IoT Gateways for a Performance Boost
In our daily lives, we increasingly come across the Internet of Things (IoT) technology — or IoT gateway. It is an ecosystem that is changing many aspects of our daily lives. From wearables to track our health or daily activity to intelligent logistics management, there are a wide variety of special applications using IoT technologies.
According to a recent forecast by Information Handling Services (IHS), the number of connected IoT devices will grow significantly from 30.7 billion in 2020 to 75.4 billion in 2025. Our IoT development experts have researched this topic to take a closer look at the Internet-of-Things gateway structure and its importance in the related environment. Let’s start with the theory and explain what an IoT gateway is!
Explaining IoT Gateways
An IoT gateway is a hardware device that is designed to communicate between a sensor network and a Cloud-based server. This gateway has a multi-layered architecture consisting of the following layers:
- Hardware Platform — related to the memory specifications and processing power of the edge gateway device. Usually, the choice of the hardware platform type depends on the complexity and objectives of the IoT applications that you want to implement.
- Operating System — the appropriate operating system should be used for different types of edge gateways in the IoT ecosystem. This helps in ensuring efficient and smooth operation with existing systems, simplifies integration, and saves costs.
- Analytics Engine — is the core of the IoT gateway ecosystem, that is able to transform raw or unstructured data into the proper information needed for the specific project goals.
- Integrated Development Platform — is a tool for creating and adding new devices and programs to your IoT ecosystem.
IoT Gateway Implementation Areas
The use of edge gateways and the creation of a scalable and reliable ecosystem based on them can improve the efficiency of software in various industries and business areas. In this part, we will list a few examples of the tech areas and business domains where IoT gateways can be implemented today to improve stability and operation speed, as well as scale data processing.
Traffic Management
By intelligently connecting vehicles to the cloud infrastructure via the IoT gateway, companies can optimize traffic in real time and reduce congestions to a minimum value. Another area where this technology can be implemented is smart solutions for organizing vehicle parking. We can use a system of sensors that show available spaces in real time, as well as organize automated parking ticket issuance.
Smart City Solutions
Gathering and analyzing data using the Internet-of-Things tools can have a significant impact on cities as they help collect data from cameras, monitor waste management, and transmit data to the cloud. In addition, the data they process helps authorities gain insights to improve traffic management and technical services, improve urban planning, air quality, etc.
Agriculture and Farming
IoT gateways have a huge potential to transform and improve the farming and agricultural fields in various ways, including gathering real-time information on soil moisture and irrigation needs, predicting crop health, and facilitating increased production. For farmers, using this technology opens up new ways to farm while maximizing their profits.
Energy Resource Management
IoT gateways enable the connection of smart meters or other energy devices to collect and analyze specific data. Timely operation of such information and its precise analytics allows energy consumers to control energy consumption and prevent unnecessary waste.
The Importance of IoT Gateways
The value of an IoT gateway is best characterized by the set of tasks it helps to effectively solve in a connected ecosystem, as follows:
- Consistency
The gateway ensures interoperability between connected networks in the IoT ecosystem using multiple communication protocols including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LoRa, and Glowpan. - Connectivity
Devices in the IoT ecosystem have sensors connected to them. The edge gateway manages the connection of these sensors to the server in the IP-based Cloud, making the IoT devices accessible on the network using these devices. - Implementation Efficiency
The IoT gateway is designed not only to assure the entire ecosystem functionality, but also provides a range of operational activities, such as configuring connected devices, authenticating them for secure network access, and providing all the necessary analytics.
Summary
Companies across industries always need to keep abreast of promising technologies in order to implement them into their business processes in a timely manner. Thus, the effective usage of the IoT gateway software capabilities can already significantly improve the operation in such areas as transport, farming, smart city management, and energy resources management. And, of course, to assure high-quality implementation of these technologies, it’s vital to hire qualified IoT app developers.
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