What are Internet of Things (IoT) devices?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an industry (and buzzword) that is becoming more and more popular.

Understanding this exciting area of innovation will be vital for keeping track of increasing digitalization and concepts such as Industry 4.0.

IoT is generally made up of three components; the device, connectivity and the cloud.

I wrote this article to help people interested in the device part of IoT get a better understanding of IoT devices and how they are used in the world today.

What is IoT?

To understand what an IoT device is, first we need to understand IoT.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that covers “the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment,” according to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA).

What are IoT devices?

IoT devices are specialized hardware like sensors, actuators, and appliances that connect wirelessly to networks to collect and exchange data. They perform specific tasks and are used across various fields, including medical, industrial, and environmental sectors, enhancing functionality through interconnectedness and real-time data communication.

But let’s deep dive into this term:

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which develops and maintains technical specifications for mobile telecommunications, breaks up IoT devices into two categories; User Equipment (UE) and Infrastructure.

1. User Equipment: Devices that connect to networks (including mobile phones, IoT devices, and computers).
2. Infrastructure: The equipment UE connects to for telecommunication services and includes the access network and core network.

You can read the standard about General UMTS Architecture (3GPP TS 23.101 version 8.0.0 Release 8) for more information on User Equipment and Infrastructure.

It’s interesting here that 3GPP keeps mobile phones and computers separate to IoT devices. So with the information we have at hand, how shall we define IoT devices?

A good definition for IoT devices is “equipment that contains embedded technology to sense or interact with their environment and communicate with the internet.”

Smart home voice assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa are two of the most known IoT devices. But the number of generic trackers and environmental monitors deployed far outstrips the number of home assistants globally.

You could argue that smartphones and computers are IoT devices; they can sense the physical world and communicate data on it to the cloud. You can certainly use them as expensive IoT devices, but you usually don’t say something is part of IoT when it requires human interaction or control.

Examples of IoT devices

• Sensors
• Security devices
• Point of Sale (PoS) devices
• Medical devices
• GPS trackers

How many IoT devices are there today?

Steadily decreasing prices for sensors and chips, plus the proliferation of connectivity options over the last 15 years, have encouraged rapid IoT growth.

The global chip shortage from 2020 onwards has slowed down some of that progress, but the number of connected devices will continue to grow at pace when looking at longer horizons.

Let’s look at some statistics about the number of IoT devices out there from reputable sources.

IoT Analytics, a provider of market insights for IoT, has seen a shift from 3.6 billion IoT Devices in 2015 to 11.3 billion in 2020. Looking forward to 2025, they predict a massive leap to 27 billion IoT devices globally.

In their Annual Internet Report, 2018–2023, published in 2020, Cisco wrote that “M2M connections will grow 2.4-fold, from 6.1 billion in 2018 to 14.7 billion by 2023.”

Considerations when building IoT devices

On the hardware side, IoT devices generally contain a modem, antenna, microcontroller (MCU), IoT SIM card (if cellular), battery or power converter, some sort of sensor, and housing to contain the components.

On the software side, IoT devices need to not only be smart, i.e. be able to process some sort of information, but they also need access to the internet. This internet connection can be achieved via a physical local area network (LAN), WiFi, Bluetooth, satellite, or cellular connectivity, for example.

Sensors

You would generally begin with the sensor when solving real-world problems with IoT devices. Do you want to reduce water usage? Then a sensor that can monitor water flow is a critical piece of how your IoT device will create value.

Some examples of IoT sensors include:

• Temperature sensors (e.g. monitoring refrigerated devices)
• Location (e.g. GPS tracking of assets)
• Vibration (e.g. predictive maintenance in wind turbines)
• Gas (e.g. monitoring leaks)
• Humidity (e.g. monitoring food quality)
• Pressure (e.g. tank level monitoring)
• Level (e.g. measuring municipal waste container levels)
• Accelerometer (e.g. monitoring integrity during transit)

Connectivity and modem type

Commuting data to the internet after it is captured is critical. You’ll need to decide whether your use case is suited to e.g. satellite, cellular, or WiFi connectivity. In the case of cellular, should the modem be capable of connecting to 2G, 3G, LTE Cat 1 bis, LTE-M, or NB-IoT? A useful resource for answering such questions is frequencycheck.com.

In the cellular realm, dual band modems are almost always a good decision. It gives you the opportunity to select the optimal network technology for the location of your devices as well as a fallback connectivity option in case of issues with one of the bands.

Using e.g. an LTE-M (aka LTE cat M.1) modem with LTE cat 1 bis fallback would be a particularly robust option for future-proofing IoT devices.

Struggling to decide whether you should entrust the future of your solution with LTE-M or NB-IoT? Then you could use Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF9160 low power SiP (system-in-package) that provides both LTE-M and NB-IoT connectivity.

You can read more about connectivity considerations here: Top 5 considerations when choosing IoT connectivity solutions.

The size, shape, and weight

The form of the device is also an important consideration. This encompasses the shape and materials used to house the device.

For example, vehicles can carry heavy devices and are relatively spacious, but making devices for people and animals will limit your device’s size, shape, and weight. You’ll also need decisions to make aorund durability, such as whether your device needs to handle a few knocks and how to position the antenna.

The power source

The power source is something that has a significant impact on IoT solutions. The majority of IoT devices have an independent power source (a battery) and are power constrained. But devices in factory settings can be plugged into an external power source.

Low-power IoT demands energy efficiency. Fortunately, it’s possible to reduce device power consumption with new IoT connectivity technologies that help minimize power drain from connectivity.

One option is to use new Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) developed for IoT. NB-IoT and LTE-M were both developed to reduce power consumption for IoT devices. Both technologies support PSM (power saving mode) and eDRX (Extended Discontinuous Reception), which extends battery life.

You can also make devices more energy efficient by reducing the amount of logic on devices. The less devices have to do, the less power they will consume. By shifting responsibility to the cloud, you can make big gains in reducing power consumption.

Onomondo’s Cloud Connectors help reduce device logic. Our no-code Cloud connectors strip away unnecessary connectivity logic wrapped around payloads and move Cloud SDKs from the device to our mobile core network.

Our tests showed a 45% reduction in overall power consumption on 2G and LTE-M networks using the Connectors method: New tests show connectors vastly extend device battery life.

Common IoT device applications

An excellent way to understand the potential IoT has for the future is to look at IoT industries and use cases.

McKinsey’s November 2021 report The Internet of Things: Catching up to an accelerating opportunity (PDF) offers a good overview of how they see the potential of IoT in terms of use cases.

Let’s dig into some of the leading IoT industries from Onomondo’s experience.

Automotive

Despite having its growth constrained by the pandemic’s impact on supply chains, the automotive industry is still an industry of great interest for IoT. IoT devices enable telematics, fleet management, predictive maintenance, smart insurance, and autonomous vehicles within this industry.

Logistics

Working alongside other industries, logistics is a vital link when producing products. The world is crying out for more efficient and transparent supply chains, and that’s exactly what IoT devices bring to the table here. Asset tracking and condition monitoring are critical use cases within this industry. For example, knowing the temperature of refrigerated goods and precise arrival times is enabled by IoT devices.

Micro-mobility

Micro-mobility is an exciting example of IoT improving life in cities and helping reduce carbon emissions. Car sharing, bike sharing, electric scooters, and last-mile delivery are examples of IoT devices helping micro-mobility. In particular, devices that track the location of assets create considerable value in this industry.

Energy & Utilities

IoT has a lot to offer energy and utilities companies. For example, automated electricity meter reading enables smart power grids and saves resources. You’ll also find helpful devices that monitor leaks in gas and water lines. Other use cases in which IoT devices help energy and utilities companies include water meters, heat meters, and tank monitoring.

Smart Cities

IoT can help sustainable development in a host of ways. In particular, making cities smarter is a way we can make massive gains on meeting climate goals, they are after all where the majority of us live. Optimizing infrastructure, smart waste, smart lighting, environment monitoring, and traffic control are just some of the use cases in which IoT devices are being deployed today.

Consumer IoT

Now, perhaps the most pervasive industry of IoT innovation listed here is Consumer IoT and Wearables. IoT is changing the lives of people around the world daily. From helping monitor their health to opening the curtains at the right time. IoT devices can monitor and automate many parts of our day-to-day life. Some current examples of consumer IoT devices are smartwatches, smart glasses, internet enabled appliances, wearable health trackers, and asset trackers.

Popular cellular IoT chipsets

Similar to putting out numbers for the number of IoT devices in the world today, analysis on the most popular IoT device brands will differ between market research bodies.

According to IoT Analytics, the five most popular cellular IoT device manufacturers, making up 93% of all cellular IoT chipsets sold in 2020, are:

1. Qualcomm
2. MediaTek
3. HiSilicon
4. Intel
5. UNISOC

Counterpoint Research has a slightly different analysis in their top five according to global cellular IoT module revenue in Q1 2022:

1. Quectel
2. Telit
3. MeiG
4. Thales
5. Sunsea

How about IoT networks?

We see cellular networks as an underutilized piece of the device, network, and internet segments of IoT.

Access networks (networks of cell towers dotted around the world) and core networks (the network which connects operators to each other and the internet) aren’t IoT devices, but play a vital part in how they create value.

It’s possible to take the burden off of IoT devices and shift logic to the network, making IoT devices more robust to change and more efficient.

By giving devices less to do, they can use less data, consume less power and be more flexible in a rapidly changing technology space.