Embedded Computing Design

It seems we are conducting ourselves similar to that of a junior high dance where the signal processing people are on one side of the gym and the IC architects are on the other side of the gym.

Can you guess how much performance gain could be realized by using analog signal processing? How much lower power dissipation? Just how crazy do you think I am?

When discussing wireless communications, I often ask people what the first wireless communications system was. I seldom get the answer I am looking for, as most do not understand my question.

My last request of them was to get their input on how we could create devices that ran on ?body heat?. I believe they were catching my vision while privately labeling me as crazy.

It surprised me when I realized that as much as I was trying to convince people that power dissipation was important, I was being ignored.

The ultimate goal of a smart sensor is that it be completely autonomous. That means it sources its own energy, performs all of its functions and communicates with the outside world wirelessly.

We were intrigued with the concept, but the concept of smart dust begged several questions about the idea of a smart sensor.

How do smart sensors fit into the IoT ecosystem?

When thinking about the IoT systems, I conclude that each of the three systems ? the cloud, the aggregator, or the sensor ? will have a different class of components.

I began to tell people that we were advertising "infinite performance, infinite bandwidth, and total security, all of which were over-stated.?

The cloud seems to provide us with infinite communications bandwidth, infinite performance, and total security. All these assumptions are lies.

The term "cloud" seemed to trivialize all the technology I had spent my career working on and the sophistication of the system I had come to deeply appreciate.

Should the term ?cloud? should be singular or plural? It would seem that geography, language, and culture would separate the clouds.

The continuing shrinking in size of the aggregator will happen as we learn to improve on power efficiency and wireless communications.

The simplest description of an aggregator is that it is a self-contained computer system.

At first glance, the aggregator appears to be the unnecessary component in the IoT.

the IoT is made up of three systems: the cloud, the aggregator, and the smart sensor. But then, there might be a case where the aggregator looks more like a smart sensor than an aggregator.

As I see it, the Internet of Things is a system of systems. Each of its three components (the cloud, the aggregator, and the smart sensor) are, in their own rights, systems.

It was several months after I had heard the phrase ?cloud computing? and, in fact, it was the concept of the Internet of Things which cleared up my working definition of cloud computing.