IoT Standards

[Geoff Sizer]

Question from 5-Jul Webinar: 

What set of standards govern the application of IoT?

Which is the standard body for IoT i.e 3GPP, SCTE, IEEE ?

Answer:

Standards bodies are active in the area of IoT and its standards - but are lagging the proliferation of IoT technologies and system deployments.

ISO/IEC – JTC1 http://www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:14:0::::FSP_ORG_ID,FSP_LANG_ID:12726,25

IEEE http://iot.ieee.org/

ANSI https://www.ansi.org/news_publications/news_story.aspx?menuid=7&articleid=0a7180a7-1f70-4bea-8b17-64c471ec0745

The leaders in this area are presently industry consortiums and private companies promoting "proprietary" standards.  History tells us that the successful ones are likely to be widely adopted – eg WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee.

Examples of emerging proprietary standards are:

Hypercat – smart cities http://www.hypercat.io/  

Apple Homekit - http://www.apple.com/au/ios/homekit/

SigFox https:https://www.sigfox.com/

LoRa  https://www.lora-alliance.org/

3GPP – http://www.3gpp.org/

[Geoff Sizer]

Question from 5-Jul Webinar: 

How important do you think Open Standards/Open-Source versus propriety/closed-source in the future of IoT?

Answer:

For IoT to proliferate and fulfil its full potential, open standards are very important.

Where standards are not open, licencing and approvals costs tend to stifle innovation, driving developers to seek open-standards alternatives – eg 6LoWPAN over Zigbee for local area wireless meshed networking.

Of course, closed standards (WiFi, Bluetooth/BLE, Zigbee) offer the benefits of interoperability across devices, and if administered wisely, tend to proliferate in the longer term.

Successful proprietary systems tend to morph over time into widely accepted standards.

The 500lb gorillas can't be ignored – eg anyone active in the home automation space would be foolish to ignore Apple Homekit.

[Cesar A Gonzalez]

 @Geoff Sizer

The 3GPP I wound't call it emerging proprietary standards, this group have a rich history in the cellular domain coming from the development of GSM with ETSI, which all know who won the battle of CDMA vs GSM. They developed the UMTS, which is 3G and developed the LTE, 4G or LTE-A. However, you're right saying the body standard are lagging behind but this is history repeating itself with disrupting technologies. 

Something to note, will be the new standard working group from 3GPP developing 5G which will cover narrowband, 15 years power device expectancy.   

Other standard group is the Open Group with its (O-MI) Open Messaging Interface, they called it the HTML of the IoT. 

 

Edited July 20, 2016 by Cesar

[Chi Binh Le]

IMHO... IOT is a user of technologies rather than a being a technology itself so there is no single set of standards governing IOT. Device developers choose technologies based on the constraints they operate under.

There are two broad categories of standards in which to make choices: network access (comprising the physical and data-link layers) and application protocol. A lot of standards that have been mentioned previously have to do with network access (Bluetooth, Zigbee, wifi, etc). These standards can be used by IOT but were not designed specifically for IOT. At the application layer, there are some protocols that could come to dominate the field - whether that will be MQTT, REST API, or something else is yet to be seen.

I don't see that any standards org is going to come out and dictate that IOT must use this or that particular access method. A comparable analogy would be that no one dictates to you how you access the Internet - you may have ADSL, cable, mobile broadband, or some other means. However, once you are connected, if you want to browse the web, you must have a client that speaks HTTP at the application layer.  Standardisation of the application layer would make IOT devices more inter-operable, and should enable a company that runs an IOT network to move from one service provider to another.

[Cesar A Gonzalez]

Yes agree with you, I think the promise of the Open Group with its O-MI standard is promising in the long run, at the very end IoT is exactly the connection of things so they will a common protocol to speak.  And amongst these disparate of standards bodies the adopted ones will be the successful ones. 

[Geoff Sizer]

The standards activity under way within ISO/IEC JTC1 WS10 is focussing on defining reference architectures, standardising nomenclature etc.

The objective is not to restrain what is done in the IoT space - but rather to provide a platfrom to foster interoperablity between devices and systems.

Indeed, there is a desire to encompass open source and public domain standards.

The regulatory compliance aspect of IoT devices is addressed by existing regilatory standards - EMC, radiocommunications, electrical safety etc.