With the investment of billions of IOT devices in the market and the growth of trillions of market shares, we have to go through strict consideration in deciding the structural design of edge node sensors or intelligent nodes in order to make the right choice. These micro edge sensors not only provide important data, but also ensure its safety. At the same time, we should adopt the lowest power consumption, cost and occupied space. Some complex processing tasks of edge nodes can be executed in the IOT gateway, which brings not only security intelligence, but also more.
The main components of the IOT system include edge node sensors or modules, which are mainly used to collect sensor data. The IOT gateway is used to process and integrate the data of all sensors and maintain the communication connection with the cloud server or other edge nodes. The cloud server is used for non real-time data analysis and storage. Finally, the mobile application is used to render and display the results of these analyses.
Based on MIPS CPU and microcontroller to realize each IOT node and IOT gateway, and how the architecture design of parallelization, security and virtualization can improve the system performance and security characteristics.
From the analysis of MIPs chip, parallelization, virtualization and security can be extended to multithreading, hardware virtualization and omnishield security technology. Before going deep into the design of IOT node / gateway, we first briefly understand these key technologies.
Onmishield technology ensures the security of the next generation SOC. Unlike other solutions, we can set security and non security partitions through simple binary methods. Of course, omnishield security technology not only creates multiple different security partitions, but also supports the independent operation of applications or operating systems in each security / non security zone to complement interference.
Hardware virtualization is the premise of processor omnishield technology, which ensures that safe zone applications can be executed efficiently and reliably, and remain absolutely isolated from other applications. At the same time, it also ensures that it is not disturbed by non safe zone applications.
Finally, multithreading technology helps optimize parallel and complex applications, making the single core processor seem to be an SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) operating system, similar to two independent processor cores. Further, the two virtual processor cores can support multiple operating systems or a combination of operating systems and "bare board" applications.
With the above understanding, now we can further understand how IOT nodes and IOT gateways are implemented and how we apply these technologies.
Internet of things (IOT) node unit
In a broad sense, Internet of things (IOT) nodes can be divided into the following three parts - intelligent sensors, intelligent sound processors and intelligent high-performance processors.
Smart sensors are mainly used for edge node sensors, with low cost and low power consumption. One AA battery or button battery can ensure its operation for one year or more. Generally, it contains only one microcontroller unit, which can realize all application functions and maintain low-power interconnection and edge data analysis. Of course, for these billions of micro sensors, another important parameter is safety.
MIPS microcontroller M series has hardware virtualization function to ensure the isolated operation of three security partitions: sensor application, interconnection protocol stack and embedded AI processing. It supports a variety of popular interconnection technologies, such as ble, 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, thread, ZigBee, WiFi and cellular network technology NB IOT. It adopts two AA batteries to ensure 10 years of service time, ultra long battery life and low cost. In some application scenarios, using network interconnection technologies such as WiFi and cellular technology, the IOT node module can directly connect with the cloud server and send various messages and data. Of course, in other application scenarios, we can also use the IOT gateway module. Scenarios using edge sensors include smart home security and automation, vehicle networking, tracking and logistics management, container cargo monitoring, consumer electronic devices such as smart refrigerators, smart washing machines, smart beverage machines, smart pallets and smart utilities.
Intelligent sound processor is a more advanced sensor node, which increases the sound processing capacity at the edge node. This requires more calculation. In addition to meeting the additional calculation requirements of sound calculation, a CPU should also adapt to the integration of different numbers of sound acquisition microphones. Some functions need to be implemented on the processor, such as sound trigger to wake the processor to start decoding sound commands, adaptive beamforming to support multiple sound microphones, and eliminating echo and noise to avoid false recognition or detection.
All these functions, such as sound data processing, interconnection processing, artificial intelligence algorithms and sensor applications, can be implemented and optimized on MIPS interptiv series multithreaded processors. At present, there are many popular voice triggers and services, such as Alexa of Amazon, OK Google of Google, Siri of apple and Cortana of Microsoft. At present, Alexa sound service has been integrated into many consumer electronic products you can think of, from refrigerators to TVs and cars, as well as smart microphones and smart phones.
Almost all of these devices support WiFi or cellular network connection technology, which can realize the interconnection with cloud voice services.
Intelligent high-performance processors are suitable for processing intensive applications, such as intelligent interconnected cameras. High performance processor not only integrates all functions of intelligent sound processor, but also integrates video accelerator, special analysis engine and ISP camera support. With more performance requirements and functions to be realized by edge processors, our system may consist of more than one high-performance processor core, or two or four cores. MIPS 64 bit i6400 processor is very suitable for this kind of application.
Internet of things (IOT) gateway
When the edge node of our system is only used to output the data collected by the sensor node or put some data processing tasks into the Internet of things (IOT) gateway for execution, it should be the most scientific way to use the Internet of things (IOT) gateway to realize data communication with the cloud server or external system. This solution further reduces the cost, system space and power consumption requirements of edge nodes. Of course, it also brings some optimization to edge nodes, such as the introduction of intelligent algorithms, real-time data analysis, data fusion and higher security features. However, while improving the performance and convenience of use, it also increases the complexity of the implementation of the Internet of things (IOT) gateway system. Because each sensor node may use different interconnection communication protocols, security protection protocols and send packets of different formats and sizes, all of which need to be classified and refined in the Internet of things (IOT) gateway. Dealing with so many different situations is not easy. As shown in the figure above, MIPs processor has the characteristics of multithreading and hardware virtualization, supports a variety of Interconnection Technologies and Internet of things (IOT) protocols, and can handle this complex architecture design efficiently and safely.
Comments
Post a Comment