Abstract:Information model is the key to solving a series of challenges in IoT industry development. Based on the information model, industry standards/architecture can be unified to achieve synergy of industry chain ecology.

This article is shared from the Huawei Cloud Community “[Cloud-based Co-creation] Standard Things Model, the Gospel of the Internet of Things”, by G-Washington.

The development trend of the Internet of Things industry: The Internet of Things industry will develop into a vertical industry

The concept of the Internet of Things first appeared in Bill Gates’ book “The Way Ahead” in 1995. In the book, Bill Gates has already mentioned the concept of the Internet of Things. From the perspective of communication objects and processes, information interaction between things and between people and things is the core of the Internet of Things.

The basic features of the Internet of Things can be summarized as overall perception, reliable transmission and intelligent processing. In 1990, the Internet of Things started from the professional application of M2M. At that time, it was fragmented and an isolated vertical structure, and the typical business application was data collection and centralized monitoring in the fields of power metallurgy, petrochemical and railway. Through sensors, remote sampling, A/D conversion, monitoring center and so on to monitor.

Starting from 2010, IoT connectivity and cloud platform enable gradual development, covering personal, family, industrial cloud services, etc. Typical businesses include smart home, Internet of vehicles, intelligent meter reading, etc. At this time, control is carried out through connection, cloud platform, data analysis, etc.

From now on, with the breakthrough of IoT vertical application business, it has developed into a vertical professional in-depth based on cloud platform, data algorithm and AI. Typical businesses include security, intelligent transportation, industry 4.0, intelligent logistics and public service facilities. The control points are expertise and software.

Starting in 2025, the IoE Horizontal Platform will extend its capabilities to connect everything, including people, processes, data and things.

The IoT industry is faced with the problems of long solution chain, fragmentation and high complexity

The system construction chain is long. Ordinary Internet applications only need to consider software development, while the Internet of Things not only needs to consider the application, but also needs to design hardware data collection, gateway convergence, data Internet of Things transmission, end cloud interaction and other scenarios.

Device models are fragmented, and IoT systems need to be coordinated with n-clock type devices. The higher requirement of business cooperation between application and device leads to privatization of device data model, tight coupling between application and device, and fragmentation of model.

The industry solution complexity is high. The industry solution of the Internet of Things is composed of M subsystems, and the integration complexity of cross-application devices increases in a series of M*N.

Problems encountered in the implementation of the Internet of Things project

FS Industrial City project is located in the Pearl River Delta. It is planned to be a model project of standard solutions for smart parks. However, many problems have been encountered during this process.

First project delivery cycle is long, the entire project delivery cycle for 9 months, contains various integration adapter during debugging repeatedly, time limit for a project coordination problems, participants for 7 suppliers, design platform vendor 5, 16 hardware brand, new types of hardware 25, docking agreement with as many as 50, old and new equipment in the middle by a lot of things need to negotiate the exchange.

The integration cost is high and the scheme is difficult to replicate. The smart park is designed with 12 subsystems, each of which is connected by more than 20 kinds of Internet of Things devices. The integration cycle of each subsystem is 1 month, and the overall integration cycle is more than 4 months. And the solution can not be directly copied into another project, the other side may only need a part of them, the rest of the need to be re-done, so the replication is very poor.

There are standard protocols such as GB28181, MQTT, Modbus, BACnet, OPC, COAP, HTTP, Web API, etc., and there are also manufacturers’ own private protocols, which are difficult to connect and heavy development workload.

The physical network project delivery in the industry requires a standard object model. For equipment vendors, there is no need to select only one vendor’s data model if there is a standard object model. For ISV application manufacturers, it is not possible to pre-integrate all applications/devices during the development phase; For SI vendors, there are too many subsystems and docking integration takes time. For the customer, the lead time is too long.

The figure on the left shows that without the standard object model, the interface of each device is different, and the application is difficult to connect to the device. However, under the standard object model, each device corresponds to a unified standard object model, which provides a consistent interface to the external, and can directly correspond to the application.

Standard object models can be arbitrarily combined to produce new models. For example, cameras and lights can be assembled together to form a lamp with a camera. The combined complex still inherits the model of the base object, which can not only meet the needs of complex scenes, but also keep its standard model docking with the application.

Standard object models can be used to improve efficiency between object models, between objects and applications, and between applications.

Huawei has built IoT Stage around the standard material model, which allows diversification of choice. In the IoT market, it provides 3500+ products and 50+ strictly selected partners. Secondly, the combination is more free. Deployment more quickly, to achieve a integration, multi-point deployment. The shorter delivery cycle reduces the time from the configuration of special account roles, the configuration of master data, the power-on of devices, the configuration of permissions and the business debugging to 3 weeks.

The standard object model cannot be defined by Huawei alone, and it requires Huawei to cooperate with multiple parties to jointly define the standard object model. Currently, Huawei has achieved 280 million + device access, 3000+ partners, and 1000+ standard object models.

Huawei’s current achievements in IoT industry include the AD hoc group of AI intelligent IoT model, which enables AIOT alliance to work with AII to jointly promote the development of AIOT industry. This is an important result of the cooperation between the two sides, which is devoted to the construction of information model. Information model is the key to solving a series of challenges in IoT industry development. Based on the information model, industry standards/architecture can be unified to achieve synergy of industry chain ecology.

Huawei hopes to create efficient and collaborative industrial chain partners (partners in various fields, standard industry organizations, open source organizations, and scientific research institutions) for end-pipe and side-cloud application, so as to realize complementary advantages, joint innovation, jointly cope with the challenges of industrial development, enhance the ecology, and promote the development of IoT industry. To build information models, promote the unification of industry reference architectures, achieve security and credibility, and accelerate the transformation of industry digital models.

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