The most important features
In 2017, a note appeared on Habré “". In 2018, the technical committee "Cyber-Physical Systems" :
GOST R “Information technologies. Internet of things. Terms and Definitions",
GOST R “Information technologies. Internet of things. Reference architecture of the Internet of things and the industrial Internet of things”, GOST R “Information technologies. Internet of things. Narrowband Internet of Things Exchange Protocol (NB-FI).
In February 2019 years PNST-2019 “Information technologies. Internet of things. Wireless data transmission protocol based on narrowband NB-Fi radio signal modulation. On April 1, 2019, it began to operate and will end on April 1, 2022. For three years of validity, the preliminary standard must be tested in practice, its market potential must be assessed, and amendments to the standard prepared.
In the media, the document is actively positioned as “the first national IoT standard of the Russian Federation, with the prospect of becoming an international standard” and the VAVIOT implemented on NB-Fi is given as an example. .
Uhhh. How many links in such a short text. Here - on the text of the preliminary standard in the first edition for those who are too lazy to google. It is better to look at the performance characteristics of the standard in this document, we will not mention them in the article.
About IoT data transfer standards
On the network, you can stumble upon the value of about 300 protocols / technologies for data transfer between devices that can be attributed to IoT. We live in Russia, we work on B2B, so in the publication we will touch on only a few:
- NB-IoT
Cellular communication standard for telemetry devices. One of the three that are implemented in LTE Advanced networks are NB-IoT, eMTC and EC-GSM-IoT. The big three mobile operators of the Russian Federation in 2017-2018 deployed sections of networks working with NB-IoT. Operators do not forget about eMTC and EC-GSM-IoT, but we will not single them out separately now.
- LoRa
Operates on unlicensed frequencies. The standard is well described in the article of the end of 2017 “What is LoRaWan” on Habré. Lives on Semtech chips.
- "Swift"
Operates on unlicensed frequencies. Domestic provider of solutions for housing and communal services and other industries. Uses its XNB protocol. They talk about production in Russia, but they promise to ensure mass production of chips in Russia only in 2020, while they live on ON Semiconductor (ON Semiconductor AX8052F143).
- Fresh NB-Fi
Operates on unlicensed frequencies. It uses the same ON Semiconductor AX8052F143 chip as Strizh, performance characteristics are similar, also announcements of the production of its own chips in Russia. In general, the relationship can be traced. The protocol is open.
About billing integration
For those who have tried to assemble a “smart home” for themselves, it quickly becomes obvious that the use of sensors from different manufacturers is significantly more complicated. Even if we see the same inscription about communication technology on two devices, it turns out that they do not want to communicate with each other.
In the B2B segment, the situation is similar. Developers of protocols, chips want to earn. Starting a project with LoRa, in any case, you will need to buy equipment on Semtech chips. Paying attention to the domestic manufacturer, you can get the purchase of services and base stations in the load, and in the future, with the successful launch of chip production in Russia, potentially equipment / element base can only be purchased from a limited number of vendors.
We work with telecom equipment and it is customary for us to receive equipment telemetry data, aggregate, normalize and transfer further to various information systems. Forward TI (Traffic Integrator) is responsible for this block of work. In a typical version, it looks like this:
In the case of expanding the customer's needs for data collection, additional modules are connected:
The estimated growth rate of the IoT devices market is 18-22% per year in the world and up to 25% in Russia. In April, at IoT Tech Spring 2019 in Moscow, Andrey Kolesnikov, director of the Internet of Things Association, announced an annual growth of 15-17%, but different information is circulating on the network. At the RIF in April 2019, slides provided data on the annual growth of the Russian Internet of Things market by 18% until 2022, the volume of the Russian market in 2018 was also indicated there - $ 3.67 billion. Tellingly, the reason for today's article "The first Russian document on standardization in the field of IoT was approved ..." was also mentioned on the same slide. In our opinion, there is already a real need to regularly integrate UNB/LPWAN base stations and telecommunications servers into billing systems.
thinking
First line
The data transfer protocol or the implementation of the transport function in general will not be of great importance (we are again talking about the fact that IoT is not just an iron connected to the Internet, but an infrastructure or an ecosystem). The data will be collected from completely different devices and the payload will also be different. It is unlikely that an electricity supplier company will build one data collection network, a gas supplier its second network, a third water disposal service, and so on. This is not rational and looks unlikely.
This means that in a conditional location a network will be organized according to one principle and one organization will collect data. Let's call such an organization a data aggregator operator.
An aggregator operator can be a service provider that only transfers data, or a full-fledged intermediary that takes care of all the complexities of billing, organizing payment for services rendered, and interacting with end subscribers-clients and service providers.
I have seen many times how people scoop up 5 receipts from the mailbox every month, for me this situation is familiar. Separate receipt for gas, separate for electricity, separate for major repairs, separate for water, separate for house maintenance. And this is not counting the payment of monthly bills that exist only online - payment for Internet access, cell phones, subscriptions to various services of content providers. Somewhere you can set up auto payment, somewhere you can not. But the general situation is such that it is already becoming a tradition - to sit down once a month and pay all bills, the process can stretch for half an hour or an hour, and if once again something in the information systems of suppliers is buggy, then you have to transfer part of the payments to another day . I would rather interact with one service provider for everything, rather than dividing my attention on dozens of bills and sites. Modern banks simplify life, but not completely.
Therefore, the automatic collection of data on consumed services and the transfer of payment for services to the end client in one “window” is a boon. The above-mentioned data collection through traffic integrators, such as our Forward TI, is just the tip of the iceberg. The traffic integrator is the first line through which telemetry data and payload will be collected, and unlike providers who care about the volume of traffic consumption in itself, IoT will give priority to the payload.
Let's look at an example close to us from telecom, what the first line does. There is an operator providing communication services. There is a call lasting 30 minutes. 15 minutes of the call fell into one day, 15 into another. The telephone exchange on the border of the day divided the call and recorded it in 2 CDRa, in fact, made two calls out of one. TI, by indirect signs, will glue such a call and transfer data about one call to the billing system, although data came from the equipment about two. At the level of data collection, there should be a system that can resolve such collisions. But the next system should receive already normalized data.
The information in the traffic integrator is not only normalized, but also enriched. Another example: data for zone billing is not coming from the telephone exchange, but we know from which location the call was made and TI adds information about geographical billing zones to the data that it passes to the next information system. Similarly, you can put down any calculated parameters. This is an example of simple zoning or data enrichment.
Another function of the traffic integrator is data aggregation. Example: data is received from the equipment every minute, and TI gives data to the accounting system for an hour. Only the data required for billing and billing remain in the accounting system; instead of 60 entries, only one is made. In this case, the raw data is backed up in case it needs to be processed.
Second line
Let's continue to develop the idea of an aggregator that has become a full-fledged intermediary. Such an operator will maintain the data collection network and separate telemetry and payload. Telemetry will be used for its own needs, maintaining the data collection network in good condition, and the payload will be processed, enriched, normalized and transmitted to service providers.
A minute of self-promotion, because it's easier to illustrate on your own software than to come up with abstract examples.
On this line, the aggregator uses in its inventory:
- Billing, which takes into account the receipt of prepared data from TI, linking them to registered consumers (subscribers), correct billing of these data in accordance with the tariff plan used, generating invoices and receipts, receiving funds from subscribers and posting them to the appropriate accounts and balances.
- PC (Product Catalog) for creating complex package offers and managing services as part of these packages, setting rules for connecting additional services.
- BMS (Balance Manager), this system must be multi-balance, it will require flexible management of write-offs for various services, it will also make it possible to use several specialized billing systems serving individual services and aggregating the calculations received from them in relation to the total balance of the subscriber.
- eShop for interacting with end users, creating a public showcase of services, providing access to the Personal Account with all modern goodies such as statistics on the use of services, switching services online, applying for new services.
- BPM (Business Processes) automation of the aggregator's business processes aimed at both servicing subscribers and interacting with service providers.
third line
This is where things get interesting from my point of view.
First, there is a need for systems of the PRM class (Partner Management System), which will allow flexible management of agency and partner schemes. Without such a system, it will be difficult to manage the work of partners and suppliers.
Secondly, there is a need for DWH (Data Warehouse) for analysis. There is where to turn around with BigData on telemetry data and payloads, the creation of showcases for BI tools and analysis of various levels will also go here.
Thirdly, well, and like a cherry on a cake, you can supplement the complex with a forecasting system such as Forward Forecast. This system will allow to train the mathematical model underlying the system, segment the subscriber base, form forecasts of consumption and behavior of subscribers.
Taken together, a rather complex information architecture of the aggregator operator emerges.
Why do we single out three lines in the article, and do not combine them? The matter is that several aggregated parameters are usually important to a business system. The rest is for monitoring, maintenance, reporting analysis and forecasting. Detailed information is required for security and Big Data, because we often do not know what parameters and according to what criteria analysts come to analyze in Big Data, so all data is transferred to DWH in its original form.
In business systems with management functions - billing, PRM no longer needs some of the parameters that came from the equipment, telemetry. Therefore, we filter the extra fields, remove them. If necessary, we enrich the data according to some rules, aggregate it, and finally normalize it for transfer to the business system.
So it turns out that the first line collects raw data for the third line and adapts it for the second. The second one works with normalized data and ensures the operational activities of the enterprise. The third allows you to highlight growth points from raw data.
What do we expect in the future and about the economics of IoT projects
First, about the economy. Above we wrote about the volume of the market. It seems that quite a lot of money is already involved. But we have seen how the economics of projects that have been tried to be implemented with our help or to which we have been invited for evaluation do not converge. For example, we calculated the creation of an MVNO for M2M using SIM cards to collect telemetry from a certain type of equipment. The project was not launched because the economic model was not viable.
Large telecom organizations are moving into the IoT market - they have infrastructure, ready-made technologies. There are quite a few new human subscribers in Russia. But the IoT market provides excellent opportunities for growth and additional profit from their networks. As long as the preliminary national standard is being tested, as long as small enthusiastic companies choose different options for implementing UNB / LPWAN, large businesses will inject funds into capturing the market.
We believe that over time, one standard / protocol for data transmission will begin to dominate, as it was with cellular communications. After that, the risks will decrease, the equipment will become more accessible. But the market by that time may already be half-captured.
Ordinary people get used to the service, it is convenient for them when automated devices take into account water, gas, electricity, the Internet, sewerage, heat, ensure the operation of security and fire alarms, an alarm button, and video surveillance. People will ripen for the mass use of IoT in the housing and communal services sector in the next 2-5 years. It will take a little more to entrust the refrigerator and iron to the robots, but this time is also not far off.
Concerns
The preliminary national standard NB-Fi has been loudly announced as a contender for international recognition. Among the advantages, the low cost of radio transmitters for devices and the possibility of their production in Russia are named. Back in 2017, in the aforementioned article on Habré, it was announced:
The base station of the NB-FI standard will cost around 100-150 thousand rubles, the radio module for connecting the device to the Network - about 800 rubles, the cost of controllers for collecting and transmitting information from the meter - up to 200 rubles, the cost of the battery - 50-100 rub.
But so far, these are only plans and, in fact, an important part of the element base for devices is produced abroad. In the PNST itself, ON Semiconductor AX8052F143 is explicitly registered.
I would like to hope that the NB-Fi protocol will be really open and accessible, without speculation on import substitution and imposition. Become a competitive product.
IoT is trendy. But we must remember that, first of all, the “Internet of Things” is not about itemization and hanging up sending data to the cloud from everything that is possible. “Internet of Things” about infrastructure and Machine-to-Machine optimization. Wireless data collection from electricity meters is not in itself IoT. But the automated distribution of electricity to consumers from several sources - public, private suppliers - for the entire settlement already looks like the original concept of the Internet of things.
What standard would you base your data collection network on? Do you have any hopes for NB-Fi, is it worth investing in the development of billing systems for collecting data from devices of this standard? Maybe participated in the implementation of IoT projects? Share your experience in the comments.
And good luck!
Source: habr.com