Implementing Cellular IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation E-Book

Dennis McCain

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 330

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Even if you’re an IoT technology manager with a sound understanding of wireless local area network technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, you may face many unique challenges when implementing a wireless wide area network (WWAN) IoT solution with cellular technologies with respect to choosing the optimal IoT device, cellular connectivity, and architecture. To help you overcome such roadblocks, this digital transformation book guides you in implementing a robust, end-to-end cellular IoT solution using best practices for all aspects of managing the IoT solution.
Starting with an introduction to the top IoT markets and solutions in the context of an enterprise’s digital transformation, this book will show you how this leads to cost savings and new business models. You’ll grasp all you need to know about the IoT system components, life cycle, and best practices for implementing an IoT solution. While the book explains all the leading IoT wireless technologies, the focus is on LTE and 5G cellular technologies. With a review of real-world cellular IoT solution case studies and future IoT trends, you'll be ready to work with wireless IoT technologies, devices, and architectures.
By the end of this book, you'll be able to identify the best wireless technologies for your IoT use cases and successfully implement cellular IoT solutions addressing key issues in the solution life cycle.

Leseprobe

Implementing Cellular IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation

Successfully develop, deploy, and maintain LTE and 5G enterprise IoT systems

Dennis McCain

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Implementing Cellular IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation

Copyright © 2023 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Group Product Manager: Rahul Nair

Publishing Product Manager: Surbhi Suman

Senior Content Development Editor: Adrija Mitra

Technical Editor: Rajat Sharma

Copy Editor: Safis Editing

Project Coordinator: Ashwin Kharwa

Proofreader: Safis Editing

Indexer: Sejal Dsilva

Production Designer: Shankar Kalbhor

Marketing Coordinator: Gaurav Christian

First published: February 2023

Production reference: 1100123

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham

B3 2PB, UK.

978-1-80461-615-4

www.packtpub.com

To my wife, Tamara, for her dedication and support to the family and me over the years. To my son, Joshua, and daughter, McKenzie, believe in yourselves you can achieve anything you set your mind to.

– Dennis McCain

Foreword

I’ve had the opportunity to work with Dennis McCain on numerous IoT projects using the capabilities he describes in this book. Three of the most memorable projects will be revealed on these pages to give you a glimpse into Dennis’s knowledge and experience.

The first was the development, launch, and support of a global IoT solution to track beverage coolers that are supposed to be inside buildings. IoT connectivity was important for tracking temperature, door opening and closing, and even the locations of the coolers because they could be stolen. This solution required integrating an IoT device with multiple cooler manufacturers and generations of cellular technologies to work worldwide, and almost every problem imaginable was encountered and solved along the way.

The second project was unraveling a tricky performance issue with a Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) solution that could be placed anywhere inside a building where there was power. Solving the problem required working with the customer, the cellular carrier, the device supplier, and the module and chipset supplier. This project was an example of how in-depth knowledge of the entire solution was necessary to achieve the end goal.

The third project was the development of a state-of-the-art smart label using an embedded SIM, LPWA module, and unique antenna and battery designs. Technical and performance issues, along with the constraints of size and cost, made this development challenging.

It’s important to know that with IoT, new trails are blazed every day, and blazing new trails is hard work. You never know what’s behind the next clump of trees. Dennis has been on point for much of this trailblazing. He knows the technology, the industry, the best practices, and the processes to navigate all aspects of IoT.

In this book, Dennis will be your guide to understanding the ins and outs of cellular IoT technologies as well as how to develop, deploy, and maintain IoT solutions. Even if you know wireless technology, IoT is a world of its own, and it’s easy to get lost in the acronyms and the options. At the heart of IoT is the device itself, the gadget that connects whatever it is you want to monitor or control to an application. Dennis is an expert on IoT devices, so there’s no one better at helping you understand the options available and identifying the right one for your use case. One of the biggest fears with IoT is the threat it could pose in the hands of bad actors, so Dennis will arm you with the right approaches to stay secure. And when you’re ready to explore 5G and what it has to offer for massive IoT, enhanced mobile broadband, and ultra-reliable low-latency communication, Dennis can take you there.

Consider Implementing Cellular IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation as your guidebook. I wish you all the best on your IoT journey.

Cameron Coursey

Vice-President, Business Mobility & IoT Products, AT&T

Contributors

About the author

Dennis McCain is an IoT lead member of technical staff at AT&T and holds a master of science degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University. Dennis is the subject matter expert for IoT devices in the AT&T IoT business and has over 20 years of wireless technology experience with a focus on IoT, working in various roles in many markets, including utility smart energy, smart buildings, smart industrial, transportation and logistics, and smart homes.

I would like to thank my loving and patient wife for her continued support through the process of writing this book. I would also like to thank my IoT colleagues at AT&T for their encouragement in pursuing my goal of publishing this book.

About the reviewers

Anurag Kumar Singh has close to 12 years of experience designing, developing, and integrating various features and solutions in telecommunications systems, specifically in Access, Core and IoT. He has received a master’s degree in computer science and provided POCs and training on end-to-end 4G, 5G, and cloud solutions for business clients of all sizes.

Innovation plays a huge role in networking, which is meant to connect people and technologies. I am thankful to all the people working toward telecommunication advancements over the last decade, with digital services reaching out to remote locations across the globe. Special mention to my family and friends for providing support and understanding for the time and commitment required to work this hard.

James Wolters has worked in a variety of technical leadership positions in the telecommunications industry over the past two decades. He has held network operations and network engineering roles with BellSouth Telecommunications and AT&T Mobility and has been focused on the IoT industry for the past 10 years. He holds a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from the United States Naval Academy and is a graduate of the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) fellowship program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Basavaraj Patil is a director for product development and realization at AT&T’s IoT business unit. He leads a team of product architects and is responsible for the design, development, and deployment of end-to-end IoT solutions. His current focus is on 5G networks, LPWA, and various platforms within the IoT ecosystem. Basavaraj is based in Dallas, Texas, and works at the AT&T headquarters location downtown.

Basavaraj is a 25-plus-year veteran of the telecom/cellular/internet industry, starting in the early days of 2G and the mass adoption of mobile communications that has evolved to what we see today. He started at Bell Northern Research/Nortel Networks before moving to Nokia and, eventually, to AT&T.

His experience spans packet core networks, smartphones, data and voice, and internet protocols and technologies. He is the co-author of the book IP in Wireless Networks, published in 2003. He has also been actively involved in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and chaired several working groups, and co-authored a number of RFCs. He has also contributed to 3GPP, 3GPP2, and WiMAX standards. He holds multiple patents pertaining to cellular and IP-based communications.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Entering the World of the Internet of Things

1

Transforming to an IoT Business

Understanding IoT technologies

Leveraging IoT for digital transformation

Monitoring and managing assets and inventory

Increasing operational efficiencies and productivity

Creating smart factories

New business opportunities

Improving the customer experience

Understanding IoT markets

Transportation

Supply chain logistics

Industrial and manufacturing

Healthcare

Energy/utilities

Summary

2

Understanding IoT Devices and Architectures

High-level IoT architecture

The link layer

The network layer

The transport layer

The application layer

The data format

The cellular IoT network architecture

The UE

eNodeB

EPC

An overview of IoT device types and use cases

Serial modems

Routers

Gateways

Remote monitoring devices

Asset trackers

Best practices

Leveraging off-the-shelf technology components

Leveraging established IoT technology partners

Planning on solution life cycle management

Slow and steady wins the race

Security is paramount

Summary

3

Introducing IoT Wireless Technologies

Licensed versus unlicensed technologies

Network topologies

WWAN and WLAN IoT technologies

Bluetooth/BLE

Wi-Fi

LoRa and LoRaWAN

LR-WPAN (IEEE 802.15.4)

Technical and cost comparisons

Frequency spectrum

Range

Power consumption

Data throughput

Module cost

Wireless technology use cases

Bluetooth/BLE

Wi-Fi

LoRa

LR-WPAN

Best practices in deploying IoT wireless technologies

1. Consider the network coverage required

2. Consider the long-term network maintenance/support required

3. Leverage existing network infrastructure

Summary

Part 2: Deep Dive into Cellular IoT Solutions

4

Leveraging Cellular IoT Technologies

The evolution of cellular technology

LTE technologies

LTE network

LTE radio technology

LTE technology ecosystem

LTE IoT use cases

LTE LPWA design and best practices

PSM and eDRX low-power features

LTE LPWA best practices

LTE LPWA use cases

Summary

5

Validating 5G with IoT

Overview of 5G

5G network architecture

5G radio technology

5G frequency spectrum

5G network slicing

5G and IoT

5G NR RedCap

5G use cases

Industrial automation (Industry 4.0)

Remote surgery

Smart vehicles (autonomous vehicles and V2X)

VR/AR

Best practices in 5G solutions

5G network carriers

5G private networks

5G IoT devices

Summary

6

Reviewing Cellular IoT Devices with Use Cases

Cellular IoT device architecture

Processing unit

Cellular module

SIM

RF

Power unit

Sensors

Input/output

WLAN radios

Cellular IoT device types

Alarm panel

Camera

Computer – in vehicle

Emergency phone

Hotspot

Lighting

Medical telematics

Metering

Modem – embedded

mPERS

POS

Remote control device

Rugged handheld

Sensors

Smart home

Tracking

Vehicle telematics control unit

Vehicle OBD II

Vending telemetry

Wearable

Cellular IoT device carrier certifications

Edge computing

Best practices in cellular IoT devices

Buying versus building

Carrier certification

Device management

Summary

7

Securing the Internet of Things

An overview of the IoT security ecosystem

IoT security challenges

Threats to IoT devices and solutions

Proposed IoT security framework

Endpoint layer

Network layer

Application layer

Best practices for securing IoT devices

IoT device hardware security

IoT device software security

IoT device OS security

IoT device connectivity interface security

IoT device network connectivity security

IoT device Wi-Fi security

Summary

8

Implementing an IoT Solution with Case Studies

Exploring the IoT solution business cases

Connected Cooler

Smart Label

Investigating the IoT device architectures

Connected Cooler

Smart Label

Analyzing the network architectures

Connected Cooler

Smart Label

Lessons learned

Piloting the solution

Device management

Life cycle management

Summary

Part 3: Cellular IoT Solution Life Cycle and Future Trends

9

Managing the Cellular IoT Solution Life Cycle

The challenges of IoT life cycle management

IoT devices

IoT wireless services

IoT platforms

The cellular IoT life cycle

Designing and planning

Provisioning

Deployment

Monitoring and management

Sunset

Best practices

The designing and planning stage

Provisioning

Deployment

Monitoring and management

Summary

10

Looking at the Road Ahead

Emerging cellular IoT technologies

Private LTE and 5G CBRS networks

iUICC and eUICC SIM technologies

IoT SAFE

IoT trends and business models

Edge computing

AI and ML

Interoperability of IoT solutions

A social and ethical IoT

The IoT for sustainability

New IoT business models

Getting started on your IoT journey

Best practices in developing and launching your IoT solution

Leveraging the IoT partner ecosystem

Focus on interoperability between IoT systems

Planning on an 18-24 month launch schedule

Summary

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

The IoT market, especially in the area of cellular IoT solutions using LTE and 5G technologies, has grown exponentially in the past 5 years as businesses are realizing how IoT is a critical enabler for revenue growth, with new business models and operational cost savings. As IoT is either in the planning or development phase for many businesses, it is important to understand end-to-end IoT technologies and industry best practices to create optimal IoT solutions. While the enterprise information technology team typically responsible for implementing IoT solutions may understand wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies such as Wi-Fi, cellular wireless wide area network technologies introduce a number of new, technical challenges that need to be understood before implementing an enterprise IoT solution. This book endeavors to provide a holistic review of the primary IoT wireless technologies, devices, and architectures with a focus on cellular IoT solutions.

Both developers and engineering managers planning an IoT solution will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide to understand the fundamentals of IoT. This book provides an understandable overview of the IoT wireless technologies, especially cellular, with real-world case studies and best practices to follow at each phase of the IoT solution life cycle. You will learn about the IoT market and the benefits of an IoT solution followed by a review of the various IoT wireless technologies, with a focus on cellular LTE and 5G. You will then learn about the main components and best practices for a successful end-to-end cellular IoT solution, followed by practical case studies of real-world cellular IoT solutions. This book will take you from an understanding of IoT wireless technologies to the business impetus and guide for a complete IoT solution implementation, concluding with real-world case studies and future IoT trends. By the end of this book, you will be able to identify the best wireless technologies for IoT use cases and will understand the architecture and best practices for a successful cellular IoT solution addressing the key pain points in the solution life cycle.

Who this book is for

This book is for IoT technology managers, leaders, C-suite executives, and decision makers considering or currently developing IoT solutions based on cellular technologies such as LTE and 5G. We assume the reader understands the importance of IoT connectivity in the context of their IoT solution.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Transforming to an IoT Business, provides an introduction to the Internet of Things, the top IoT markets, and why it is important for a business to consider an IoT solution. It introduces the basic technologies and architecture of an IoT solution and what types of “things” are connected and why.

Chapter 2, Understanding IoT Devices and Architectures, provides an introduction to IoT solutions, from the architecture of the IoT device to cloud applications, with descriptions of each component and best practices in designing an enterprise IoT solution.

Chapter 3, Introducing IoT Wireless Technologies, provides an overview of the primary IoT wireless technologies, including both licensed and unlicensed WWAN and WLAN technologies. This chapter provides a comparison of cellular and other wireless technologies deployed on the market with a review of use cases, along with technical and cost trade-offs.

Chapter 4, Leveraging Cellular IoT Technologies, goes into detail on cellular wireless technologies, especially Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technologies. It provides an overview of LTE wireless technologies, best practices in using these technologies, and the new IoT use cases enabled by these technologies.

Chapter 5, Validating 5G with IoT, goes into detail about the newest cellular technology, 5G, which has unique features enabling new high-bandwidth, low-latency IoT applications. The chapter provides an overview of 5G with use cases and best practices in using 5G technologies in IoT solutions.

Chapter 6, Reviewing Cellular IoT Devices with Use Cases, builds on the high-level overview of common IoT devices and use cases. It provides more detail on cellular IoT device types, use cases, and carrier certifications, including a review of edge computing and machine learning. The chapter concludes with a review of best practices in selecting cellular IoT devices for an enterprise IoT solution.

Chapter 7, Securing the Internet of Things, looks at privacy and security at all levels of the IoT solution architecture, including the device and connectivity – a critical part of any large-scale IoT solution. The chapter provides details on critical privacy and security guidelines and best practices for a robust, secure end-to-end IoT solution.

Chapter 8, Implementing an IoT Solution with Case Studies, crystallizes the review of complete IoT solutions from business case to technical execution. This chapter presents two real-world cellular IoT solution implementations covering the technical decisions for each component of the IoT solution presented in the previous chapters.

Chapter 9, Managing the Cellular IoT Solution Life Cycle, presents the full cellular IoT solution life cycle, describing the challenges and best practices at each stage to help ensure the success of an enterprise IoT solution.

Chapter 10, Looking at the Road Ahead, presents some emerging cellular IoT technologies as well as new IoT trends and business models likely to emerge in the next 10 years. The chapter provides insight into and best practices for getting started with designing and implementing an enterprise IoT solution.

To get the most out of this book

This book is intended for readers that just want to know more about all aspects of IoT solutions or readers that are considering implementing an IoT solution and realize the importance of IoT wireless connectivity.

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/NOvWZ.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. Here is an example: “The first case study is the Connected Cooler solution, and the second case study is the Smart Label solution.”

Italics: Indicates references to another chapter, another section in the same chapter, or a particular image in a chapter. This style is also used to highlight keyboard keys. Here is an example: “These network architectures are shown in Figure 5.2.”

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, email us at [email protected] and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/support/errata and fill in the form.

Piracy: If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the material.

If you are interested in becoming an author: If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit authors.packtpub.com.

Share Your Thoughts

Once you’ve read Implementing Cellular IoT Solutions for Digital Transformation, we’d love to hear your thoughts! Please click here to go straight to the Amazon review page for this book and share your feedback.

Your review is important to us and the tech community and will help us make sure we’re delivering excellent quality content.

Download a free PDF copy of this book

Thanks for purchasing this book!

Do you like to read on the go but are unable to carry your print books everywhere?
Is your eBook purchase not compatible with the device of your choice?

Don’t worry, now with every Packt book you get a DRM-free PDF version of that book at no cost.

Read anywhere, any place, on any device. Search, copy, and paste code from your favorite technical books directly into your application. 

The perks don’t stop there, you can get exclusive access to discounts, newsletters, and great free content in your inbox daily

Follow these simple steps to get the benefits:

Scan the QR code or visit the link below

https://packt.link/free-ebook/9781804616154

Submit your proof of purchaseThat’s it! We’ll send your free PDF and other benefits to your email directly

Part 1: Entering the World of the Internet of Things

To begin our IoT journey, we will start with an overview of the top IoT markets and underlying IoT devices, technologies, and architectures that enable enterprise IoT solutions. This will set the foundation for our deep dive into cellular IoT solutions in Part 2.

This partcontains the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Transforming to an IoT BusinessChapter 2, Understanding IoT Devices and ArchitecturesChapter 3, Introducing IoT Wireless Technologies

1

Transforming to an IoT Business

The majority of people are familiar with the Internet of Things (IoT), which was first coined in 1985 and was born according to Cisco Systems in 2008 when more things were connected to the internet than people. In practical terms, IoT is defined as physical objects that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the internet. Now, IoT is ubiquitous, especially in the consumer market, where home automation/monitoring is now quite common. As of 2020, there were over 12 billion connected devices with a forecast of more than 30.9 billion IoT devices worldwide by 2025 (source: Business Insider, IoT Analytics, Gartner, Intel, Statista). There were 5.8 billion connected automotive and enterprise IoT devices by the end of 2020, and it is expected that more than 15 billion enterprise IoT devices will be connected by 2029 (source: Gartner), which is why enterprise IoT is the focus of this book. While over 98% of business leaders have an understanding of IoT, statistics show that many are unclear of the exact definition of the term (source: Fierce Electronics), which undermines the full potential of enterprise IoT solutions and is the reason we decided to write this book. The enterprise market is where IoT is making the biggest impact in terms of digital transformation, with operational cost savings and new business models. By the end of this chapter, you will have a good understanding of the underlying IoT solution technologies and markets, as well as how IoT solutions can be used to transform a business with operational cost savings, improved efficiencies, and new business models.

In this chapter, we will cover the following main topics:

Understanding IoT technologiesLeveraging IoT for digital transformationDiscovering the top IoT markets

Understanding IoT technologies

In this section, you will learn about the underlying IoT technologies while using a high-level IoT solution end-to-end architecture as a guide. This includes IoT devices, connectivity, data analytics, and applications. The goal of this section is to provide you with a practical understanding of an IoT solution that will form the basis for an enterprise’s digital transformation, as discussed in the next section.

At a high level, an IoT solution consists of four basic layers, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 1.1 – High-level IoT architecture

The device layer is the actual physical device or thing in IoT that is connected to the internet. It captures critical IoT sensor data such as temperature, humidity, light, and air quality for remote monitoring applications. We will explore IoT devices in more detail in Chapter 6, Reviewing Cellular IoT Devices with Use Cases, but some common IoT devices that gather this sensor data include gateways, routers, and asset trackers. This sensor data can include location data for assets such as cars and enterprise fleets, health data for remote patient monitoring (RPM), or video data for security. We will cover IoT device types in more detail in Chapter 2, Understanding IoT Devices and Architectures, and describe how an IoT device is the foundation for an IoT solution. We will also discuss the near real-time processing of data at the device layer, known as edge computing, which is a growing and important trend that is driving tremendous growth in enterprise IoT.

The connectivity layer is the wireless or wired connectivity, which is the gateway to the internet. This could be a wireless local area network (WLAN) technology such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or Zigbee or a wireless wide area network (WWAN) technology such as cellular or LoRaWAN. As we will discuss in Chapter 2, Understanding IoT Devices and Architectures, and Chapter 3, Introducing IoT Wireless Technologies, WLAN technologies rely on a WAN gateway device to backhaul connectivity to the internet. Although several wireless technologies enable IoT, which we will present in Chapter 3, Introducing IoT Wireless Technologies, we will make the case that cellular technologies such as LTE and 5G are unique enablers for the new and transformative IoT business models, which is part of the reason why cellular IoT devices grew 18% year-over-year to reach 2 billion by the end of 2021 (source: IoT Analytics). More specifically, Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) cellular technologies such as LTE Category M (LTE-M) and Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) offer unique features in terms of lower cost and power that further enable new IoT applications. In Chapter 3, Introducing IoT Wireless Technologies, we will provide much more detail on both licensed and unlicensed wireless IoT technologies, especially LPWA, and how they enable the growth of enterprise IoT solutions and new IoT business models. In Part 2, we will do a deep dive into cellular IoT wireless technologies.

The data analytics layer is where the IoT device data is processed and is typically implemented in combination with the application layer in the domain of a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. The data analytics layer is where the value of the IoT device data is realized in terms of data analytics and actionable data for an enterprise IoT solution. As mentioned earlier, for many IoT applications, much of the IoT data processing is moving from the data analytics layer in the cloud to the device, which is known as “edge” data processing. This enables more real-time and low-latency applications such as intelligent transportation (for example, autonomous vehicles), augmented/virtual reality, and video intelligence. We will go into more detail on IoT data processing in the context of IoT architectures in Chapter 2, Understanding IoT Devices and Architectures.

The application layer is the dashboard for the IoT solution that pulls together the IoT device data with the connectivity and processing into a meaningful presentation. For example, in the case of asset tracking, this would be a map showing the location and contiguous path of an asset such as a fleet vehicle or container, along with temperature and humidity sensing data/alerts along the way. Behind the application is where data processing takes place. This involves the time series data from the IoT device along with sensor and location data. In this example, the asset tracking application in combination with the underlying data processing provides not only a better user experience in monitoring the asset but also identifies patterns that drive business decisions around real operational cost savings. We will cover the IoT application protocols, including MQTT and CoAP, in more detail in Chapter 2, Understanding IoT Devices and Architectures.

We will review the end-to-end IoT solution architecture in more detail in Chapter 2, Understanding IoT Devices and Architectures, but at a high level, these four IoT layers are the basis for an enterprise IoT digital transformation in terms of improved customer experience, real-time insights leading to operational cost savings, and new service business lines. In the Understanding IoT markets section, we will discuss the top IoT markets, along with some example applications in each market, that helped create a digital transformation strategy that is being adopted by more and more businesses. While in 2018, 57% of businesses adopted IoT in some way, this increased to 94% in 2021 (source: Aruba Research Report, Microsoft). Moreover, 83% of organizations that employed IoT technology have reported a significant increase in business efficiency (source: Aruba Research Report, Microsoft). In the next section, we will learn how IoT can drive enterprise digital transformation.

Leveraging IoT for digital transformation

What is the role of IoT in enterprise digital transformation? In short, IoT solutions act as a connection between the physical assets of a business and the information technology (IT) infrastructure, leading to improved operational efficiencies as well as new and better customer experiences. To provide the impetus for implementing an IoT solution in your business, we will describe five areas where IoT can enable digital transformation in your business:

Monitoring and managing assets and inventory.Increasing operational efficiencies and productivity.Creating smart factories.Driving new business models.Improving the customer experience.

Let’s start by reviewing one of the most common areas where an enterprise IoT solution can transform your business – monitoring and managing assets and inventory.

Monitoring and managing assets and inventory

A critical area where an IoT solution can transform your business is providing information on the health and location of various business assets, shipments, and stock inventory:

Figure 1.2 – Asset tracking and monitoring use cases

One of the leading areas where IoT can transform a business is asset monitoring and inventory management. In terms of asset monitoring, an IoT solution can provide automatic notifications on the health and location of business assets such as fleet vehicles/trailers, containers, pallets/bins, retail coolers, and machinery. This enables a business to reduce human error and improve daily operational efficiencies and asset downtime due to maintenance, also known as predictive maintenance. Business assets are the lifeblood of a successful business, so effectively monitoring and managing these assets is a fairly easy way to realize significant operational cost savings. An IoT solution is also ideal for inventory management, where the location, temperature, and stock levels of inventory are critical to the success of a business supply chain. An IoT solution with wireless technologies such as RFID, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular in conjunction with the appropriate IoT devices and applications virtually eliminates the outdated manual processes associated with inventory management, which are prone to human error and theft, which increase the operational cost of a business. Along the lines of asset management is shipment tracking with IoT-enabled asset monitoring of not only location but also temperature, humidity, and tampering to directly validate the integrity of shipments. This will be discussed in more detail in the next section on IoT markets.

An IoT solution can further transform your business by improving overall operational efficiency and productivity through the seamless integration of business processes and systems.

Increasing operational efficiencies and productivity

There are many ways an IoT solution can increase efficiency and productivity in a business. In general, an enterprise IoT solution can efficiently tie inventory management systems and factory automation/monitoring with customer relationship management (CRM) systems and logistics for improved customer relationships and operational cost savings. In a factory setting, the data from IoT devices can provide unique insight into the production line processes and shipping delivery times, which helps operations complete quicker and more cost-effectively. Moreover, enterprise IoT solutions can reduce employee workloads and allow for further automation, creating cost-saving efficiencies. Industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions are revolutionizing the manufacturing industry by monitoring machine performance and conditions for predictive maintenance to eliminate production line bottlenecks due to machine downtime.

This leads to our third related area where IoT is transforming businesses, which is the Smart Factory.

Creating smart factories

IoT has been the enabler for factory automation and predictive analytics, which has been called smart factory:

Figure 1.3 – Evolution of Industry 4.0 and smart factories

As discussed earlier, IIoT solutions can create several operational efficiencies in a factory setting, which, together with the IoT data analytics from staff, supply chain, stock inventory, and machine health, allows for what has been called the 4th industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. The hallmarks of the smart factory in Industry 4.0 that have been enabled by IoT are predictive analytics for machine maintenance, inventory management, and smart production workflows that are more automated (for example, industrial robotics) for improved operational and cost efficiencies, as well as reduced waste. With a smart factory, potential disruptions are reduced, and production is both more efficient and predictable.

With the adoption of IoT, businesses are now also able to create entirely new business models, thus creating new revenue streams and providing added value to customers.

New business opportunities

Businesses that use IoT solutions have created entirely new service business models, which allow them to track and monitor the performance of their products over their full life cycle, enabling new value-added services for their customers. For example, in the healthcare market, IoT enables both RPM and telemedicine services, which we will cover later in this chapter. In the agricultural market, IoT enables crops as a service with full crop life cycle management from seed to shipment. An IoT supply chain logistics solution provides not only real-time location data but also data on the temperature, humidity, and integrity of shipped assets such as perishables, including pharmaceuticals and food, which provides significant value to end customers and consumers. These value-added services create a closer relationship and trust with their customers, enabling future business.

By implementing IoT solutions, businesses can now offer subscription services around these IoT-enabled value-added services that avoid the upfront capital expense associated with traditional products. With a continuous connection to customers through an IoT solution, businesses can now develop recurring revenue as-a-service models where the customer pays for continuous value. For example, several new IoT-enabled businesses offer fleet/asset management applications that provide a subscription-based offering to their customers to track and manage their fleet and other critical assets without the upfront capital expense for the devices or infrastructure. The as-a-service IoT solution model, which uses advanced data analytics, can be extended to many other subscription-based models, such as security monitoring as a service, health monitoring as a service, crops as a service, and predictive maintenance as a service.

Ultimately, IoT solutions not only benefit businesses but also customers with improved, more personalized customer engagements throughout the product life cycle.

Improving the customer experience

There are many ways IoT solutions improve customer experiences. IoT solutions allow businesses to collect data at various points in a product life cycle from the time it is produced to the time it is retired, providing deep insight into how the product is used to better personalize the customer experience. This improves customer loyalty and trust in the brand. For example, we are probably all familiar with the ease of making purchases at retail stores and kiosks using smartphone apps and smart point-of-sale IoT devices, which improves and personalizes the customer experience with that business. Retailers are also using IoT to manage shelf stocks and monitor shopper behavior to better serve in-store customers.

Now that you have some insight into how IoT can enable a digital transformation in your business, let’s review the leading IoT markets with some example IoT applications in each before considering some common business problems solved by implementing an IoT solution.

Understanding IoT markets

As of this writing, the top five enterprise IoT market segments are as follows:

TransportationSupply chain logisticsIndustrial and manufacturingHealthcareEnergy/utilities

In this section, we will review and define each of these segments and provide insights into how IoT is transforming these markets with some example IoT applications.

Transportation

Transportation includes both automotive connected cars and enterprise logistics, which depend on air, rail, and truck transportation. As we will discuss in the next section on the logistics market, IoT asset monitoring solutions in transportation are a critical part of improving efficiencies in supply-chain logistics. Concerning connected cars, Cisco estimated that connected vehicle applications will be the fastest-growing IoT market with a 30% compound annual growth rate (source: Cisco 2020). The number of connected cars is projected to be over 400 million by 2025 (source: Statista 2021). In terms of fleet management, IoT solutions enable an enterprise to better manage fuel consumption, optimize routes, and maintain its fleet to reduce operational expenses and increase productivity. Fleet management IoT solutions also improve fleet safety and compliance with the new electronic logging device (ELD) government mandates, which further improves overall fleet safety. A typical IoT solution for fleet management would include a vehicle location tracking device with the capability of monitoring vehicle maintenance and engine runtimes. Typically, there is also a gateway (ELD) device to automatically log drive times, which avoids the human error of manual drive logs. Many fleet management solutions now also include both security cameras and dash cameras to monitor both the driver’s behavior and the behavior of other drivers on the road for potential accident investigations and security. Almost all key components of a fleet, including location, vehicle behavior, engine maintenance/performance, idle time, cargo status, driver behavior, and security events, can be monitored with an IoT solution.

Nearly all new cars have integrated telematic IoT connectivity, which enables not only in-vehicle infotainment applications but also embedded communications, vehicle updates, and predictive maintenance, which improves the customer experience and provides new service business models for automotive OEMs. This IoT connectivity has been extended further to include autonomous driving and vehicle communication with other vehicles, city infrastructure, pedestrians, and cloud applications, which has been termed Cellular V2X (C-V2X). As we will discuss in Chapter 5, Validating 5G with IoT, low-latency, high-bandwidth 5G cellular technologies play a critical role in enabling these new connected car applications. Also included in the connected car IoT market are several IoT use cases based on the installation of after-market IoT gateways or dash cameras in the vehicle. For example, several insurance companies now offer insurance discounts to drivers with good driving behavior who use IoT sensor devices in their vehicles that detect speed, hard braking, and hard acceleration. Much like the fleet management IoT applications described earlier, dash camera applications can improve the safety and security of drivers.

Supply chain logistics

As shown in Figure 1.4, supply chain logistics is the networked infrastructure of suppliers, transportation, production, warehousing, and stock inventory that provides the end-to-end connection between suppliers and wholesale/retail customers:

Figure 1.4 – Supply chain logistics IoT use cases

The importance of supply chain logistics to the global economy was made clear with the recent pandemic in which shortages in semiconductor chips and raw materials have impacted all areas of the global economy, especially manufacturing. As shown in the preceding figure, with IoT technologies, it is now possible to have end-to-end visibility of the entire supply chain from the raw materials to the end customer. The supply chain disruptions because of the pandemic have been the impetus for change in supply chain operations worldwide and have increased the focus on IoT solutions to increase efficiencies and overall visibility. The global supply chain management market size was valued at USD 16.64 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.8% from 2022 to 2028 (source: Grand View Research 2022). There are three key areas of supply chain logistics where IoT solutions can have the most impact. These are as follows:

Inventory/warehouse managementAsset monitoringTransportation and fleet management

Let’s go into more detail on the IoT solutions deployed in these areas of the supply chain.

Inventory/warehouse management

The most common application of IoT in supply chain logistics is in the area of inventory and warehouse management, where IoT solutions can not only track incoming and outgoing shipments but also manage inventory levels by working with enterprise ordering and inventory management systems:

Figure 1.5 – IoT solutions in inventory/warehouse management

One of the fundamental needs in supply chain logistics is being able to locate and manage warehouse inventory in near real-time, which