IoT news | IoT and sustainability

An article from oneM2M, the global standards initiative covering requirements, architecture, API specifications, security solutions and interoperability for Machine-to-Machine and IoT technologies.

Sustainability is firmly on the agenda of governments and businesses, nearly six years after the United Nations formalized its Sustainable Development Goals.

The US General Services Administration, which manages federal government buildings, operates with a “strategically sustainable” focus. In Europe there have been calls for more durable and durable goods. Meanwhile, China has big plans to go ‘green’.

Business leaders view sustainability as central to day-to-day operations and as a key driver of organizational change. Against this background, IoT technologies are fundamental building blocks to enable sustainability† That’s because remote connectivity makes it easier to manage widespread assets. Remote connectivity also improves availability and easy access to IoT data. Organizations now have the tools to improve their decisions about scarce resources.

The fundamental role of IoT has two important implications. The first is about maximizing the adoption of IoT systems in sustainability use cases. This requires early adopters to share their implementation experiences and sustainability gains. Others can then learn and give impetus to the adoption trend. The second is about making IoT technologies inherently sustainable.

Design principles to make IoT sustainable

Some IoT use cases involve custom solutions that will never change. Many others will evolve over time. That could be because of additive requirements, business transformation pressures and technological evolution. Sustainable design must be at the heart of this evolution to boost the longevity of solutions. It should also reduce the risk of discarding early implementations due to poor design choices in the procurement process. Therefore, in addition to mastering individual IoT technologies, solution designers must apply sustainable design principles. These include considerations about interoperability, open standards, modularity, reuse and scalability.

Interoperability has several dimensions. The simplest is to make it easy to combine different technologies and swap components from different suppliers. A more demanding one is exchanging data between application and operational silos. This will arise when organizations work together across department and company boundaries to enable better decision-making. These benefits lead to the principle of scalability, to extend the full potential of IoT solutions beyond mission-critical and high-value use cases.

Modularity in system and software design helps designers combine subsystems. This allows many established and legacy technologies to be integrated into larger and more demanding IoT systems. It retains some of the value of deployed systems without reducing their useful life. Modularity also supports the principle of ‘re-use’. By creating software libraries and reusable components, other developers can save time and improve their productivity.

Sustainable IoT technology

In addition to sustainable design principles, another consideration is to make IoT technology components sustainable. This can involve efficient hardware designs to improve their power characteristics and extend the life of constrained IoT devices. New design approaches are needed for several reasons. One is that IoT devices work differently from smartphones that are charged almost daily. Another reason is that many IoT devices are expected to survive in remote locations for up to ten years. The entire approach to power consumption should minimize the costs and resources required for anything but essential field maintenance.

The demand for reliable and timely data will lead to an increase in IoT devices with low power consumption, low cost and long life. Their sustainability characteristics depend on intelligent and efficient communication and energy-saving operating modes. One solution is to collect and transmit data without having a device constantly on or continuously polling the network. Dormant and deep-sleep business models are ways to reduce energy consumption. However, its use relies on communication protocols, between device and network, to optimize connectivity and data transfer. To realize these technical benefits on a large scale and uniformly in the IoT industry, standardization is required.

A standards-based approach to sustainability

oneM2M is the international standardization initiative for end-to-end IoT systems. OneM2M’s business includes requirements gathering, architecture design, API specifications, security solutions, and interoperability for Machine-to-Machine and IoT technologies. As such, the oneM2M technical standard represents a set of common services that apply to all IoT systems. In the spirit of repurposing established industry standards, this extends to component IoT technologies such as CoAP, MQTT, and LWM2M, among others.

As part of its sustainability commitment, oneM2M launched an initiative to address the different facets of sustainability. This is an industry effort, involving participants from the technology and policy disciplines.

Scalability, modularity and reuse are fundamental aspects of the oneM2M standard. The horizontal architecture and framework of technical specifications of oneM2M are designed for reuse in multiple verticals. This also means individual implementations can overcome boundary limitations to enable interoperability of applications, data, technology and vendors.

Industrial and academic member organizations developed oneM2M technical specifications in an open and collaborative environment, with a clear governance framework. These factors promote confidence in oneM2M specifications, as well as interoperability testing and certification efforts between suppliers. Building on these foundations, oneM2M members are exploring ideas to make IoT technologies sustainable. Promising ideas will be incorporated into the future standardization roadmap of oneM2M. Contributions are welcome from the IoT industry ecosystem. Direct participation in oneM2M activities is open to everyone.

About oneM2M: oneM2M is the global standard initiative covering the requirements, architecture, API specifications, security solutions and interoperability for Machine-to-Machine and IoT technologies. Founded in 2012, OneM2M brings together eight of the world’s leading standards development organizations: ARIB (Japan), ATIS (US), CCSA (China), ETSI (Europe), TIA (US), TSDSI (India ), TTA (Korea), and TTC (Japan), along with industry associations and more than two hundred member organizations. For more information, including how to sign up and participate in oneM2M, see: www.onem2m.org.