M2M gets ready for a trillion sensors
Rick Nelson, Chief Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 6/1/2007 2:00:00 AM
The Internet has revolutionized personal and business communications, and TCP/IP and other communications protocols stand ready to do the same for embedded computers, which increasingly are communicating with other computers and myriad sensors over machine-to-machine (M2M) links.
That's the contention of Bob Burckle, VP of WinSystems, who at the April Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in San Jose, CA, detailed his firm's plans to take advantage of the market potential of M2M. A key driver, he said, is the proliferation of sensors, which, according to research from the Focal Point Group, could number 1 trillion by 2010, when they will complement 500 billion microprocessors, 2 billion smart devices (including appliances, machines, vehicles, and building equipment), 1 billion handheld smart devices (including mobile phones and PDAs), and 300 million personal computers.
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The PPM-GX, a PC/104-Plus compatible single-board computer, sports an Ethernet controller, four UARTs, and two USB ports. Courtesy of WinSystems. |
Burckle said WinSystems aims to address this market with single-board computers that can process sensor data and communicate it over a variety of communications links, including Bluetooth and Ethernet as well as CDMA and GSM cellular links. The company's latest offering, introduced at the ESC, is its PPM-GX, a PC/104-Plus compatible single-board computer (SBC) based on the 1-W AMD Geode GX 500 processor. The PPM-GX sports an Ethernet controller, four 16C550-compatible UARTs, and two USB ports.
The paper “Communicating Machines Are Triggering an Embedded Revolution,” which Burckle coauthored with Steve Pazol, president of nPhase, provides details on the emerging M2M market and on the variety of communications-link choices designers have. The authors differentiate M2M from more traditional industrial-control networks like SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) that impose restrictive, real-time requirements. M2M networks, they write, impose no such restrictions because they don't control processes; they “simply gather and pass along data to a central server.” Because M2M networks don't depend on time-critical data and are therefore tolerant of network delays, the authors write, M2M-connected devices can be distributed across a wide area.
See the complete paper, which provides additional information on how to choose from among the various wired and wireless communications options for your M2M networks.
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