Industrial IoT: What, Why, and Why Bluetooth Technology

November 1, 2024
Alfredo Perez
Ambient IoT, Asset Tracking, Bluetooth Low Energy, Broadcast, Location Services, Smart Industry

If you are a Bluetooth^® developer, marketer, or aficionado who’s new to the Industrial IoT (IIoT), this article summarizes for you some basics that will help give your IIoT learning curve a quick boost and, more importantly, explain why Bluetooth^® technology is becoming a major player in the IIoT.

Industrial IoT – What Is It?

If you do an online search, you will find that there are multiple definitions, technologies, and applications associated with the IIoT. From Infineon’s perspective, and keeping things as simple as possible, the industrial IoT is simply a digitalization process for industries where industry can mean a manufacturing activity or a distinct group of productive, profit-making enterprises.

Digitalization refers to the act of integrating and leveraging digital technologies in all areas of a business to transform and optimize operations, processes, models, etc.

Industrial IoT – Why Is It Relevant?

A digitalization process involves significant investment and effort, so you must wonder: What motivates enterprises to consider or pursue such transformation?

Very simple, enterprises are constantly facing growing challenges that impact their profitability and competitiveness, some of which are captured in Figure 1. Through the IIoT, enterprises acquire powerful technological capabilities useful to manage, mitigate, or overcome many of these challenges. That’s what makes the IIoT relevant.

IFX Article 1 — *Figure 1 – Growing challenges motivating enterprises to adopt the IIoT*

Industrial IoT – What Can It Do?

In terms of functionality, IIoT devices and systems enable sensing, control, computing, communication, networking, commissioning, and interfacing abilities that, all together, allow organizations to conduct actions over assets, processes, products, and/or workers, such as:

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Collecting data, processing it, and using it to drive automated, intelligent decision making
Monitoring and tracking, continuously, in real time and remotely
Introducing control or management mechanisms to optimize asset or business-related parameters like usage, cost, energy, efficiency, etc.
Improving or enhancing human interaction or interfacing

Exploiting such abilities and actions strategically can lead to the maximization of business uptime and the optimization of resources and productivity. Also, new services or features for existing products can be introduced to enable new business models or add revenue streams.

To add more color, below are two examples that illustrate what the IIoT can do.

Sensing and Automation

Allows modernizing legacy or existing machinery and facilities
Data collected on such assets permits better monitoring and assessing performance, maintenance, or utilization
Automated controls responding to such data can be exploited to manage operation and energy costs more effectively to optimize uptime and productivity, enable workplace safety measures, eliminate human errors, etc.

Monitoring and Tracking

Gives continuous visibility into the status or location of products, processes, workers, etc.
Allows detecting and reacting to production or distribution issues quickly and mitigate their impact
Enables inventory management optimization options
Helps detect and minimize theft and related loss

Industrial IoT – Key Factors

If the IIoT is so great, everyone must be racing to bring IIoT solutions to the market then, right?

Yes and no. The truth is, the potential and forecasts for the IIoT are tremendous and there is certainly a lot of activity going on in the IIoT space. However, there are many critical factors to industrial customers and system integrators that make designing, deploying, and commercializing IIoT solutions non-trivial. Figure 2 captures some of the main ones.

IFX Article 2 — *Figure 2 – Key factors for industrial customers and system integrators*

From the start, there are three fundamental factors to consider always in the industrial space: performance, reliability, and cost. In an industrial setting, things must work as expected always, exactly when needed, consistently, and delivering the highest return on investment as quickly as possible.

Then, from a consumer perspective (e.g., those with decision-making power to bring IIoT into a factory, enterprise, etc.), other crucial factors to account for include security, longevity, ease of use, platform support, robustness, and technical support. And from a systems integration view, key additional factors would be protocols, energy efficiency, and size. Justifications for why are all these important are given in the next table.

With so many factors at play, you can easily infer two things:

There is no silver bullet when it comes to developing an IIoT solution and bringing it to market
The number of IIoT device or solution suppliers able to check all the boxes is small

NEW MARKET RESEARCH

The Ambient IoT – The Emergence of a New Class of Bluetooth^® IoT Devices

This report defines the Ambient IoT, outlines targeted use cases, and highlights the next steps needed to capitalize on the Ambient IoT opportunity. It also explains the central role of Bluetooth^® technology in addressing Ambient IoT use cases, characterized by its low power consumption, low cost, flexibility, interoperability, and scalability.

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Key Factors

Performance: Solutions adopted must always work as expected under all specified conditions/scenarios.
Reliability: Solutions adopted must perform the intended function consistently, without failure, throughout their rated lifetime.
Cost: Solutions adopted must deliver the highest ROI as quickly as possible.
Security: Solutions adopted must pose zero risk to the security of operations, products, business reputation, etc. Also, they must be updatable for protection against new and future threats.
Longevity: Solutions or suppliers chosen must guarantee the longevity necessary to recover the investment, maintain and upgrade adopted solutions, profit over the long run, etc.
Ease of Use: Solutions considered must be easy to evaluate, design with, deploy, maintain, etc. for developers and simple to use for the end users.
Platform Support: Solutions adopted must be scalable, compatible with relevant ecosystems, interoperable with existing and future products or systems, based on common and reusable software/tools, etc.
Robustness: Solutions chosen must deliver the ruggedness and quality required for an industrial environment.
Technical Support: Suppliers selected must offer the expertise and support to help minimize R&D time, meet regulatory requirements, help integrate new systems with old, deploy upgrades or new features easily, minimize downtimes if an issue comes up, etc.
Protocols: Solutions chosen must support protocols for communication, networking, security, safety, etc. suitable to meet customer targets for performance, reliability, cost, security, upgradability, etc.
Energy Efficiency: Solutions chosen must support diverse energy operation modes and give options to achieve the highest efficiency possible.
Size: Solutions chosen must be optimally sized to meet use case needs but also minimize cost.

Wireless in the Industrial IoT

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Wireless connectivity is a foundational building block for the IIoT and technologies enabling direct cloud access. Wi-Fi and cellular were primary choices in the early stages. However, not every IIoT device or application demands cloud connectivity or the horsepower of Wi-Fi (e.g., wide channel bandwidth, tens or hundreds of MB throughput, a powerful application or host processor, unrestricted power consumption, etc.), or the cost and risk associated with operating in a licensed frequency band. Also, modern IIoT system architectures involve diverse types of device, with different design and performance requirements (e.g., gateways, control panels, end nodes, wireless infrastructure, etc.) where, in many cases, energy efficiency and low cost are top priorities. Because of this, Bluetooth® technology has gained major traction and is poised to grow its presence in the IIoT significantly.

Industrial IoT – Why Bluetooth Technology?

Bluetooth^® technology is a wireless communication standard that, originally, was intended to replace cable connections to personal electronic devices and form short-range personal area networks (PANs).

Over time, the scope and reach of Bluetooth technology have been largely expanded with the addition of new capabilities and features through periodic revisions to the Bluetooth Core Specification, some of which are highlighted in the next table.

Bluetooth Core Specification

v4.0: Introduced the Bluetooth Low Energy mode of operation, enabling battery-powered solutions that can run from a coin cell battery for years.
v5.0: Added significant transfer speed and range improvements with the 2M and Coded PHYs and also enabled higher data communication in a connectionless mode with Extended Advertising.
v5.4: Introduced Periodic Advertising with Responses (PAwR) which allows connectionless, two-way, one-to-many data communication.
v6.0: Rolled out Bluetooth Channel Sounding, a fine-ranging feature useful to estimate the distance between connected devices precisely and securely, enabling proximity awareness, locating, and tracking applications.

Bluetooth^® Channel Sounding: A Technical Overview

This paper provides an overview of the forthcoming update to the Bluetooth^® Core Specification. The update adds Bluetooth Channel Sounding, a new feature that enables secure fine ranging between two Bluetooth devices.

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oday, Bluetooth technology is suited to support the range, robustness, security, and networking topology requirements of diverse industrial applications. Moreover, as result of the success Bluetooth technology has had in battery-powered consumer applications for mass markets, Bluetooth devices (e.g., SoCs and modules) have been greatly optimized for minimal size, cost, and energy consumption which are all desirable characteristics for industrial applications as well.

In a nutshell, these are ten of the reasons why Bluetooth technology is a key player in the IIoT today and, more importantly, projected to have tremendous growth in the near and long term.

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Energy Efficiency: Energy efficiency is the essence of Bluetooth Low Energy (LE). Battery or ambient-powered industrial applications like tags for asset tracking or electronic shelf labels (ESL) demand the highest efficiency possible and there is no better wireless technology than Bluetooth to deliver it.
RF Performance: State-of-the-art Bluetooth devices achieve an outstanding RF link budget and support features like frequency hopping and LE channel classification to help avoid/mitigate RF interference. It is great for operating in industrial spaces (e.g., warehouses, factories, etc.).
Cost and Size: Bluetooth devices are extremely cost competitive since they are typically targeted for high-volume applications. Their sizes keep shrinking with new process nodes and through cost-driven design optimizations. ICs in the market today can be as small as 3.6 mm2.
Throughput and Long Range: Bluetooth LE can support a raw throughput of 2 Mbps which is appropriate for a wide range of industrial applications, and its range has improved drastically (> 5 km) with the introduction of Coded PHYs and features like Advertising Coding Selection.
Multi-Protocol Support: Bluetooth technology is widely supported in multi-protocol devices that combine it with Wi-Fi, 15.4, etc. Proven co-existence mechanisms implemented in hardware or software to coordinate multiple radios in a collocated setting are available.
Network Topologies: Bluetooth technology supports a variety of networking topologies, including point-to-point, broadcast, and mesh that enable one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many device communication, in connected or connectionless modes. It is great for IIoT use cases with diverse network performance, node count, or energy efficiency needs.
Security: Bluetooth technology offers robust security capabilities with secure pairing at the core. Pairing gives devices resources to enable link encryption, privacy, and data signing. Private addresses for tracking protection are also supported. Modern Bluetooth devices integrate dedicated security subsystems in hardware as well.
Modules: Many vendors offer complete system solutions integrating Bluetooth ICs and all external components needed (e.g., antenna, XTALs, passives) in miniaturized PCB or SiP modules, with regulatory and standards-based certifications included. It is great to add Bluetooth technology to multiple designs for fast development/time-to market, etc.
Standardization: Benefits of Bluetooth standardization include operating in a globally available unlicensed frequency band, interoperability with devices from different vendors, access to a large pool of suppliers and to a global ecosystem of devices/software/solutions, efficiency and path to scalability, future-proofing, etc.
Platform Support: Bluetooth technology is available in all tablet and mobile device platforms used in industrial settings for access, device provisioning, interaction through smartphone apps, etc.

Bluetooth Applications in the IIoT

For reference, below are some examples of IIoT applications where Bluetooth LE is being used.

IFX Article 3

Key Takeaways

The IIoT is a digitalization process for industries that gives them powerful capabilities to manage or mitigate growing challenges impacting their profitability and competitiveness. The benefits and potential offered by the IIoT are crystal clear, but the numerous relevant factors to account for in an industrial setting make the design, deployment, and commercialization of IIoT solutions non-trivial. Wireless connectivity is fundamental for the IIoT and Bluetooth technology has evolved into a key wireless technology ready to grow its position in the IIoT space exponentially. We have given 10 reasons why Bluetooth technology is well suited to win in the Industrial IoT and some examples of the applications where it is being used already.

In the bigger picture, the IIoT is also a major technological development, enabling the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, along with other marvels like cloud computing, big data analytics, cyber-physical systems, AI and ML, visualization technologies (VR, AR), etc.

A key aspect of Industry 4.0 is the attention to sustainability, an area where many applications and solutions based on Bluetooth LE and its world-class energy efficiency excel compared to others based on competing wireless technologies. Make that reason 11 for why Bluetooth technology is a great fit for the IIoT.