How IoT Can Take Advantage Of Decentralization?
By Farshad Kheiri, PhD, MSc. on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
At 55Foundry, we are exploring how decentralization can help current technologies overcome major challenges. As part of this effort, we are looking into the “Internet of Things,” also known as IoT.
What Is IoT?
In 1999, Kevin Ashton, a Procter & Gamble employee at the time, came up with the word “Internet of Things,” as a marketing strategy for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) directed towards senior management. But what is RFID? Radio Frequency Identification uses radio waves to transmit data stored on a chip attached to an object. These radio signals contain information about the object they are attached to. RFID was initially used for supply management purposes. For example, by placing a reader inside storage, you can find out what is stored inside. I previously discussed this in more detail here.
The initial version of IoT was a series of objects that constantly transmitted data which could be read by an appropriate receiver. However, this concept has been around for a longer time. The technology of sensor networks has been around for over 60 years, since 1950. The U.S. military was using distributed acoustic sensors to detect and track submarines. These sensors were distributed under the ocean and as one is triggered, the trajectory and speed of the detected submarine were calculated. This was based on the neighbors’ triggering times and locations.
Since the IoT has come into existence, many people are excited and exploring the vast possibilities. The definition has been extended to connect all things to the internet! (Figure 1) In a more technical sense, any set of devices or objects can be interconnected and data can be transferred between them. As suggested by the definition of IoT, these devices (things) do not need to process data, they just need to be able to transfer or receive the data. Based on functionality, these objects could collect the information and then transmit it (like temperature sensors) or receive the data and take action. In some cases, the objects can sense and act simultaneously (like a thermostat).
IoT might have just been a dream at some point, but wireless technology was advanced and applied to make it a reality! However, its development has been very slow. The emerging availability of 5G has moved the peer-to-peer network speed from 100 Mbps (megabits per second) in 4G/LTE and 1 Gbps (gigabits per second) in Advanced LTE to 10 Gbps in 5G (100 to 10 times faster respectively). Additionally, the latency (the delay between the sending and receiving data) from 200 milliseconds in 4G has decreased to 1 millisecond in 5G.
Let’s compare that speed to the braking time for a human compared to an autonomous vehicle. For a car that moves at a speed of 100 km/h to stop, a human needs a distance of 7 meters assuming that the only factor is human visual stimuli reaction. By the time a person sees an obstacle and reacts, it takes about 250 milliseconds compared to 1 millisecond with 5G technology. Let’s assume the braking reaction has zero latency, using sensors that rely on 5G technology after they sense the obstacle they can send a signal to the car braking system in 1 millisecond and it requires a 3 cm distance clearance from the obstacle to be able to react in time. If you are doubting autonomous vehicle reaction time, keep this in mind! This means that a 5G reaction response can be 250 times faster.
Challenges:
Interconnecting all devices and letting data flow in between them can be very beneficial, especially if intelligence is applied and actions can be taken. For example, when you leave your office towards your car on a cold winter day, the car can be enabled to turn on with the heater, or when you set your car GPS navigation towards your home, your home heater can be enabled to turn on prior to your arrival.
However, there are also challenges! To date, the biggest challenge with IoT has been developing hardware technology that makes it possible. Protocols and algorithms are not as complicated. As technology has attracted more attention and adoption, other problems have emerged! Amongst these, data privacy and security of the nodes (things) are top concerns. IoT systems are set up in a wireless network and even though there has been tremendous progress in the area of security, it is still far from perfect.
Currently, IoT data is being transferred or received between interconnected devices and these connections are as secure as the established network. If the data is the temperature or moisture level in a farm, it may not have much value to hackers; however, if data is about smart home devices or any other place's private spaces, a data breach may be disastrous. There have been several major data breaches over the past year in IoT systems. This has raised concerns among businesses regarding the use of IoT to share data platforms to increase the performance of current tasks. Adding IoT and sharing data among devices may compromise data security and privacy.
Now let’s take a step back and consider the way these devices are set up. As long as they have access to the correct amount of memory, decentralization protocols enable a tamper-proof platform. Additionally, the security keys of ownership certificates can guarantee the privacy of shared data. For more details on decentralized platforms, you can refer to my previous article.
Setting up IoT on a decentralized platform can address some of the biggest challenges and like a decentralized AI platform, it will require careful architecture design to make sure, it is not overloaded by placing unnecessary data on the chain.
