Bits-N-Bites - Internet of Things

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			    Call for Demos



The arrival of Things connected to the Internet in the recent years

brought to life new applications.  In the consumer segment, numerous

small and smart devices add new dimensions to existing domains such

automatic home management, in-vehicle entertainment, eHealth, fitness

and more.  A growing enthusiasm in novel market suggests

imminent and impressive deployments: billions new connected devices

expected by year 2020.



In professional segments, examples abound of the use of connected Things for 

future manufacturing and Machine-to-Machine communications. As of today,

factory networks primarily rely on wired communication networks to support 

Industrial Automation and Control Systems.  On the other hand, Wireless 

Sensor Networks have the power to extend the reach of Monitoring and Control 

to gather unused measurements beyond what is physically and economically 

possible with wires; the collection of these measurements by widely distributed 

sensing devices and their processing by Big Data analytics yield the next

degree of process optimization, a vision known as the Industrial Internet. This   

will require the combination of the best of IT and OT technologies together, 

forming the IT/OT convergence.



Despite the word 'connected' being commonly employed in this context,

the current Thing topologies do not use IP as known in the non-Things

world.  Instead, intermediary albeit small Boxes translating between

IP and Thing-specific protocols are in common use (for

e.g. application-layer conversions, IP to non-IP address translation,

IP header compression, 'mesh-under' non-IP routing and more).  This

leads to typical 'multi-stage' topology such as: a temperature sensor

connected to a smartwatch using a hardware communication protocol,

further connected to a smartphone using a short-range non-IP protocol

and finally connected to a WiFi router using a full IP link.





On another hand, past experience in the development of the Internet

suggests that if intermediary Boxes are less present in the path -

dumb networks (thus reducing the 'multi-stage' Thing topology to a

minimum of 2 stages and down to 1, ideally), the full potential of

end-to-end principles may be uncovered: each Thing may be directly

queried, their number may grow in a more scalable way and richer

applications may offer features beyond what's talked about these days.



When deploying multi-stage Thing topologies, two trends compete: IP

protocols are enhanced and transformed into less end-to-end protocols

(address translation, header compression, 'mesh under' routing and

more) and, alternatively, existing IP protocols are reduced to their

bare minimum such as to fit in reduced Things (reduced CPU frequency

and number of transistors, dimensions and energy consumption).



Demonstrations of these IoT concepts are called for.  The

demonstrations should exhibit recent developments of IP protocols for

IoT networks (6lowpan adaptation layers, MANET and RPL routing

protocols, 6tsch time-constrained communications, CoAP app-layer

protocols) as well as demonstrations of the tendency of bringing the

known IPv6 as close as possible to the Thing - minimum set of

unmodified IPv6, Neighbor Discovery, DHCP, HTTP, IKEv2.



Examples of demos include and are certainly not limited to:

- home automation controller using SNMP for HVAC and ambient

  temperature, electricity counter.

- industrial-grade Wireless Sensor Network products

- scalable wireless designs and existing deployments

- IPv6 end-to-end and backbone interconnection

- tablet summarizing status of widespread devices through

  heterogeneous link connections.

- smart belt collecting body information with low-energy communication

  protocols.

- vehicle interior connected designs, vehicle-to-road sensor-based

  communications.

- sensor-assisted autonomous mobile Things (mono-, bi-, quad- wheeled

  or propelled devices).



Demonstrations may be realized in different manners:

- the Things deployed on a table, relying on local connections and

  alternatively exhibiting remote access across the  Internet.

- poster describing demo.

- video sequence showing a lab demonstration.



Each demonstration must position with respect to questions such as

- use of IP protocols: IPv4 or IPv6?  

- intermediary Box or not?

- on the market now, in the prototype stage, in an idea phase?

- part of a collaborative project?  gov't-funded or private?