interesting piece from Network World that basically says zigbee is a no-go on the mobile handset and that LTE and WiFi will dominate, and perhaps NFC, too. I’d basically agree, with the caveat that DASH7 co-occupies the NFC space as I’ve argued here before. I don’t agree, as you’ll see in my comment, with the idea that WiFi is a panacea for everything and can magically become “low power”, nor do I think WiFi is going to displace Bluetooth anytime soon. Note that WiFi adoption on smartphones in China is lagging … so it’s no slam dunk in the world’s largest market. I look at GPS more as a sensor than as a radio, btw.
So smartphones will have four radios in the end, in my view:
1. LTE for high bandwidth, very long range voice and data comms
2. WiFi for high bandwidth, campus-area voice and data comms
3. Bluetooth for cable replacement
4. NFC/DASH7 for mobile payments, social networking, location based services, mobile advertising, sensor networking, and more.
“I have two very bold predictions,” he said during an interview at The Networked Grid taking place in Palm Springs. “In two years, nobody will ever choose to buy a mesh network again, and everyone that has already picked a mesh solution will be integrating commercial networking strategy to supplement it.”
This is just another example of the industry waking up to the limitations of mesh networking, in this example using SmartGrid applications. The use of mesh today in smart grid environments is entirely due to the poor signal propagation of technologies like ZigBee and its various 802.15.4 cousin specifications. ZigBee meshes because it is short range and can’t cut through walls and other RF-unfriendly materials. Cellular carriers see the same weakness for ZigBee, per this article, but only from the opposite end of the coverage spectrum: cellular has very long distance coverage with good signal propagation, albeit with a monthly service charge, high device costs, and terrible battery life.
Another reason mesh is promoted is due to the poor battery life of ZigBee. ZigBee nodes, especially those acting as routers for other ZigBee nodes, have batteries that die quickly as a result, thus the need to re-route a message to a node that isn’t dead. Sounds cool, sort of like the way the wired internet was architected, except the total cost of ownership is through the roof and the performance is weak when compared to better, longer-range technologies like DASH7 or even cellular.
The ZigBee folks promoted mesh as a cool marketing gimmick that just happened to reflect (and paper over) the inherent weaknesses in their technology. I know firsthand that there are some very cool military apps that can benefit from mesh (blue force tracking, for example), but these are the epitome of niche applications. WiFi can use mesh for backhaul, but this is beside the point when it comes to the internet of things, which is about the opposite of high bandwidth pipes. The internet of things and apps like SmartGrid monitoring are almost entirely about short, bursty messages triggered by sensors. We don’t need to stream YouTube videos in the internet of things (OK, OK in a few cases, perhaps, but this is .00000001% of the total node population 10 years from now). If you are thinking of deploying mesh today, you owe it to your company and your shareholders to think twice and really investigate the risks in deploying mesh if it’s outside the defense sector. Don’t take it from me, just listen to what the global cellular industry is saying.
DASH7 was recently the subject of an article in IEEE Spectrum entitled “DASH7 Networking Gains Momentum” … compares DASH7 to Zigbee. Readers of this blog know my views on the comparison, but two points were made by the author that I want to clarify:
1. The zigbee rep implies that zigbee might be better at penetrating a window “if the only way for a radio signal to pass into or out of a room is through a window, a shorter wavelength may, in fact, work better.” Zigbee developers deal with this every day since their technology perpetually frustrated with its inability to reliably penetrate walls, ceilings, and floors, thus this kind of argument is not surprising given the source. But the argument is sort of a red herring. DASH7 penetrates all of the above, including glass, reliably and with great range so the comment is pretty misleading. In an extremely niche case where the only exit out of a room were a 70cm window, the claim might be true, but only marginally so.
2. The comment in the article about an alleged difficulty designing antennas for DASH7 is, frankly, baffling. (ha!) There are plenty of 433 MHz and DASH7 antennas today that are super small and getting smaller. No idea where this came from — oh — wait a minute – scratch that.
Finally, the zigbee rep tries to argue that DASH7 is engaging in “market positioning”, which when I read it, it sounds like he’s saying we’re hyping the technology or making claims we can’t support. Neither is true – any good product manager “positions” his product vis-a-vis substitutes or competitors every day, DASH7 is no different. In our case, the strengths of DASH7 position starkly with those of zigbee and in many cases, it’s simple physics and nothing to do per se with DASH7. 433 Mhz is superior to 2.45 MHz for wireless sensor networking in nearly every case we’ve studied. Exceptions are a) high bandwidth video or audio file sharing or internet backhaul, or b) instances where mesh networking is truly an end user requirement, which in our experience rarely if ever occurs. Were it not for the signal propagation limitations of 2.45GHz, much of the “meshing” going on out there would not be necessary. More than one zigbee developer has said this to me. More support on us vs. them here.
I also know more than one zigbee developer understands this and is beginning the move from 2.45 GHz, where most zigbee implementations occur, to 900 MHz, but this just creates further interoperability problems, increases the cost of ownership to customers, and fundamentally doesn’t solve zigbee’s many challenges. 900 MHz also has global frequency allocation issues, unlike 433 MHz.
Perhaps the zigbee folks can respond below with their ripostes?
2009 was an important year in the history of wireless sensor networks, but not for all the “usual” reasons. 2009 was less about flamboyant breakthroughs than about quiet but hyper-important infrastructure and investment decisions whose effects that will be felt for many years to come. Here are my top ten events of 2009 that will most impact the adoption of wireless sensor networking in the months and years ahead as well as my (related) predictions for 2010. Enjoy and feel free to comment!
In January 2009 DoD awarded a contract for $429 million in DASH7 infrastructure. Significant because the US Dept of Defense operates the largest and most complex supply chain in the world and both allied defense forces as well as suppliers of many types, including CPG companies, will eventually be required to deploy DASH7 infrastructure. Given the global footprint of DoD’s supplier network, this is the most profound development of year in terms of global adoption of a wireless sensor networking (WSN) technology based on a single global standard. That DoD is standardizing internally and externally with DASH7 is a major event that most outside the supply chain sector missed but will have ramifications for years to come in both defense and commercial sectors similar to DoD’s pivotal impact on barcode and fax adoption.
2010 prediction: accelerated adoption of DASH7 by defense forces in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and India.
2. DoE SmartGrid Stimulus Awards
Federal funding for new investments in measurement and control infrastructure for the nation’s electricity grid will have downstream ramifications for hundreds of applications which may not even be energy related. While this year’s stimulus spending mostly subsidizes large utilities who are using the technology for demand planning purposes, psychologically the “battle” for control of home automation networks began in earnest in 2009. Large amounts of government money are enabling a wide array of companies, most of whom are unconnected to utilities, dip their toe into this space and offer a variety of solutions for home healthcare, home multimedia, environmental command and control, and much more. Many wireless sensor networking protocols — DASH7, WiFi, Bluetooth, ZWave, Zigbee, and others — are taking unique approaches to this market and the smartest companies are digging in for a long ramp up as despite the sugar high of stimulus money, few see utility companies as the innovators that will ultimately drive this market. 2009 was the year of important investments by component suppliers, device integrators, software vendors, systems integrators, utilities, telco’s, and many that will prove pivotal in raising awareness around opportunities in home/building automation.
2010 prediction: focus on mobile handsets as the command and control center for home automation displaces set top box/desktop-centric visions.
A small event to some, but evolving the ISO 18000-7 standard from a defense-centric technology to one that is global and interoperable across geographies, industries and applications, will eventually mean access to a single global, interoperable standard for extremely low power wireless sensor data acquisition that is simply not attainable with competing technologies. With the catalyst of the defense sector driving initial adoption (see #1 above), 2009 was the year DASH7 entered the arena as a serious wireless sensor networking alternative and in the eyes of many, the technology that is hands-down superior to the next best alternative. If WSN is important to your business, put the DASH7 Alliance on your to-do list for 2010.
2010 prediction: DASH7 Alliance aligns more closely with complementary technologies like cellular, passive RFID, WiFi, and 2D barcodes.
4. Chinese Political Leadership Embraces Wireless Sensor Networking
When Chinese premier Wen Jiabao pronounced the internet of things as a national imperative for China, it got surprisingly little play in North America, but in Asia it was widely advertised and for those who study China and its increasing sway over technology adoption, this was an important moment as it signaled that not only do government leaders there realize that WSN is critical to China’s future as a manufacturing power, but the internet of things will permeate many other industries where China is or hopes to be a global leader. As the hub of the world’s supply chain, China’s acknowledgement of the importance of the IOT should strike everyone as pivotal.
2010 prediction: New announcements from top three Chinese mobile carriers around environmental sensing businesses/pilots.
5. Twitter: Human sensor network.
The explosion of Twitter, a service that only a couple of years ago people openly ridiculed, demonstrates the power of a “human sensor network”. The ability to add non-human sensors to Twitter and other social networking applications is a natural evolution of the current application that will present great opportunities and challenges, but would have been delayed were it not for the “teachable moment” that Twitter provided the wireless sensor networking community this year.
2010 prediction: presentation of sensor data in 2D environments like Twitter continues to prove disappointing and sensor data over Twitter remains a novelty until 2011/2012.
6. NTT DoCoMo environmental sensing announcement.
DoCoMo’s announcement of a pilot in Tokyo whereby environmental sensor data would be acquired by mobile phones was a watershed announcement in that it signals how wireless carriers will play a pivotal role in providing a data acquisition interface for unstructured environments like a city. As the role of sensors and location markers becomes clearer through the growth of augmented reality applications, carriers will see the opportunity to drive new commerce
and advertising revenues as well as leverage GPRS/CDMA backhaul for transporting sensor data as well as for executing transactions resulting from access to sensor data.
2010 prediction: Regulators in Japan increasingly recommend 433 MHz as the frequency in Japan for a range of logistics and sensor networking applications, to the exclusion of technologies operating at 2.45GHz, which present a range of interference and performance problems there and elsewhere.
7. The Wikitude Browser and Augmented Reality
The Wikitude browser demonstrated on a basic level how we will integrate masses of sensor, location, and metadata from the physical world around us. Demonstrated on the Apple iPhone, it relies on GPS (primarily) for deriving location, which limits the application to outdoor environments. But future implementations will augment GPS data with location and sensor data from DASH7-enabled tags that can be updated by merchants or municipalities simply and cheaply, with minimal maintenance of the tag.
2010 prediction: Several major CPG companies launch pilots using augmented reality with DASH7. Augmented reality will become a huge theme in 2010.
8. IBM’s SmarterPlanet advertising campaign
Regardless of your opinion of IBM, their Smarter Planet campaign this year was terrific. Suuure it’s nice to have big marketing budgets, a cynic would say, but this campaign articulated opportunities in WSN that raised end user awareness and that will provide benefits to the entire industry. Sam Palmisano has done a terrific job of aligning what seems like the entire company around this theme and many of us noticed.
2010 prediction: IBM’s focus on Smart Water is particularly prescient … expect lots of announcements around a “Smart Water Grid” that augments the electrical one that made headlines in 2009.
9. Wi-Fi Alliance ad-hoc networking announcement
This announcement signalled WiFi’s intent to capture more of the home automation market that is coveted by the Bluetooth/Zigbee/ZWave crowd. Home automation is already shaping up to be a very heterogeneous landscape with many options, but this ultimately serves to create still further fragmentation, at least for the near future. I don’t see the same downside for bluetooth that some see with this – I like my bluetooth headset and wireless keyboards – but clearly the WiFi folks fired a warning shot to the rest of the home automation crowd.
2010 prediction: integration of high-bandwidth/high power WiFi connectivity @ 2.4GHz with low bandwidth/low power connectivity @ 433 MHz (DASH7).
What does swine flu have to do with WSN, you say? This virus scare/pandemic has illustrated for many just how interdependent we’ve all become and how our massively complex and high-volume commercial relationships with people from across the globe can not only benefit us economically, but also threaten us physically (and economically, if enough are stricken). The need for better pandemic preparedness and cold chain management will be solved in part by the availability of a wireless sensor networking standard that can allow anyone to operate or interoperate with another network similarly to the way we roam from wifi hotspot to wifi hot spot. Use of a low cost, reliable WSN technology that we can either re-use or dispose of at the end of the journey is a major advancement that will not only help us mitigate the imapct of pandemics like H1N1, but also — don’t laugh — make us more competitive. Counter-intuitive, I know, but the smarter we make our supply chains, the more competitive we become.
2010 prediction: major regulatory breakthrough in the way RF devices are allowed/disallowed on aircraft for purposes of cold chain/perishables management.
What do you think? Comments are enabled below … have a great 2010 everyone!
DASH7 was recently the subject of an article in IEEE Spectrum entitled 