The internet of things: getting connected
There exists a multitude of communications protocols, nascent ecosystems and emerging service and business models that create a complex landscape for market entrants to penetrate. Companies, established and new, are lining up for a piece of the business and placing their bets. Are they hedging or going all in?
Let’s start by looking just at the top communications technologies for internet of things (IoT)-related integrated circuits at the physical and data link layers—the level where the ‘things’ of the IoT communicate with each other (upper layer IoT protocols such as IPv4/IPv6, HTTP, CoAP, MQTT, XMPP, FTP, etc, are best left for another day).
Further focus could include IEEE 802.11 and cellular protocols, which although are extremely important for IoT connectivity, have very high overlap with non-IoT applications. This leaves us:
