The IoT gateway improves response time and minimizes network transmission costs. It serves as a link between IoT devices and the cloud.
IoT technology is maturing and providing exciting solutions across various fields. IoT offers practical solutions that can be implemented in different industries.
In this article, we will discuss an important component of the IoT—the IoT gateway.
IoT devices require an IoT gateway as a central hub for communicating with external networks and transmitting and receiving data from the cloud.
If you look closely, you will find that a lot is happening underneath the IoT. Devices communicate with each other over the network; devices communicate with the cloud; and vice versa. Managing all these processes can sometimes be overwhelming. But the IoT gateway can solve this problem.
Let’s see how.
The IoT Gateway: A Bridge Between IoT Devices and Servers
We always say that the Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of interconnected devices that collect and exchange data with each other and the cloud over the internet.
Now, standing in the middle of this complex interconnected network is the IoT gateway, reducing the complexity of communication processes.
The IoT gateway is a small physical device that transmits information from IoT devices to the cloud, bridging the gap between IoT devices and servers.
Why do we need an IoT gateway?
In some IoT solutions, organizations deploy a bunch of IoT devices. However, monitoring and managing these devices individually can be difficult. It becomes even more challenging if the devices have different power and connectivity requirements.
However, the IoT gateway connects different types of IoT devices running on different interfaces and protocols to the internet.
Therefore, we can say that the IoT gateway works somewhat like your network router. It is the link between IoT devices and the cloud. All data from IoT devices will reach the cloud through the IoT gateway. This data transmission is bidirectional. The IoT gateway allows for bidirectional data flow between the cloud and IoT devices. Moreover, the best IoT gateways can also handle device management tasks, such as firmware updates.
As technology advances, these IoT gateway devices can not only route traffic but also preprocess data locally at the edge before sending it to the cloud, making things easier.
Thus, the IoT gateway also aggregates and summarizes data received from numerous IoT devices to reduce the amount of data before forwarding it to the cloud.
So, the answer to why we need an IoT gateway is that the IoT gateway can improve response time and minimize network transmission costs.
Also read: The Difference Between IoT Platforms and IoT Gateways
How Does the IoT Gateway Work?
Now that it is clear what an IoT gateway is, let’s understand how the IoT gateway works using the example of a smart agriculture system.
The smart agriculture system is equipped with multiple sensors deployed in various fields. These sensors collect various soil-related information, such as temperature, humidity, NPK values, pH, carbon dioxide, and salinity.
Each sensor is equipped with a microcontroller responsible for data collection and transmission. The sensors and microcontrollers together form a sensor node. (However, we will refer to it as the “sensor” to avoid confusion.)
The sensor node cannot operate data locally, so it passes the data to the cloud. All sensors send data to the gateway using low-power short-range communication protocols.
Here, the gateway processes and aggregates the data and further transmits it to the cloud via the internet. Local preprocessing of data is done to minimize network latency, known as edge computing.
I know you must be wondering something now.
Why can’t the sensor node send data directly to the cloud?
Well, that is not the optimal solution because each sensor should have sufficient power capacity and appropriate Ethernet connectivity. Both cases are rare.
IoT Gateway Architecture: An Overview
The most common gateway architecture design includes the gateway itself, which is not equipped with any sensors. The gateway software embedded in the device collects data from the sensors, preprocesses the data, and sends the results to the data center.
1. IoT Gateway Device Hardware
The IoT gateway hardware includes a processor, IoT sensors, protection circuits, and connectivity modules such as ZigBee, Bluetooth, and WiFi. The type, speed, and memory space of the hardware are based on the operating system and the IoT gateway device.
Additionally, the end-user applications also bear significant responsibility for the design of the IoT hardware.
2. Operating System
The choice of the operating system (OS) is largely based on the IoT application.
For instance, if a gateway is created for a medium-sized application, a real-time operating system (RTOS) is used. However, if the gateway is designed for complex operations, Linux is considered the best choice.
3. Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)
The hardware abstraction layer is for the portability of IoT software. This layer in the architecture is designed to make software design independent of hardware. From this point, the time and cost required to port the developed software applications to different hardware platforms will be reduced.
4. Sensor Stack
As the name suggests, this layer consists of a software stack that acts as an interface for the IoT sensor module. The specific software stack is integrated based on the sensor interfaces supported by the IoT gateway. Some examples of integrated software stacks include ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, BLE, etc.
5. Device Configuration
This layer includes device management and device configuration. The IoT gateway device needs to track all connected devices/sensors. Additionally, all sensor management and configuration are performed at the IoT gateway itself.
Therefore, configuring the IoT gateway device to manage IoT sensor settings, attributes, and access control becomes more important.
6. Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA)
FOTA updates ensure that the IoT gateway software is updated with the latest version of security patches, operating systems, firewalls, etc. Thus, in the IoT network, the gateway periodically checks for firmware updates in the cloud and triggers updates.
7. Data Communication Protocol
For cloud communication, the IoT gateway should connect to the cloud via Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and 4G/5G modems. Here, the underlying communication layer is the UDP or TCP IP protocol.
Protocols such as MQTT, CoAP, XMPP, and AMQP are used to maintain standardization.
8. Data Management
The aforementioned includes data flow, data filtering, and data storage. Here, the IoT gateway maintains the data from the sensor nodes to the gateway and from the gateway to the cloud.
The task here is to minimize data transmission latency and ensure data fidelity.
9. Cloud Connection Manager
This architecture layer is responsible for smooth connection to the cloud and also handles reconnections, device status, and gateway device authentication.
10. Custom Applications
The IoT gateway applications are custom-designed based on business needs. These gateway applications communicate with all services and functions across the layers to manage data efficiently, securely, and responsively.
11. Gateway Data Transmission
The IoT gateway connects to the internet for data transmission. However, the GPRS network is the preferred connection. This data has built-in intelligence to determine which data should be processed for transmission over the network.
What Functions Does the IoT Gateway Have?
Here are some of the most important functions of the IoT gateway:
Communication with the Cloud
This is the primary goal of the IoT gateway. It connects the sensor nodes to the cloud via 4G/5G or WiFi. This is a bidirectional communication where the data collected by the sensors is sent to the cloud, and commands from the cloud are sent to the gateway.
This provides centralized control over data flow. Additionally, sensors that do not support internet connectivity can receive it through the IoT gateway.
Traffic Routing
It’s obvious: the gateway acts as a router and manages traffic. The IoT gateway serves as a central traffic management system, making data control and analysis easier.
Support for Multiple Transmission Protocols
You may know that sensors use different communication protocols, such as BLE, ZigBee, RFID, LoRaWAN, or LoRa.
The gateway transmits data via more power-consuming protocols (such as cellular and Ethernet). Considering this, each device speaks a different language, and the IoT gateway helps them communicate and send the correct information to the cloud.
Isolation of Sensor Nodes
By transmitting all data to the cloud, the gateway protects the sensor nodes from public internet access. It also acts as a firewall by not allowing direct connections to the sensors.
Edge Computing
This is the best part of using the IoT gateway—edge computing. Before passing data to the cloud, the gateway can filter and aggregate it locally. This reduces overall data traffic, increases the response time of IoT devices, and lowers data transmission costs.
Local Data Storage
The gateway has local storage capacity to cache data when not connected to the cloud. Thus, all data is secure.
Security
The IoT is known for its low levels of security. The IoT gateway is a great solution due to its advanced encryption and unauthorized access control.
Benefits of IoT Gateways
With so many functions, gateways indeed have many advantages. Here are some advantages of using gateways in IoT systems:
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Protocol Translation
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Data Aggregation
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Edge Computing
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Security
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Scalability
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Reliability
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Cost-Effectiveness
IoT Gateways, Edge Computing, and Security
The IoT is all about unaffected data insights and automation. Some IoT devices may generate large amounts of data. Collecting large amounts of data can be beneficial, but it can also be a problem if there are many similar devices in the IoT ecosystem, and all these devices send data to the cloud individually.
IoT devices consume the available internet for the company and lead to high cloud storage costs.
This is where edge computing comes in. By using edge computing, the total amount of data that needs to be sent to the cloud will decrease, thus lowering costs and internet consumption.
For example, if IoT devices are installed in a mall for crowd counting, it makes sense to send all raw footage to the cloud for data processing every minute.
However, it is more efficient to process all collected data at the edge rather than uploading all footage in real-time. Edge devices can distinguish between important data and less important data. For example, footage of the door when no one enters the mall.
Thus, edge devices collect data, review it, and send it to the gateway device, which further transmits the data to the cloud.
However, the IoT does have some security risks. Therefore, processing IoT data on edge devices will significantly reduce the amount of data sent to the cloud. This way, only a limited amount of data will be transmitted to the cloud.
In Summary,
The IoT gateway is crucial for managing IoT devices, and it can also help organizations reduce security risks and internet consumption associated with IoT.
IoT gateways can be used in all IoT systems, such as real-time soil health monitoring, forest fire detection, video surveillance systems, water quality monitoring, kiosk management, and more.