November 2015
34
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Leveraging modularity in embedded
design to accelerate IoT proliferation
By Prakash Mohapatra,
Toradex
This article explores how
adopting the modular approach in
developing IoT devices can accelerate
the proliferation of IoT. We will see
exponential growth of IoT applications,
but cost will determine user
acceptance and market penetration.
COM/SOM offer an ideal
cost-effective platform for making
this growth possible.
The concept of modularity is widely
deployed in many industries such as transport
and logistics, packaging, software and many
more. Although the interpretation may dif-
fer across various industries, in simple terms
modularity means that a large system can
be created by combining many standardized
small sub-systems or units. The benefits are
enormous in terms of reduction of system
development time and cost and addition of
scalability, convenience, and customization.
First coined by Kevin Ashton back in 1999, the
phrase Internet of Things (IoT) has evolved a
lot over time. In simple terms, the phrase can
mean ubiquitous connectivity. It promises
an era in which discrete things or objects are
connected through Internet or other connec-
tivity mediums, and these objects individually
or collectively achieve some meaningful result.
So, maybe in the near future, when you are
left with only a few beer cans, your fridge can
directly order beer from an online-grocery
site. That would be awesome!
IoT is creating possibilities with which tech-
nology is getting deeply embedded in our lives.
Some fields showing promising IoT applica-
tions are smart homes, smart cities, security
and assistance, connected vehicles, industrial
automation, healthcare, wearables, and many
more. With the advent of pervasive connectiv-
ity, cognizance has entered into the non-living
realm. Things or objects can now take auton-
omous decisions based on some events, with-
out human intervention.
Although the IoT ecosystem is colossal, at
the ground level, it is supported by embed-
ded devices that have some processing power,
memory, and some I/O. Embedded devices
such as sensors and gateways play an import-
ant role in driving IoT. Sensors are compact,
power-efficient, application-specific devices
that monitor the ambient environment and
pass on the information, using Internet or
another connectivity medium, to a gateway
that processes the data and takes some actions.
As gateways may receive data from multiple
sensors, they therefore need some processing
power, memory and a set of I/Os. An indus-
trial plant monitoring system can be easily
made with few sensors and a gateway. The
sensors can monitor a variety of parameters
such as plant temperature, vibration, etc and
pass on the information to a gateway. The
gateway receives the data and checks for any
anomaly. In case of any abnormal condition
like high plant temperature, it can send a mes-
sage to the smartphone of the plant technician.
If everything is normal, then the gateway can
upload the data to a cloud-server for analyt-
ics and maintenance records. Let´s come now
to the embedded development of sensors and
gateways. Usually, sensors are simple, appli-
cation-specific and standardized, microcon-
troller-based devices. The gateways need to be
versatile in terms of computing, storage and
connectivity requirements, thus the embed-
ded development of these devices becomes a
bit challenging. There are many standardized
gateways available in the market; however,
there may be scenarios where these gateways
do not fulfil your price, performance, power,
or connectivity requirements. Let´s explore
constraints in various embedded platforms
that are employed for product development of
embedded devices such as gateways, and then
attempt to showcase how the concept of mod-
ularity can be leveraged to reduce time-to-
market and development cost of IoT devices.
Usually, OEMs prefer to develop the hard-
ware and software from scratch as it offers
them total control over the project and they
can customize the platform based on their
requirements. The hardware components
such as SoCs, memories, power supplies, mul-
timedia and connectivity interfaces, peripher-
als, displays, etc are integrated over a printed
circuit board (PCB). The software stack
including device drivers, board support pack-
ages, user interface, etc are developed either
in-house or some parts are outsourced by
the OEMs. This method incurs the following
Figure 1. Details of
Computer on Module
