DEVICES AND

GATEWAYS
What is a device?

■ A device is a hardware unit that can sense aspects of it’s environment

and/or perform tasks of its environment.
■ They are small-scale embedded processing microcontrollers with on-chip
RAM and flash memory, I/O capabilities and networking interfaces that
are integrated on System-on-a-Chip(SoC).
Characteristics of Devices
■ Microcontroller
■ Power Source
■ Sensors and Actuators
■ Communication
■ Operating System
■ User Interface
■ Device Management
■ Execution Environment
and many more…
Types of devices

■ Basic Devices: Devices that only provide the basic services of sensor
readings and/or actuate and provide limited support for user
interaction.
■ Advanced Devices: Devices that provide the services of sensor
readings and/or actuate, provide support for user interaction and also
host the application logic and a WAN connection.
Deployment Scenarios
■ Basic Devices
– Home alarms
– Smart meters
– Building automation systems(BAS)
– Standalone smart thermostats
■ Advanced Devices
– Onboard units in cars
– Robots and autonomous vehicles
– Video camera
– Connected printers
Basic Devices

■ The hardware requirements are low, both in terms of processing power

and memory.
■ The main focus is on using inexpensive microcontrollers with built-in
memory and storage like an SoC-integrated circuit with all main
components.
■ Another common goal is to enable battery as a power source, with a
lifespan of a year and hence using ultra-low energy microcontrollers.
■ As low-power operation is key to battery-powered devices, the
microcontroller hosts functions that facilitate sleeping.
Basic Devices(Cont.)

■ The microcontroller typically hosts a number of ports that allow

integration with sensors and actuators.
■ The gateway is required as these devices lack WAN interface.
■ The microcontroller contains most of the radio functions needed for
communicating with the gateway and other devices in the same
network.
■ Due to limited computational resources, these devices commonly do
not use a typical OS.
■ A typical task for the application logic is to read values from the sensors
and to provide these over the LAN interface.
Figure 1: SoC-integrated circuit with all main components on one single chip
Advanced Devices

■ An advanced device is a powerful CPU or microcontroller with enough

memory and storage to host advanced applications.
■ It has more advanced user interface than basic devices.
■ It contains video or other high bandwidth functions.
What is a gateway?

■ A gateway refers to a device that performs translation of the physical

and link layer.
■ For LAN technologies, the gateway is used for inclusion and exclusion of
devices.
■ The gateway device is also used for many tasks such as data
management, local applications and device management.
Data Management

■ Typical functions for data management include performing sensor

readings and caching of the data, as well as filtering, concentrating, and
aggregating the data.
■ Critical information needs to be available at the right point in a timely
manner and in the right form before transmitting it to back-end servers.
Local Applications

■ The benefit of hosting this logic on the gateway instead of the network
is to avoid downtime in case of WAN connection failure, also minimize
usage of costly cellular data and reduce latency.
■ The execution environment is responsible for the lifecycle management
of these local applications, including installation, pausing, stopping,
configuring and uninstalling of the applications.
■ The management agent can be controlled from a terminal shell or via a
protocol.
■ Bundle packages can be retrieved from the local file system.
Device Management

■ The devices communicate directly with the device management server.

■ Device management perform many of the management tasks for devices:
– Provisioning: Initialization of devices and features to be enabled.
– Device Configuration: Management of device settings and parameters.
– Software Upgrades: Installation of firmware, system software and
applications on the device.
– Fault Management: Enables error reporting and access to device status.
■ The gateway functions act as a mediator between the server and the
devices.
Device Management(Cont.)

■ These gateway functions operate in three different ways:

– If the devices are visible to the DM server, the gateway can simply forward
the messages and is not a visible participant in the session.
– If the devices are not visible but understand the DM protocol, the gateway
can act as a proxy, acting as a DM server towards the device and a DM
client towards the server.
– If the devices use a different DM protocol from the server, the gateway can
represent the devices and translate between the different protocols. The
devices can be represented either as virtual devices or as part of the
gateway.
Thank You

Presentation by
Nikil S Raaju