Software Data Sheet

Unison RTOS version 5.2Ultra tiny embedded Linux™ or POSIX™ compatible RTOS

Unison and

Internet of Things (IoT) or Machine to Machine (M2M) Communication

IoT and M2M systems have evolved to the point where they arereally the same thing. In the early days, M2M really meant thatthe communication occurred over a cell modem network. IoTwas originally thought of as a solution for small devices andsensors to save data in the cloud. Today these have expandedand merged as a single environment involving communicationsacross a network using a variety of protocols, and a cloud basedenvironment for capturing and storing data and tools to buildthese environments in both the cloud and embedded sensorenvironment.

Figure 1: Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M)systems have identical components and system architectures today.They integrate sensors, communications and backend cloud storage andanalysis.

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I n t e r n e t o f T h i n g s ( I o T ) o r M a c h i n e t o M a c h i n e( M 2 M ) C o m m u n i c a t i o n s A r c h i t e c t u r e

With a general agreement that the number of sensors on systemswill grow substantially. The main requirements of IoT andM2M systems are:

•Many small and inexpensive sensor

•Low power sensors for many applications

•Wireless networking

•Internet communications

•Cloud based services which require integration with frontend sensors

•Smart phone, tablet and computer access to database

•System security

These key requirements drive the implementation of softwaremodules and services provided by RoweBots and lead to manyother requirements.

With the number of sensors growing exponentially, abundantsmart phones and tablets, and the cloud offering almostlimitless storage, the scalability of these systems is critical.These systems are often intended to support millions of nodeswhich changes the scope of the problem considerably.

The scalability issue leads directly to communication protocolswhich support publish subscribe type operation making iteasier to deal with network connection and disconnection. Inaddition, this creates a need for low overhead on these protocolsto reduce the cost of sensor nodes – lightweight protocols arehighly desirable.

Given the shear magnitude of the number of sensors, batteryreplacement is a big issue. Energy harvesting schemes are beingemployed to eliminate batteries or recharge them automaticallyover the life of the device.

With many small sensors, the cost and convenience of systemscan be enhanced by making the devices wireless. For example,in large industrial installations, wireless networking caneliminate significant cabling requirements during installationand lead to adhoc network configuration.

With standardized communications protocols offered byconformance to the broad set of W3 specifications,interoperability of systems is substantially enhanced. RoweBotsfocuses on industry standards in all areas to ensure that systemswill be easily integrated and supported over time.

Cloud based environments have been in IT departments formany years. They offer Internet connected services withsecurity and a database to store the data. New IoT platforms arebeing developed as well. Ultimately, the IT department must becomfortable with the cloud platform selected and generally itwill be one of the following offerings:

•Microsoft IIS, ASP.net, C# and Azure

•Oracle with Java and Javascript

•IBM Websphere

•MySQL

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L o w P o w e rK e y F e a t u r e s

S c a l a b i l i t y

W i r e l e s s N e t w o r k i n g

I n t e r n e t C o m m u n i c a t i o n s

C l o u d B a s e d S e r v i c e s

Due to the variety of environments that generally work withthese platforms to connect protocols and various languageimplementations for business logic, RoweBots offerings areflexible to deliver a variety of solutions in this area to ensure ITneeds are addressed.

With the plethora of devices available today to receive data, andthe growth in this list of devices with experimental devices insmart watches, home displays and other systems, access toinformation has never been easier. The access to informationwill expand exponentially too particularly as users getaccustomed to immediate information and use their devicesmore.

Today, all systems need to be secure. The Unison OS offeringincludes complete security features and this is extended to theIoT offerings in a variety of ways. Please refer to the UnisonRTOS System Security data sheet for Unison OS details, onlythe aspects related to IoT and M2M will be discussed here.

Although there is many features and requirements for IoT andM2M offerings, the core part of RoweBots offering is thecommunication protocol support and examples which enablethe sensor systems to talk to the IoT gateway (or edge router ifyou prefer) and the edge router to talk to the backend cloudsystem.

Figure 2: Unison offers off the shelf support for a broad set of wirelessand wireline protocols along with a broad set of IoT / M2M protocols withfull security provisions which are all necessary for applicationimplementation on microcontroller (MCU) and microprocessor (MPU)processors. Examples for both management of devices and managementof applications services are also provided.

Current Unison RTOS IoT and M2M Protocol Roadmap:

• CoAP• very light clients• security of a unique nature• requires special server• requires additional protocols for publish subscribeoperation awaiting standardization• udp based• ARM supported

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S m a r t P h o n e s , T a b l e t sa n d C o m p u t e r s

C o m m u n i c a t i o n s P r o t o c o l s

S y s t e m S e c u r i t y

• MQTT• full publish subscribe / read write• TCP based• IBM supported• small efficient client implementation (3.5K Flash, 128bytes RAM)

• DDS or Distributed Data Service• used for high bandwidth connections• best for shared memory or fast bus based systems• large memory footprint

• HTTP/RESTful• easy implementation• standard port 80 implementation• IT departments favor this incremental approach

• Websockets• secure• easy to use• not necessarily widely supported yet

• Odata• Used to encapsulate xml documents• Used with HTTP/RESTful solutions for documenttransmission• JSON and BSON are common data passing formats• Supported in Microsoft Azure and IBM Websphere asprimary services for distributed communications

All protocols are in development with HTTPS/RESTful, DDSand MQTT shipping today. Please contact the factory for therelease dates for other protocols.

Other seperately available RoweBots files for Unison OS:

• File Systems

• System Security

• Wireless

• USB

• Remedytools

• Internet Protocols

• Unison for Specific Processor Families

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A d d i t i o n a l I n f o r m a t i o n

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RTOSve r s i o n 5

•HTTPS/RESTful–now

•DDS - now (3rd party)

•MQTT – now

•CoAP with

HTTPS/RESTful upgrade

-standardization delayed

•Odata – contact factory

•Websockets – contact

factory

S o f t w a r e

V e r s i o n•Unison 5.2 A v a i l a b i l i t y

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