Mastering IOT

Build modern IoT solutions that secure and monitor your IoT infrastructure

Colin Dow, Perry Lea

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781838643089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Hardware
• Index: Computer Science

Leverage the full potential of IoT with the combination of Raspberry Pi 3 and Python and architect a complete IoT system that is the best fit for your organization

Key Features

• Build complex Python-based applications with IoT
• Explore different concepts, technologies, and tradeoffs in the IoT architectural stack
• Delve deep into each element of the IoT design—from sensors to the cloud

Book Description

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the fastest growing technology market. Industries are embracing IoT technologies to improve operational expenses, product life, and people's well-being.

We'll begin our journey with an introduction to Raspberry Pi and quickly jump right into Python programming. We'll learn all concepts through multiple projects, and then reinforce our learnings by creating an IoT robot car. We'll examine modern sensor systems and focus on what their power and functionality can bring to our system. We'll also gain insight into cloud and fog architectures, including the OpenFog standards. The Learning Path will conclude by discussing three forms of prevalent attacks and ways to improve the security of our IoT infrastructure.

By the end of this Learning Path, we will have traversed the entire spectrum of technologies needed to build a successful IoT system, and will have the confidence to build, secure, and monitor our IoT infrastructure.

This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products:

• Internet of Things Programming Projects by Colin Dow
• Internet of Things for Architects by Perry Lea

What you will learn

• Build a home security dashboard using an infrared motion detector
• Receive data and display it with an actuator connected to the Raspberry Pi
• Build an IoT robot car that is controlled via the Internet
• Use IP-based communication to easily and quickly scale your system
• Explore cloud protocols, such as Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and CoAP
• Secure communication with encryption forms, such as symmetric key

Who this book is for

This Learning Path is designed for developers, architects, and system designers who are interested in building exciting projects with Python by understanding the IoT ecosphere, various technologies, and tradeoffs. Technologists and technology managers who want to develop a broad view of IoT architecture, will also find this Learning Path useful. Prior programming knowledge of Python is a must.

Long-Range Communication Systems and Protocols (WAN)

So far, we have discussed Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) and Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN). These types of communication bridge the sensors to a local net but not necessarily the internet or other systems. We need to remember that the IoT ecosphere will include sensors, actuators, cameras, smart-embedded devices, vehicles, and robots in the remotest of places. For the long haul, we need to address the Wide Area Network (WAN).

This chapter covers the various WAN devices and topologies including cellular (4G-LTE and the upcoming 5G standard) as well as other proprietary systems including Long Range Radio (LoRa) and Sigfox. While this chapter will cover cellular and long-range communication systems from a data perspective, it will not focus on the analog and voice portions of mobile devices. Long-range communication is usually a service, meaning it has a subscription to a carrier providing cellular tower and infrastructure improvements. This is different to the previous WPAN and WLAN architectures as they are usually contained in a device that the customer or developer produces or resells. A subscription or service-level agreement (SLA) has another effect on the architecture and constraints of systems that need to be understood by the architect.

Cellular connectivity

The most prevalent communication form is cellular radio and specifically cellular data. While mobile communication devices, had existed for many years before cellular technology, they had limited coverage, shared frequency space, and were essentially two-way radios. Bell Labs built some trial mobile phone technologies in the 1940s (Mobile Telephone Service) and 1950s (Improved Mobile Telephone Service) but had very limited success. There were also no uniform standards for mobile telephony at the time. It wasn't until the cellular concept was devised by Douglas H. Ring and Rae Young in 1947 and then built by Richard H. Frenkiel, Joel S. Engel, and Philip T. Porter at Bell Labs in the 1960s that larger and robust mobile deployments could be realized. The handoff between cells was conceived and built by Amos E. Joel Jr. also of Bell Labs, which allowed for handoff when moving cellular devices. All these technologies combined to form the first cellular telephone system, first cellular phone, and the first cellular call made by Martin Cooper of Motorola on April 3, 1979. Following is an ideal cellular model where cells are represented as hexagonal areas of optimal placement.

Cellular Theory. The hexagonal pattern guarantees separation of frequencies from the nearest neighbors. No two similar frequencies are within one hex space from each other, as shown in the case of frequency A in two different regions. This allows for frequency reuse.

The technologies and proof of concept designs eventually led to the first commercial deployments and public acceptance of mobile telephone systems in 1979 by NTT in Japan, and then in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in 1981. The Americas didn't have a cell system until 1983. These first technologies are known as 1G, or the first generation of cellular technology. A primer for the generations and their features will be detailed next, however, the next section will specifically describe 4G-LTE as that is the modern standard for cellular communication and data. The following sections will describe other IoT and future cellular standards such as NB-IOT and 5G.

Governance models and standards

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a UN specialized agency and was founded in 1865; it took its present name in 1932, before becoming a specialized agency in the UN. It plays a significant role worldwide in wireless communication standards, navigation, mobile, internet, data, voice, and next-gen networks. It includes 193 member nations and 700 public and private organizations. It too has a number of working groups called sectors. The sector relevant to cellular standards is the Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). The ITU-R is the body that defines the international standards and goals for various generations of radio and cellular communication. These include reliability goals and minimum data rates.

The ITU-R has produced two fundamental specifications that have governed cellular communication in the last decade. The first was the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000), which specifies the requirements for a device to be marketed as 3G. More recently, the ITU-R produced a requirement specification called International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced). The IMT-Advanced system is based on an all-IP mobile broadband wireless system. The IMT-Advanced defines what can be marketed as 4G worldwide. The ITU was the group that approved of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology in the 3GPP roadmap to support the goals of 4G cellular communication in October of 2010. The ITU-R continues to drive the new requirements for 5G.

Examples of the ITU-Advanced set of requirements for a cellular system to be labeled 4G include:

• Must be an all-IP, packet-switched network
• Interoperable with existing wireless
• A nominal data rate of 100 Mbps when the client is moving and 1 GBps while the client is fixed
• Dynamically share and use network resources to support more than one user per cell
• Scalable channel bandwidth of 5 to 20 MHz
• Seamless connectivity and global roaming across multiple networks

The issue is that often the entire set of ITU goals are not met, and there exists naming and branding confusion:

...

Feature	1G	2/2.5G	3G	4G	5G
First Availability	1979	1999	2002	2010	2020
ITU-R Specification	NA	NA	IMT-2000	IMT-Advanced	IMT-2020
ITU-R Frequency Specification	NA	NA	400 MHZ to 3 GHz	450 MHz to 3.6 GHz	TBD
ITU-R Bandwidth Specification	NA	NA	Stationary: 2 Mbps Moving: 384 Kbps	Stationary: 1 Gbps Moving: 100 Mbps	Min Down: 20 Gbps Min Up: 10 Gbps
Typical Bandwidth	2 Kbps	14.4-64 Kbps	500 to 700 Kbps	100 to 300 Mbps (peak)	TBD?
Usage/Features	Mobile telephony only.	Digital voice, SMS text, caller-ID, one-way data.	Superior audio, video, and data. Enhanced roaming.	Unified IP and seamless LAN/WAN/WLAN.	IoT, ultra density, low latency.
Standards and Multiplexing	AMPS