Internet of Things At A Strategic Inflection Point

This post focuses on a particularly important technology market, the Internet of Things. IoT is at a strategic inflection point, due to explosive projected market growth and unresolved problems of wireless data throughput and energy-efficiency needs. The IoT market is projected to grow to 75 Billion devices by 2025. This growth is predicated on very high throughput wireless networks combined with high energy-efficiency which are not yet available.  Existing wireless technologies, including 5G, will not meet this market need. Also, the extreme diversity of IoT applications will require both small sensors that operate using minimal energy and bandwidth and virtual reality applications with very high Gigabit per second data rates and substantial power requirements.


IoT Technology And Market Requirements Convergence

Current Long-Term Market Projections Are Based On The Emergence Of Technology Solutions

This Mayo615 YouTube Channel video focuses on a particularly important technology market, the Internet of Things. IoT is at a strategic inflection point, due to explosive projected market growth and unresolved problems of wireless data throughput and energy-efficiency needs. The IoT market is projected to grow to 75 Billion devices by 2025. This growth is predicated on very high throughput wireless networks combined with high energy-efficiency which are not yet available.  Existing wireless technologies, including 5G, will not meet this market need. Also, the extreme diversity of IoT applications will require both small sensors that operate using minimal energy and bandwidth and virtual reality applications with very high Gigabit per second data rates and substantial power requirements. For example, Intel estimates that one autonomous vehicle will generate 4 Terabytes of data daily.

The good news is that through my work evaluating advanced research proposals in IoT, I can report that a solution may already be at the laboratory “proof of concept” stage.

The proposed solution that is emerging is the development of innovative software-hardware architectures in which all network layers are jointly designed, combining a millimeter wave high-throughput wireless network and a battery-free wireless network into a single integrated wireless solution.

This is no small feat of engineering but it does appear to be feasible. There are many challenges to successfully demonstrating a millimeter wave wireless network integrated with the Tesla-like concept of radio-wave backscatter energy harvesting. However, collaboration among universities and large Internet companies’ research units are nearing the demonstration of such a network. The likely horizon for this becoming an industry standard is probably three to five years, with prototype products appearing sooner.

You can also read my earlier website posts on the Internet of Things here on mayo615.com.  Links to related posts on IoT are also shown below on this post.

Author: David Mayes

Founder, Mayo615 Technology Partners Ltd., UBC adjunct faculty, Intel alumnus, technology assessment, international business, cleantech, fly fisherman, native Californian and citizen of France, who has been very fortunate to have traveled, lived and worked all over the globe. My wonderful wife, Isabelle has reintroduced me to my French Provençal heritage.