Users’ devices (e.g. smart phones, with ever growing storage and processing capabilities, acting as hot-spots), and a multitudes of smart objects and things (e.g. from Consumers’ Electronics) with embedded communications, will create new challenges and opportunities at the edge of the network. It is estimated that, in less than ten years, there will be a few hundreds of billions of electronic devices (including machines, sensors, actuators, etc) connected with each other and to the Internet. A wave, innovating networks, starting at the edge.

At the edge (in the last few meters) there will (soon) be a growing number of such communicating entities, with powerful storage and processing capabilities, interacting one each other locally. Imagine cars or Users having a sort of communication halo around them (i.e. a range of connection, interaction). Imagine also kiosks and lamp streets having their own halos. Overlapping halos will allow networks to emerge spontaneously (as flocks of birds flying around). Short-middle range connectivity will be covered by local device-to-device communications, whilst long range interactions will be enabled by hopping into the big Net. Services and data will be virally delivered through multiple devices, machines, objects mostly by using local resources.

Is this scenario so far away in the future ? Not really: some military solutions (almost ready for civilian needs) are already available.

Today, creating – your own “halo” – by yourself would cost you less than one or two hundred euros (obviously depending on what and how many devices you wish to have). You may like to include, for example, an Android smart phone (which can act also as Wi-Fi Hot Spot), one (or more) cheap, tiny PC (e.g. a Raspberry Pi for $ 25) and one (or more) microcontroller (e.g. based on Arduino) for controlling any sensor, actuator or electronic gadget.

Raspberry Pi: a cheap, tiny PC for $ 25

It will be like a fully fledged wireless personal area network (with thousands of free applications available on the web). Once equipped with autonomic features it will be ready to interact spontaneously with other people’s halos to create dynamic local networks. Welcome to Edge Networks.

This scenario raises important issues for Stakeholders to consider. Are we ready?

New cloud based production infrastructures are just round the corner

Telecommunications have connected the world, people and businesses. They have also made possible new businesses, such as the ones that developed on the Internet. In the coming decade embedded communications will change most businesses by transforming what is now sold as a product into a service. That will lead to a reshape of processes and organizations in many enterprises.

It is also likely to emphasize the transition of telecommunications from being a service to becoming a commodity.

The Cloud will no longer be a tool to decrease IT cost, rather it will become a production and service infrastructure where many transactions will involve, or affect, a variety of enterprises in an ecosystem like marketplace. Tiny changes to a product (the release of  new API) may lead to significant changes in the offer, being this the result of many independent enterprise innovations.

By 2020 many products are expected to:

❏    Deliver functions by connecting to networked providers (servers, cloud, other products).

❏    Change their functionality by updating their software.

❏    Provide customer support via an embedded link to CRM systems.

❏    Be monitored and maintained from a remote location.

❏    Support a variety of service providers and related biz models.

❏    Cooperate with the environment to deliver add on functionalities.

Basically every market segment will take advantage of these capabilities, from car manufacturing to consumer electronics, from airliners (and airlines) to drugs companies, from agricultural products to furniture.

• The embedding of communications in products opens up a large audience to COMSOC. This requires much more attention to vertical markets and to the engineering of the “embedding”.
• The interface aspects are becoming very important as objects become connected and hence can provide a wider variety of functions. COMSOC shall support this area as well.

If you feel that chips are too big you will be pleased to know that some researchers is on your same page and is working on it. At the MIT in the Material Science Lab scientists have developed a new technique to grow nanotubes and replace vertical wiring in chips thus allowing more dense, smaller chips.

Structure of a carbon nanotube

Carbon nanotubes are now being produced for many applications but the construction method does not fit with the one of chips manufacturing.

The MIT scientist found a way to produce nanotubes at the same temperature being used to manufacture chips thus opening the way to grow them inside the chip.

The various components present in a chip are connected one another with tiny copper wires but as the chip dimension shrink so the wires have to shrink. Below certain dimension the copper conductivity suffer and the wires may no longer work. This is were carbon nanotubes can help.

Take a look at the article if you like more details on this new technology
http://www.physorg.com/news171812351.html

Moore’s law appears to be on track to keep going for several more years, as scientists keep finding work around to what seemed just few years ago impassable stumbling blocks.

This means cheaper and more performing chips, more innovation and further dissemination of chips everywhere, smarter objects and more communications. The right mix to generate ecosystems.