV Whitespace.

 

  • The application layer, this layer consists of the actual IoT platform, which enables the convergence of the physical world to the digital world, i.e. allow the user to create and manage the digital representation of the physical devices inside the platform. The IoT platform itself needs to have these features at least. An easy and intuitive way to manage physical things on the platform. Industrial grade security features and certifications (essential or else the IoT solution cannot be used in the majority of industries). Ability to add or program functionality inside the platform, widespread support availability and lastly provide an extensive user interface builder utility inside the platform.

 

  • The analytics layer is perhaps the most important; it allows the user to view the data stored inside the platform and run machine learning algorithms on the data to extract useful information from these models to gain useful hidden information from the data. Several options for visualising the information should be provided in the application layer, such as confusion matrix, time series graph, scatter plots and bubble charts.

 

  • The visualisation layer, as the name suggests deals with the visualisation aspects of the IoT solution. The tools are present in the application layer, so this layer deals mostly with deployment and support for different type of devices such as mobile phones, tablets, PC and even augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The need for Augmented Reality support is also now growing in the era of big data as it enables the user to grasp more information then it is possible through the traditional 2D displays.
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