Comparing IoT Technologies: Sensors, RFID, And Video Tracking

Eliminating User Interface for Efficiency

1.The statement “best interface for a system is no user interface” can be stated as elimination of the user interface system at the moment of slapping the application in a technology, which can be very much beneficial in saving time for a user and end the work in very less time. This implication helps in eliminating various steps that are involved in the duration while user interfacing with that technology. This elimination will help to buy time for the user, who wants to use latest and advanced technology in way that is more efficient. Following examples can throw more light on this topic:

Example 1: implementation of door opening system in cars using mobile application: For this implementation, latest technologies are being programed using user interface system to complete the work. In this case, many steps involve user interface system (Miller, 2015). A user will have to first take out his or her phone, and then turn it on if it’s off, after that he/she will have to unlock the phone, as everyone keep their phone locked. Then he/she will have to search that certain application from the sea of applications and then he/she will be open the door of the car. Much time can be saved in this whole process by eliminating the user interface steps by installing sensor in the key; it will let the user to unlock the door whenever it reaches in the range. Therefore, without user interface system, there will be only one-step to open the door of car, just reach near the car and gates will be open for the user who has the key.

Example 2: Merchant payment system by smart phone application: In this case, there are also various time-consuming steps for the user interface system. These steps can be listed as; first, the user enters the restaurant, ordered food or anything else (Vermesan & Friess, 2013). For payment, he has to follow the steps that are stated in above case and in addition he will have to enter card number then payment will be made. Without user interface, he would have just ordered and left the restaurant and the payment would have made automatically. This would have made the technology time-saver and much more efficient. 

2.Specifications of Cables:

Cable types Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Bandwidth	Distance	Interference rating	Cost	Security
Twisted-Pair Cables	1 MHz	100 m	Interference in this cable is susceptible to interference which is limited to a distance (Santo Peluso, 2012).	Cheapest with respect to the rest of the types of cable	Not much secured with respect to the other cable types
Co-axial Cables	1 GHz	500 m	These cables have least interference with respect to other cable types (Rusek et al., 2013).	Expensive than Twisted-Pair cables but cheaper than Fibre-optics	Breach-able security but safer than twisted pair cables
Fibre-Optic Cables	75 THz	2km – 10km	Not susceptible to the Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) (MacAskill et al., 2013)	Much expensive than Co-axial and Twisted-Pair cable types	Much secure with respect to rest of the cable types

Categories of Cables

Twisted Pair Cable:

A Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) has following categories:

First type: Features 22-AWG two pairs.

Comparing Bandwidth, Distance, Interference Rating, Cost, and Security of Different Cables

Second type: Inherit type 1 with four telephone pairs.

Third type: Features two pairs of shielded 26-AWG.

Unprotected Twisted-Pair (UTP):

First type: UTP is used in low speed data cable and telephone lines.

Second type: These can support four MPs implementation (Lee et al., 2013).

Third type: These cables support maximum 16 MPs, but commonly used in 10 MPs.

Co-Axial cable:

First type: 50-Ohm RG-7 or RG-11, applicable with thick Ethernet.

Second type: 50-Ohm RG-58, applicable with thin Ethernet (Ha et al., 2013).

Third type: 75-Ohm RG-59, applicable with cable television.

3.Summarized Table of Advantages, Disadvantages and Application of IoT

Devices	Applications	Advantages	Disadvantages
Sensors	· Smart washing machine · Weather monitoring · Smart internet mirror · Smart sleep system · Blood pressure monitoring (Tozlu, 2012).	· More range of sensing distance as compared to any capacitive or conductive sensor · With proper power supply, it will work adversely · Atmospheric dust, rain, or any other environmental oxidizing agent cannot affect it	· Cannot reflect signals from curved surfaces and through many thin layers and soft objects too.
RFID	· Highly used in tracking objects, items or products in a store. · Airline baggage’s are also implemented with RFID · Pharmaceutical tracking is another application of RFID · Even jwellery shops are using this technology to track jewels in the store.	· Available in variety of sizes, various of types and several materials · RFID used in Tag code is completely secured which cannot be duplicated · Tags can be used, as many times as an individual want to use. · No physical contact is needed between the data carrier and the communicating device (Gubbi et al., 2013).	· Much expensive is one of the disadvantages of RFID · A user cannot be completely rely on this technology, because it is hard to understand · There are very few applications rather than tagging · Generally longer than barcodes
Video Tracking	· Interaction between human and computer is one of the best application of video tracking · Medical imaging is the another application of video tracking · Augmentation of reality · Video-communication	· Automation and controls one of the advantage of video tracking which makes it much popular nowadays. · Monitoring on others, for federals it can be used to catch criminals · Communication between two devices like video conferencing · Improve the quality of livelihood	· This technology is based on much more complex system · Not any unique standard for the equipment that can be used for video monitoring · Application of Internet of Things can result in various security and privacy issues for an individual.

There are several security issues to an individual by the application of internet of things. Among them following are the main security issues that can harm an individual: it can be used as a bridge between two devices by unwanted individuals (hackers) to access the data or any personal information that can be much sensitive to expose. Another security issue related to the use of Internet of Things is related to the safety risk of an individual, as it not much safe to be relied on any AI (Jing et al., 2014). They are vulnerable to attacks and mistakes by very few human errors.

In general, application of Internet of Things involves personal sensitive information, which an individual may not want to expose. This sensitive information may be related to bank accounts, medical information and physical location (Da, He & Li, 2014). Using this technology may result in the expose of personal information, which includes habits, locations and physical conditions of an individual.

In this mode, the operating request results in an endpoint generation. This endpoint has to wait to receive a response of the request made by the originated point. This process takes place after the requested operation has been finished. This process may take very long time, more than expectation and waiting timing may be unknown from the originator side. This is a synchronous case, and in synchronous case, there is not any facility to receive the asynchronous message by the originator side. This results in the exchange of signals from both side receiver and the originator, which will be performed by the Originator itself.

Publish/subscribe or pub/sub which helps in enabling communication of unidirectional signals to several subscribers from the publisher side. After getting declaration from the subscriber side on the category or class of the data asked to the publisher. After the clarification of that data about the availability of new data, publisher pushes the new data message towards the interested subscribers. It can be better understood by following figure:

Advantages and Disadvantages of IoT Technologies: Sensors, RFID, and Video Tracking

Response/command response become suboptimal because of the over heading of the unread messages which are travelling in the reverse direction (Borgain, Kumar & Sanjay, 2015). Following is a figure depicting the working mechanism of command/response paradigm:

(Source: Created by author)

These paradigms can help in calculating the time saved. 6 ms + 1ms (Propagation delay elimination + elimination of 1 ms in receiving the message) which equals 7ms.

Based on the data of internet users between the years 1983 and 2016 Nelson defined Nelson’s Law, which stated that the rate of the growth of user’s bandwidth is drastically increasing with the fraction of 1/2 (50%) per year. “A high-end user’s collection speed grows by 50% per year” is the statement given by Nelson Law (Nielson, 2014). Following graph has been proposed for the Nelson’s Law

Figure 3: Graph population v/s year (Nelson, 2016)

It can be seen that both Moore and Nelson had given the same thesis that user’s bandwidth is increase day by day but Nelson was more accurate with full evidence. Moore stated that “computer double in capabilities every 18 months” but as per the evidence provided by Nelson, this seems less appropriate, as it says 60 % yearly.

Implication of Nelson’s law in IoT:

It is being expected that sensor technology will spread it wings in each corner of the world and in 2024, trillion in numbers is the expected amount of sensors being applicable for various activities (Singh, Tripathi & jara, 2014). In future, it will be used in houses, cars, and clothing and in many more areas.

References:

Borgohain, T., Kumar, U., & Sanyal, S. (2015). Survey of security and privacy issues of Internet of Things. arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.02211.

Da Xu, L., He, W., & Li, S. (2014). Internet of things in industries: A survey. IEEE Transactions on industrial informatics, 10(4), 2233-2243.

Gubbi, J., Buyya, R., Marusic, S., & Palaniswami, M. (2013). Internet of Things (IoT): A vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Future generation computer systems, 29(7), 1645-1660.

Jing, Q., Vasilakos, A. V., Wan, J., Lu, J., & Qiu, D. (2014). Security of the internet of things: Perspectives and challenges. Wireless Networks, 20(8), 2481-2501.

MacAskill, E., Borger, J., Hopkins, N., Davies, N., & Ball, J. (2013). GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world’s communications. The Guardian, 21, 2013.

Miller, M. (2015). The Internet of things: How smart TVs, smart cars, smart homes, and smart cities are changing the world. Pearson Education.

Nielsen, J. (2014). Nielsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth, 1998.

Rusek, F., Persson, D., Lau, B. K., Larsson, E. G., Marzetta, T. L., Edfors, O., & Tufvesson, F. (2013). Scaling up MIMO: Opportunities and challenges with very large arrays. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 30(1), 40-60.

Santo Peluso, M. (2012). An Analysis Of The Strengths Of Twisted Pair For Current And Future Broadband Deployments (Doctoral dissertation, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University).

Singh, D., Tripathi, G., & Jara, A. J. (2014, March). A survey of Internet-of-Things: Future vision, architecture, challenges and services. In Internet of things (WF-IoT), 2014 IEEE world forum on (pp. 287-292). IEEE.

Tozlu, S., Senel, M., Mao, W., & Keshavarzian, A. (2012). Wi-Fi enabled sensors for internet of things: A practical approach. IEEE Communications Magazine, 50(6).

Vermesan, O., & Friess, P. (Eds.). (2013). Internet of things: converging technologies for smart environments and integrated ecosystems. River Publishers.