Embedded Systems Provide the Foundation for the Next Generation of Smart Connected IoT Devices

Overview

As manufacturers implement IIoT ecosystems that connect their machines, equipment, and production systems to the digital enterprise, embedded systems technology will provide intelligence “at the edge.”   In today’s connected factories and plants, embedded systems provide the foundation for the next generation of smart connected IoT devices and the digital enterprise.  These intelligent edge devices can aggregate and analyze sensor and other data and stream information to support predictive analytics platforms and the concept of the digital twin.

Embedded systems power intelligent edge devices and smart sensors provide actionable information to support asset monitoring, data analytics, process alarming, process control, machine learning, and the emerging AI ability for machines to make sense of and act on complex data patterns.  Increasingly, the computational capabilities in on-site servers and cloud computing are migrating into the gateways and edge devices for IIoT networks.

It comes as no surprise that the first phase of IIoT will be the proliferation of intelligent edge devices. If industry is to move to ecosystems of smart connected machines and production systems, the first step is to create a digital environment that securely connects factories and plants using intelligent devices that can access, capture, aggregate, and analyze data at the production process and provide actionable information to enable operations, maintenance, and plant and product engineering and support groups to optimize how products are designed, manufactured, and supported. Embedded systems technology will be a prime enabler for this.

Diverse and Complex Embedded Systems Market

The overall embedded systems market is large, highly fragmented, and includes multiple sectors for hardware and software across a variety of market segments. These range from consumer electronics to automotive, aerospace, high tech, and medical devices.

Market researchers put the total market for embedded systems (hardware and software) at about $170 billion for 2016.  This represents only part of the larger market for the machines they empower. The software component is estimated to be about 6 percent of the total market, or $10 billion.  

For simple, high-volume consumer devices, hardware can represent 99 percent of the total cost.  However, in the low-volume embedded systems used for aircraft or highly reliable industrial controls, 95 percent of the cost can be tied up in software; especially when testing for compliance with standards on complex applications are included.

Further complicating the embedded systems market is the fact that there is no clear boundary between embedded systems and computers. Even today, there is some debate about whether a smartphone or a smart IoT gateway is an embedded system or a standalone computer.

Embedded Systems in Automation Evolve to IIoT

Manufacturing automation is a market sector for embedded technology suppliers.  However, until recently, it was somewhat limited.  This is largely due to the traditionally proprietary nature of much current automation equipment, devices, and software.  However, with today’s trend toward open automation systems, new embedded systems platforms and new programming standards are gradually replacing the proprietary environments of the past.

For manufacturing and other industrial applications, the automation systems are typically used to monitor, control, and/optimize the production processes.  Process data retrieved by control systems can be combined with other data sources (including both engineering and product design data) and analyzed to improve the process.  These data then become part of the digital history.  For these production systems, the current focus for IIoT is to access data to power predictive and prescriptive analytics and to help improve both product design and the associated manufacturing and support processes, rather than for actual, real-time process control.

Embedded Systems for IIoT Must Be Secure

As embedded systems enable intelligent edge devices for machines, equipment, and production systems, cybersecurity is a critical factor in software and hardware development. While the Internet affords a way to connect factory ecosystems, products and equipment in the field, and even manufacturing supply chains; this smart, connected world must be made secure and reliable or manufacturers will not adopt IIoT and the enabling edge technology.

Today, hackers, government entities, and cyber criminals constantly challenge the security of digital devices, systems, and networks. We are all aware of viruses, ransomware, industrial cyber-attacks, credit card fraud, and stolen identities. Clearly, developers of IoT devices and communications that incorporate embedded systems must focus on building secure products.

A presentation at the 2017 Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in Boston, by Michael Barr of Barr Associates discussed the results of a recent survey of embedded system software development engineers. Nineteen percent of embedded developers claimed they did not use any security standards to build the software, and 18.5 percent claimed they had security standards, but these were not followed due to the intense pressure to quickly create inexpensive devices for the consumer market. However, IIoT-embedded devices must be built with the appropriate standards for the application.

As equipment and machine OEMs integrate intelligent sensors and edge devices into their products, they must ensure that they meet both applicable security and safety standards. The hardware, operating system, middleware, and any other software component that comprise the embedded system should be robust enough to comply with these standards.

Embedded Systems Suppliers Look to IIoT and the Edge for the Future Market

Programming for embedded systems has evolved from a machine language development environment (“coding to the metal”) targeted to specific devices, to a platform-based development approach. Using platforms can greatly reduce development costs and speed development time. DCS and PLC companies typically construct their products using proven hardware and software platforms, rather than develop these from scratch for every new product development project.

The operating system is a key component of embedded systems for industrial applications.  In most cases, these are real-time operating systems (RTOS). Control systems may choose to start with a commercial RTOS from a small group of major suppliers like Wind River, Green Hills, Express Logic, QNX, or Mentor Graphics.  In some situations, hardware providers build in a more complete product development infrastructure. Embedded systems technology providers see IIoT and the emergence of intelligent edge devices driving a major business market for the future.

Currently, a Linux Foundation project has the goal to unify the IoT marketplace and accelerate enterprise IoT deployments. In April 2017, the Linux Foundation announced the launch of EdgeX Foundry, an open-source project to build a common open framework for IoT edge computing and an ecosystem of interoperable components that will help unify the marketplace and accelerate the proliferation of enterprise and Industrial IoT.

The complication here is there is no clear standard that shows what level an IoT or IIoT device is built to. In this regard, it is important from the start to develop a product with a specific market in mind, since consumer, commercial, industrial, and hazardous industrial markets all have different functional requirements. It is critical to write a clear functional requirement for the product to be developed. IEEE 830, a general standard for software development, provides a format for the “Functional Requirement Specification” that is common to all forms of software development. While this serves as a guiding format, it is very general and might not apply to the next “blockbuster” product that comes along to meet the unique needs of the marketplace.

Recommendations

The primary function of IIoT is to create connected ecosystems in factories and plants that allow data to flow across the digital enterprise and to the cloud.  As industrial companies make the transformation into digital enterprises, they will be able to adopt and implement a range of technologies like predictive/prescriptive analytics, the digital twin, and operational intelligence. The clear trend is to move connectivity and intelligence to the edge, where a new generation of smart sensors and intelligent devices will discover, access, aggregate, and analyze operational data. These smart edge devices will be powered by embedded systems software and advanced multi-processors computing at the source.

IIoT networks support LAN and WAN architectures and can (in principle) perform many of the functions we see in industrial control systems. Embedded systems have benefitted from more powerful processors and hardware platforms and from the various software platforms that speed development, increase performance, and reduce costs. Choosing the right product for the task requires taking a careful look at features, functions, and compliance to standards.

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Keywords: IoT, Industrial IoT (IIoT), Embedded Systems, Digital Enterprise, Software, Development Platforms, Connected Ecosystems, Process Control, Analytics, ARC Advisory Group.