1. Why gateways are required in an IoT solution?

An IoT gateway bridges the communication gap between devices, sensors, equipment, systems, and the cloud. By systematically connecting the cloud, IoT solution and services offering local processing and storage, as well as an ability to autonomously control field devices based on data inputs by sensors through gateway. IoT gateways also enable customers to securely aggregate, process and filter data for analysis. It helps ensure that the federated data generated by devices and systems can travel securely and safely from the edge to the cloud.

2. What is the biggest challenge in creating an IoT gateway solution?

The biggest challenge lies in enabling interoperability by supporting multiple connectivity sensor protocols, like Z-Wave, ZigBee, BLE, Wi-Fi, BACnet etc. The connected sensors and devices, in an IoT ecosystem, should be able to seamlessly intercommunicate with other devices through the Gateway or send the required data to the cloud.

3. What are the key functionalities required in an IoT gateway?

The following functionalities are essential in an IoT gateway solution:

Support for multiple connectivity protocols

Should be scalable, hardware-agnostic and OS-agnostic

Should enable computing at the edge by defining data processing rules through the cloud control panel

Utilize local storage to provide backup in case of network failure

Integrate edge data with your existing enterprise systems or IoT platforms using our API console

Manage your entire device infrastructure from a single interface — perform firmware updates, get device health and diagnostics information to enable predictive maintenance

Secure the entire communication pipeline by managing encryption, certifications, role authorizations and authentication

4. How to secure the IoT Gateway?

Security should be an integral component in any IoT ecosystem. Active and passive network attacks, including device monitoring, eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle, and jamming are a few common examples of attacks. The need here is to safeguard the IoT assets, through the use of complete IoT device life cycle management controls and a layered security approach. Layered security should include network security, application security, device security, and physical security. Security strategy should ensure secured connectivity to IoT gateway along with payload encryption, device identity using certificates, and encryption of data at rest and in transit.

5. How do IoT Gateways help in Device Lifecycle Management (DLM)?

At present connected device are increasing coherently with advancement in technology. Management of these devices become critical issue day-by-day. IoT gateways provide a secure and scalable channel for remote device management.

IoT gateway enables a wide range of connection protocol, high availability, and multi-level data security for the device lifecycle management system. The gateway helps DLM system with real-time data analysis, fault detection, and solutions, management of device uptime/downtime, updating of device software remotely.

It enables device authentication, configuration, diagnostics, and allows only authenticated devices to connect with the cloud.

6. What are the common protocols an IoT gateway should support?

IoT gateway supports multiple wired & wireless connection protocols and standards like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, Z-Wave, and Zig-Bee etc. An independent IoT gateway should have an ability to connect through some these standard protocols.

Whenever a new device tries to connect to the gateway, it should enable a device verification and authorization process. Gateway should be able to automatically detect devices, across multiple protocols, in the network.

7. What type of Industrial and Residential devices can connect to IoT gateway?

IoT Gateway can connect to both industrial (IIoT) and residential devices (IoT) .

and residential devices . Unlike residential devices, industrial devices predominantly represent mechanical systems, and gateways can connect to such devices, having a wired or wireless communication protocol already installed. Industrial devices can be HVAC System, Energy Distribution System (Smart Grids), Biometric System, Alarm System, Fire Control, Sensors, and Actuators etc.

In the residential category, devices can be Air Conditioner, Day Light Control System for energy saving, Security System, Smart Metering System, and any other Smart home accessories.

There should be no limit on device connectivity. The gateway should enable M2M communication, which allows devices to share data between them, resulting in a better optimization of resources.

8. How is data capture done through IoT gateway?

The first requirement of an IoT Gateway is to discover and connect devices and collect data from those devices.

Data provided by devices are generally continuous and has a tendency to occupy large communication bandwidth. Gateway provides bandwidth flexibility and data management that is necessary for evaluation of system performance and device control & management.

Standards and protocols establish a bidirectional connection between devices and IoT gateway. Gateway provides an end to end communication between edge and cloud.

Gateway analyses data according to set parameters and accordingly conveys the message to the messaging interface for further control actions.

9. Why are microservice applications essential for IoT gateway Architecture?

Microservice in IoT gateway refers to many small services, every micro service represents to a specific task or application and all services can communicate with each other.

It allows further changes in the system according to the requirement, as it is not a monolithic structure. It allows each service to be initiated and managed independently. There is no necessity of making changes in the whole structure.

There are containers assigned for each service. Containers basically refer to a system which contains all resources and information about applications’ software update and running procedures. Any application can be run independently without execution of the whole program. It gives benefits in optimizing the response time of the system.

There is no need of recompilation, as container consists of an inbuilt run-time environment (API, library files, application specifications, and other tools).

It is a scalable platform which helps in the growth of any business by enabling flexibility and adaptability to the dynamic requirements of the product in the market.

10. Why we need Clustering for IoT Gateways?

One of the biggest challenges for a large scale IoT solution, that uses a gateway, is the continuous availability of the gateway, without any downtime and security breaches. An ideal scalable solution would be to deploy many gateways in the IoT network and to enable a peer-to-peer connectivity between those gateways, a concept similar to cloud networks. This constitutes an IoT Gateway Clustering. For example: In the case of an industrial plant, data generated from different IoT devices can be very high. (Know about the role of the Universal gateway in Building Automation). IoT gateways can provide a secure connection between cloud and devices for data storage and analysis. To ensure high availability of gateways, all the gateways can be enabled to communicate with each other through a common communication bus. At eInfochips, we term it as CIBTM (Communication Interface Bus) — a combination of multiple OT (Operational Technology) buses that results in a cluster of gateways. Know more on IoT gateway clustering.

Originally published on, https://www.einfochips.com