Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is often referred to as Industry 4.0 to denote the fourth industrial revolution, that of connecting products, machines, services and humans through the cloud. IIoT is moving toward an era of increased interconnectivity, which is forecasted to soon outgrow consumer IoT. This new age of smart manufacturing requires new ecosystems to facilitate full factory automation and real-time monitoring with the aim of increasing productivity, enabling predictive maintenance and optimising supply chain and asset traceability whilst developing a safer and more secure environment.
Interconnection of machines requires the deployment of sensor nodes, devices that take measurements (for example, the location of a valuable asset, the environmental conditions in which a food product is being stored or the heat emitted by a damaged pump), which can be stored or transmitted to a hub for further processing. A lot of sensors are currently cabled, which is often impractical when pieces of equipment need to be moved around and full re-wiring is then needed. Retrofitting aging production lines with sensors can be tricky, if not totally impossible, when data needs to be acquired on moving parts or near hot machines. For monitoring infrastructure like pipelines or train tracks, the cost of wiring these cables may be too high to make it feasible. So, in many cases, making the device autonomous in terms of the way it is powered, for example by using batteries, makes a lot of sense.
