Designing Reliability Into Your IoT SolutionÂ

In the world of the Internet of Things (IoT), new devices are connecting to each other every single day, making it truly an exciting time to be in the planning stage for your new wireless product. However, issues are bound to arise when you’re dealing with IoT. It is not a matter of if an issue occurs, it is a matter of when.

You may have an idea of what you want and how you want it to work, but what technical and business decisions do you need to consider in order to ensure success and a reliable deployment? Additionally, how do you engineer reliability and sustainability into your product? In this white paper, we will walk through the top considerations in order to design and build a reliable IoT solution that makes your endeavor successful.

Technologies

Wireless carriers have sunsetted 2G and 3G networks over the last 5 years. Cellular technology is traditionally designed for the consumer, and consumers demand even faster speeds and lower latency. The demand for data consumption is only going to increase, therefore, cellular technologies are constantly evolving to more efficiently use the spectrum and improve data speeds and latency. Consumer cellular devices can bring in much more revenue than an IoT device, so they get the priority. Although wireless carriers have begun to deploy CatM and CatNB technologies as a part of their 5G specification, which are designed for IoT devices, the question remains, will those too be sunsetted when future specifications roll out? With that possibility, there needs to be a plan in place to design in sustainability. Cellular IoT devices will always take a back seat to consumer devices, so the risk of network sunsetting will always be a factor to consider.

Selecting The Right Carrier

As cellular coverage varies by carrier, it can be tricky to make sure you select the right one. The carrier you wish to use will have hardware implications. When selecting a radio module, look for one with multiple frequency bands to allow for the option to switch between carriers, especially if one has better coverage over the other. If your design only allows for one carrier, then you’re married to that carrier while the device is in the field.

Additionally, selecting the correct SIM card design is critical for long term sustainability. Designing-in dual SIM capability will mitigate that issue and allow your device to switch between carriers. There are companies offering an eSIM capability where you can load various carrier IMSI profiles onto a fixed SIM. This functionality allows for flexibility and sustainability, however, many options available in the market today aren’t “True” eSIMs.

Energy Consumption

Long battery life traditionally equals higher device cost and a larger battery, and therefore, a larger device form-factor. On the other hand, low battery life may require more truck rolls and an increase in operational costs. It is important to first determine how long the device needs to stay in the field without recharging or swapping the battery. This will then help you determine how much battery storage is required. Upon selecting the right size of battery, it is important to understand how the battery cost impacts the build cost. Oftentimes, long battery life can make the device too expensive to justify the business case. Such an impact may cause a rethinking of the overall design. It is extremely important to understand this tradeoff as early as possible to ensure viability of the project.

Data Consumption

Like battery life, data consumption can make or break the business case. First, you need to understand how much and how often data is needed in order to deliver value for the overall application. There are three things to consider when assessing your data consumption:

How often do you need to collect data?
How big is each data payload?
How fast do you need data to transmit?

Answering these questions will help you to understand battery size, radio module type, preferred carriers, and monthly data costs. Making the appropriate adjustments in these areas will ensure the overall solution will have longevity and reliability.

Protecting Your Data

This is an area that is often overlooked and designed late in the development process. The security of the solution can make or break its reliability. When making security considerations, focus on the following three areas:

Implement security at the edge by reducing vulnerabilities and access. You can install an agent on the device that encrypts the data at the edge and then decrypts it with unique keys in the cloud.
Implement network security with private APNs, device-to-server VPN, and firewalls. Setting up network security can be costly, but worth every penny over the life of the solution.
Implement security within the data storage. The correct user permissions are critical and will help limit access to the data that allows your business to provide value. In IoT, data is vital to the organization, and protecting it needs to be designed early in the process.

Required Certifications

In order to operate on a wireless network, certifications are required by the carriers that are designed to ensure your IoT device doesn’t harm the network. For an IoT solution, you will need at least three types of certifications to operate on a wireless carrier network. Those three are the PCS Type Certification Review Board (PTCRB), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and a carrier certification. Certifications can cost tens of thousands of dollars and about six months to complete the process. Understanding the requirements before submitting for certification is critical and will save you thousands of dollars and precious time to market. Time and cost estimates can be drastically higher if your solution doesn’t pass the first time. If your device is certified, it will increase the chance that you will have a solid performing device and a reliable solution.

Other certifications to consider are non-wireless network related certifications such as FDA or Class 1 Div1 and 2 certifications. FDA is required for medical devices or devices that touch the skin, and Class 1 Div1 and 2 certifications are required for devices that may need to be in highly flammable environments. Designing your device to meet these specifications is vital in the reliability of the solution.

“Understanding the requirements before submitting for certification is critical and will save you thousands of dollars and precious time to market.”

Antenna Design

The antenna design will make or break your project. A poorly designed antenna will not pass carrier certifications and your device will have poor visibility on a wireless network. Additionally, if your device is going to be installed in hard-to-reach locations like parking garages or other industrial settings, a poor antenna design will limit deployability of the device. Poor antenna design will have operational impacts to the overall solution. A poor design will lead to poor performance, increasing service calls and creating a poor customer experience. Superior antenna design will go a long way in the reliability of your IoT Solution.

Unforeseen Situations

With these new technical requirements, will the product still remain viable? Will the finished product still solve the original problem and does your solution still create value for your targeted customer? If so, then you may be ready to go to market, however, you may still need to factor in your response to unforeseen situations. Through testing of the solution in real world environments, new problems can arise such as:

“Bringing an IoT solution to market is difficult and many do not make it, however, overcoming the primary hurdles will drastically increase project success.”

Form factor issues make it difficult for the device to fit in ideal environments
Connectivity is poor in the desired area for deployment
Devices fail to connect properly
Battery power drains too fast
Device enclosures aren’t rugged enough
Devices send too much data

Solving such problems will be critical to your success in the marketplace.

Making Your Solution Robust, Reliable and Scalable

In order for your solution to be robust, reliable, and scalable, you must understand the condition and status of the device at all times. This includes:

Reaching out and touching the device to troubleshoot
Managing the software on the device and making real-time changes
Switching over to another carrier when connectivity is lost, or helping the device get itself back online

Bringing an IoT solution to market is difficult and many do not make it, however, overcoming the primary hurdles will drastically increase project success. While the goal may be to build an affordable solution that meets the business model requirements, some risks can include:

Engineering costs and timelines of solutions that can be hard to manage
Certifications that are costly and time consuming

Turnkey solutions that are pre-certified can eliminate these risks while ensuring your solution is operating at the most optimal specification.

“Your focus should be on growing your business, so the good news is, you may not have to be an expert on all things IoT.”

Ease of Management and Success

While creating a connected solution to solve a business problem, you may feel like you have to be an expert on all things software, hardware, and wireless networking. Your focus should be on growing your business, so the good news is, you may not have to be an expert on all things IoT.

Do you use a computer for business? In order to use that computer, did you build the modem or write code to have it connect to WiFi? Did you build the display in order to see your computer’s output? Of course not. Your IoT solution can be the same. The IoT space is maturing, where various elements can be managed for you or off-the-shelf components can be purchased to provide more reliability to your solution.

Success is seen when the solution is creating value for your customer and your profitability begins to grow. A reliable solution has tangible benefits that are felt on the bottom line. These benefits include:

No need for truck rolls to fix unreliable devices
Data consumption is under control so there are no issues of data overage
Network security is in check so no vulnerabilities arise
Devices are durable and reliable and there is no need to swap out faulty devices
Reliable solutions mitigate downtime and revenue loss
Reduced service calls for your connected equipment that can kill your connected solution ROI

Airgain and OptConnect

Airgain is an advanced wireless technologies and systems provider that is focused on creating cellular-based IoT products and solutions. Its NimbeLink embedded modems and asset-trackers are carrier-certified and deployment ready. Airgain also offers a full line of both internal and external antennas to ensure optimal signal strength. By design, Airgain makes connecting to cellular networks easy, significantly reducing your costs and time-to-market.

Types of customers that benefit from partnership with Airgain:

Packaging and Logistics
Transportation
Video Surveillance-as-a-Service
Micromobility
Fleets
Utilities
M2M
Airlines
And more…

OptConnect is North America’s leading provider of fully-managed wireless connectivity services in the IoT/M2M space. OptConnect provides a secure and reliable monitored wireless connection to the Internet for unattended equipment that is easy, low-risk, and convenient: All supported by a superior customer service infrastructure. OptConnect has spent 13+ years perfecting managed wireless services so that customers can focus on their core business strengths without having to deal with the delays, complexities, and frustrations of typical cellular deployments. OptConnect’s fully managed solution provides Connectivity-as-a-Service for M2M and IoT applications that are simple and easy to implement.

Types of customers that benefit from partnership with OptConnect:

Retail, Financial, Energy, and Industrial applications that want a simple, fully managed solution that fall into one of these scenarios:
Organizations that recognize they don’t have the technical expertise in-house to design connectivity into their solution and want to outsource the complexity to an expert.
Organizations who have tried to implement cellular connectivity into their solution but have hit obstacles and need someone else to manage it for them.
Companies that have the expertise to design cellular connectivity into their solution, but don’t want to staff and support the infrastructure necessary across a large deployment.

To learn more please contact our connectivity experts today.

Call Airgain at 1-760-579-0200 or email info@airgain.com

Call OptConnect at 877-678-3343 or email sales@optconnect.com

Contact Us

Want a quicker response?