Application: Smart Home.
Processor: DM3725 ARM Cortex A-8 32-bit.
Word count: 509 words.
A smart home is the one in which the devices have the capability to communicate with each other as well as to their intangible environment. Gives owner the capability to customize and control home environment for increased security and efficient energy management. Several organizations are working to equip homes with technology that enables the occupants to use a single device to control all electronic devices and appliances. Consumer product manufacturers like Belkin, Philips, Amazon and Haier have already established themselves as prominent companies in this market.
In Smart Homes, sensors are the device with which we measurements are made, which have the capacity to take measurements such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning, water levels, light consumed at home, etc., action performed by the processor. The information is processed and made available through a number of access methods such as touch screens, mobile phones and 3-D browsers.
The networking aspects are bringing online streaming services or network playback, while becoming a mean to control of the device functionality over the network. IoT applications using sensors to collect information about operating conditions combined with cloud hosted analytics software that analyse disparate data points will help facility managers.
There are different forms of connectivity, like Ethernet, Wi-Fi, GPRS, LPWAN, zigbee, bluetooth, etc. For Smart Home, mostly used Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The potential of wireless sensor networks to facilitate energy management in buildings, which increases occupant comfort while reducing energy demand, is highly relevant.
An example of Smart Home applications is the Amazon Echo device, which is one of the most popular. Is a smart speaker developed by Amazon.com. The device consists of a 9.25 inch (23.5 cm) tall cylinder speaker with a seven-piece microphone array. In the default mode the device continuously listens to all speech, monitoring for the wake word to be spoken, which is primarily set up as “Alexa”. Echo’s natural life like voices result from speech-unit technology. High speech accuracy is achieved through sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) algorithms built into the Echo’s text-to-speech (TTS) engine. Provides dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) support for audio streaming and Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP) for voice control of connected mobile devices. Runs on Amazon Web Services that are Amazon cloud computing services.
Among the processors used for IoT, we have Texas Instruments DM3725 ARM Cortex-A8 processor. It is the processor used by Amazon Echo.
C64x+ Instruction Set Features:
- Byte-Addressable (8-/16-/32-/64-Bit Data).
- 8-Bit Overflow Protection.
- Bit-Field Extract, Set, Clear.
- Normalization, Saturation, Bit-Counting.
- Compact 16-Bit Instructions.
- Additional Instructions to Support.
- Complex Multiplies.
NEON SIMD instruction set extension, Thumb-2 instruction set encoding and ThumbEE instruction set. RISC Processor. ARM Instructions are Little Endian. ARM Data is configurable and DPS Instructions/Data are Little Endian.
Frequency from 800 MHz to 1 GHz and above. 256MB of LPDDR1 RAM and 4GB of storage space. The device provides three interrupt controller (INTC) modules: MPU subsystem INTC (INTCPS), IVA2.2 subsystem INTC and Modem INTC. The INTC can handle two types of interrupts originating from an external device.
References:
- Vermesan, O. and Friess, P. “Internet of Things – From Research and Innovation to Market Deployment”. River Publishess. [Available online]
- “ARM Cortex-A8”. [Available online]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A8
- “Amazon Echo”. [Available online]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo
- “IoT Applicantions with Examples”. January 30, 2016. [Available online]
http://internetofthingswiki.com/iot-applications-examples/541/
- Keyur, K. and Sunil, M. “Internet of Things-IOT: Definition, Characteristics, Architecture, Enabling Technologies, Application & Future Challenges.” [Available online]
Application: Smart Health.
Processor: BioProcessor ARM Cortex M4 32-bit.
Word count: 499 words.
The IoT can be used in clinical care where hospitalized patients whose physiological status requires close attention can be constantly monitored using IoT. This requires sensors to collect comprehensive physiological information and uses gateways and the cloud to analyze and store the information and then send the analyzed data wirelessly to caregivers for further analysis and review. In addition the technology can be used for remote monitoring using small, wireless solutions connected through the IoT.
The Continua Health Alliance, an industry consortium promoting tele-health and guaranteeing end-to-end interoperability from sensors to health record databases, has defined in its design guidelines, a dual interface for communication with physiological and residential sensor showing a Personal Area Network (PAN) interface based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) standard and its health device profiles, and a Local Area Network (LAN) interface, based on the Zigbee Health Care application profile. The standards are relatively similar in terms of complexity but BLE, tends to have a longer battery life primarily due to the use of short packet overhead and faster data rates, reduced number of packet exchanges for a short discovery/connect time, and skipped communication events, while Zigbee benefits from a longer range and better reliability with the use of a robust modulation scheme (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum with orthogonal coding and a mesh-like clustered star networking technology).
Samsung Electronics announcement that it is launching an all-in-one advanced system logic chip. Samsung calls this the Bio-Processor and its current focus is towards the wearables market for the quantified self. The chip processes bio-signals without the need for expensive or clunky external medical processing equipment, it does this by integrating an analog front end (AFE), microcontroller unit (MCU), power management integrated circuit (IC), digital signal processor (DSP), and eFlash memory. The Bio-Processor comes with 512 KB Flash, 256 KB RAM and a Cortex M4 CPU. Samsung provides a handy chart that displays the increased power efficiency of the Bio-Processor with DSP compared to discrete chips without DSP.
The integrated AFEs in the chip records a range of biometric data that should put the Bio-Processor in a different league to wearables that focus solely on heart rate and calories burned. Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) measures body fat, photoplethysmogram (PPG) uses an LED pulse oximeter to monitor the cardiac cycle and respiration, electrocardiogram (ECG) monitors the heart’s electrical activity, and the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) system detects electrical nerve impulses in the skin.
The ARM Cortex M4 is a 32-bit RISC processor core licensed by ARM Holding for microcontroller use. Instruction sets:
- Thumb-1 (entire).
- Thumb-2 (entire).
- 32-bit hardware integer multiply with 32-bit or 64-bit result, signed or unsigned, add or subtract after the multiply.
- 32-bit hardware integer divide (2-12 cycles).
- Saturation arithmetic support.
- DSP extension: Single cycle 16/32-bit MAC, single cycle dual 16-bit MAC, 8/16-bit SIMD arithmetic.
1 to 240 interrupts, plus NMI, integrated sleep modes. Endianness is chosen at silicon implementation in Cortex-M cores. Optional floating-point unit and optional memory protection unit.
References:
- Vermesan, O. and Friess, P. “Internet of Things – From Research and Innovation to Market Deployment”. River Publishess. [Available online]
- “ARM Cortex-M”. [Available online]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-M#Cortex-M4
- Rethink Wireless. “Samsung targets enhanced smart health position with Bio-Processor”. [Available online].
