New Tech Europe | Jan 2017 | Digital Edition

IoT Special Edition

agnostic to the form factor, operating system or service provider. The member companies are contributing software and engineering resources to the development of a protocol specification, open source implementation, and a certification program, all with a view of accelerating the development of the IoT. What makes this slightly different is that it is intended to cover a range of existing and emerging wireless standards and be compatible with a variety of operating systems, rather than just being one radio technology. The OIC is competing directly with the AllSeen Alliance that is backed by chip giant Qualcomm, Microsoft and also networking giant Cisco. This is built around the AllJoyn open source technology developed by Qualcomm and now has 50 companies signed

up, including Sharp, D-link and Wilocity. The aim of AllJoyn is that the core building blocks and services for discovery of new devices, how they connect and security can be used across both wireless and wired networks for connecting up devices. The aim is to standardize the approach at a higher level to allow devices with different technologies to interact, so the focus is on service-level discovery, capabilities broadcasting, remote procedure calls, interface sharing and message handling, along with the ability to react to dynamic, ad-hoc network changes. AllSeen is probably slightly ahead of other consortia such as OIC and the Thread Group with more members and a software development kit to allow applications developers and end customers to work with the technology. However the amount

of software development needed to bring different technologies together with a low power implementation may be a challenge for many customers, along with the focus mostly on the US. Conclusion Low power is becoming a driving force behind the development of technology for the Internet of Things. Trading off data rate, packet complexity and wireless duty cycle to reduce the power requirements and extend battery life is leading to a split of protocols and standards, backed by a range of different consortia. It is now down to the different applications, particularly in the smart home, and the cooperation of different suppliers that will determine the protocols with the critical mass and so the cost effective solution.

New-Tech Magazine Europe l 43