Exploring IoT Technologies

Comparing Cable Types

1.What does the statement “the best interface for a system is no User Interface”?  When might this apply and provide two examples.

In recent times, there has been changes in the way users interact with the things around him or her. A decade back it was the era of graphical user interface. That was the era when users used to interact with machine through a graphical user interface. It can be said that GUI is still working for people and machines. However, the continuous focus is to evolve the user interfaces. The next big thing is VUI (Voice User Interface) where the commands are given over the voice. However, it is debated that the best interface is no user interface (Mumtaz & Alsohaily, 2017). It is correct to say that as people want to interact with machines and tools around with natural behavior. People do not want that any extra layer or interface should exist between them and machine and this made the statement, ‘the best interface for a system is no User Interface’ true. The applicability of ‘no user interface’ can be discussed as below:

1. Users can use the sensory organs to manage their cell phones. For example, IRIS scanner to login in the phone.
2. Users can use the voice or shake features to open the camera in the phone.

It can be said that the world is moving towards the stage of no user interface, or at least the vision with the technology is to reach the stage of no user interface. There are various other examples or applications of no user interface (Mumtaz & Alsohaily, 2017). The driverless car  is a perfect example of no user interface.

2.Compare the bandwidth, distance, interference rating, cost and security of a) twisted pair cable, b) coaxial cable and 3) fibre optic cable.  Use current data, give specific details for at least 3 types of cable within each category, these should have different specifications, rather than simply different brands of the same type.

The comparison can be shown in the form of a below table

	Twisted pair cable	Coaxial cable	Fiber optic cable
Bandwidth	Lowest bandwidth	High bandwidth, 80 X more transmission capacity than Twisted Cable	Highest bandwidth, 26,000 X more transmission capacity than Twisted Cable
Distance	Preferable for low distance	Can be used for high distance	Can be used for very large distances also
Interface Rating	Lowest	Average, ideal for video consumption	Best
Cost	Low	Average	Most expensive among all
Security	Least secure among all the alternatives	Average security	Most secure among the three. Minimal resistance from external interfaces

The three types of cable within each category can be discussed as:

Twisted pair cable:

1. Landline Telephone wires
2. Home appliances system like Transistor
3. Radio and media devices

Coaxial cable

1. TV cables
2. Connect computers within the network
3. Cell Phone systems

Fiber optic cable

1. Broadband wires
2. Police security features
3. GPS & Antenna

3.The three common ways to obtain information from IoT devices are sensors, RFID and Video tracking.  Compare the three technologies by addressing the advantages, disadvantages, key requirements for the things.  Provide two applications of each (these applications should NOT be sourced from the textbook).  You may use a table to present the material if you wish.

The comparison between sensors, RFID and video tracking as part of Internet of Things can be shown as:

Examining IoT Data Collection Technologies

	Sensors	RFID	Video Tracking
Advantages	Most secure among all as there is no chances of duplication	Most efficient among all as there is time delay	Most easy to implement and affordable among all due to familiarity
Disadvantages	Most expensive among all as specific skillset is required to develop the system	At times, it could be complex to implement the system due to various intricacies involved	The disadvantage is that it’s not as secure as other mediums of Sensors & RFID
Key requirements	The key requirement is that the sensors to be used should be same for all the users	The RFID tags should be made available that could be stick to all the products	The infrastructure set up should have the available support of video tracking
Applications	Key applications across new products of IOT like: i. Driver less vehicles ii. IRIS sensor to open the gate of homes	Key applications across home infrastructure like: i. Library management system to manage books ii. Retail store to manage inventory and stock out	Keya applications for communication purpose across organizations like: i. Video conferencing among employees from different culture ii. Camera based access of home remotely on mobile phone

4.Discuss the issues associated with security and privacy in the context of the Internet of Things.

It would be correct to say that Internet of Things is a powerful thing and there are various strong features and benefits of IOT. However, there are various privacy issues and security threats associated with IOT. These issues can be discussed as:

1. There are various end points or the touch points where the data can be leaked. There is always a possibility that the data from the sender is not received by the user end. There is always the issue of data theft (Ochs & Riemann, 2017).
2. There is also the security issue of fraud associated with the implementation of Internet of Things. There could be data and security attack from the external party that makes the use of IOT weak (Ochs & Riemann, 2017).
3. There are privacy challenges with the use of Internet of Things infrastructure as users’ information can be masked and used by some intruders. This can happen when there is some breach in the network (Ochs & Riemann, 2017).

5.An IoT water level monitoring application requires updates from a sensor periodically, using the command/response paradigm. The application triggers a request every 1 s. The round-trip propagation delay between the application and the sensor is 12 ms. On average the sensor consumes 3 ms to process each request. The application consumes 2 ms to send or receive any message. If the application blocks on every request to the sensor, how much of its time budget can be saved by redesigning the application to use the publish/subscribe communication model in lieu of the command/response approach?

The advantages of publish/ subscribe model over command/ response design is the efficiency advantages. With publish/ subscribe model a lot of time can be saved as it is not unidirectional like command/ response (Mumtaz & Alsohaily, 2017).  The analysis of the budget and the saving of the time with the use of publish/ subscribe model can be discussed as:

• Time to trigger the request: 1 s
• Round trip propagation delay: 12 ms
• Time consumed at the end of sensor: 3 ms
• Time consumed at the end of application: 2 ms

If the system design is changed to publish/ subscribe model then also the time consumed at the end of senor and at the end of application would remain same. However, the system should be able to save the time of round trip propagation delay. So, it would be a saving of 12 ms per second. In percentage terms it would be:

(12/60) * 100

= 20% saving

6.Describe Nielson’s Law.  How does it relate to Moore’s Law?  What are the implications for the Internet of Thing?

The Moore’s law is very simple. It says that the processing system doubles every 18 months. The Nielson’s law can be considered as the extension of Moore’s law and it states that the bandwidth speed for high end users increases by 50% per year. The comparison of Nielson’s Law with Moore’s law suggest that the speed of bandwidth is less than the speed of technology advancements. One of its major implications for Internet of Things is the bottleneck that could occur due to less advancements in the speed of Bandwidth (Miraz & Excell, 2015). It means that there could be situations that the IT infrastructure is ready due to technology advancements. However, the Internet speed is not up to mark.

References

Miraz, M. H., Ali, M., Excell, P. S., & Picking, R. (2015, September). A review on Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Everything (IoE) and Internet of Nano Things (IoNT). In Internet Technologies and Applications (ITA), 2015 (pp. 219-224). IEEE.

Mumtaz, S., Alsohaily, A., Pang, Z., Rayes, A., Tsang, K. F., & Rodriguez, J. (2017). Massive Internet of Things for Industrial Applications: Addressing Wireless IIoT Connectivity Challenges and Ecosystem Fragmentation. IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, 11(1), 28-33.

Ochs, T., & Riemann, U. A. (2017). The Internet of Things: From Things to Valuable Outcomes. In The Internet of Things in the Modern Business Environment (pp. 126-146). IGI Global.

Rayes, A., & Samer, S. (2017). Internet of Things—From Hype to Reality. Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland.

Schmidt, R., Zimmermann, A., Möhring, M., Nurcan, S., Keller, B., & Bär, F. (2015, September). Digitization–perspectives for conceptualization. In European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing (pp. 263-275). Springer, Cham.