Single-pair Ethernet standard means goodbye to batteries

If you’ve ever spent a Christmas morning with children, you probably have a soft spot for batteries. While there is something truly magical about Christmas morning, especially with children, that magic comes to a screeching halt when your children go from unwrapping their presents to you assembling them.

Your Norman Rockwell Christmas turns into an episode of Survivor, where your core life skills are put to the test and your survival depends on successfully scavenging several unique battery types to charge remote control cars, game controllers, and easy-to-bake ovens.

Toys that you developed and bought to bring joy to your children become the nemesis of your life. For months you work on this cause, driving down the cost of batteries, diligently replacing them until you give up and let the toys die at the bottom of your toy box. You inevitably toss those toys in the trash or donate those batteries to another unsuspecting parent who wants to bring joy to their child while spending their retirement savings on batteries.

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If you think toys are bad, think about buildings

By 2025, it is expected that there will be more than 75 billion devices connected to the network worldwide. Many of these devices will be sensors in buildings, and many of these sensors will likely use batteries. This could add up to a large number of batteries in buildings, potentially thousands.

Maintaining batteries for tens of thousands of devices can become unsustainable and too expensive for building operators. The arduous maintenance of battery sensors can offset the benefits of battery sensors, putting them at risk of being abandoned and failing to realize long-term benefits.

The real value of the Internet of Things (IoT) for buildings lies in data collection and how that data can help building owners and operators improve the health and well-being of building occupants, increase operational efficiencies and achieve an overall greater ROI from their built spaces.

The reliability of device data, especially sensor data, is highly dependent on the reliability of the device’s connection to the network and its power source. A loss of connection could mean the loss of critical data required for building operations. While wireless connectivity can and will support many of these connections, wireless’s ability to operate long-term is limited when the device is powered by batteries.

When deploying battery-powered devices, one hidden cost that is often overlooked is the responsible disposal of old batteries. While batteries are relatively small in size and may have a lifespan of several years, the sheer number of devices expected to be used in IoT applications is an important consideration. Businesses are looking for ways to increase their use of sustainable materials and lower their carbon footprint. It may not make sense to deploy thousands of devices with disposable batteries if there is a more sustainable alternative.

For sensor manufacturers, it is critical to design a sensor that is easy to manage throughout the sensor lifecycle. For building operators, choosing reliable, easy to manage, and environmentally friendly sensors is critical to the long-term success of their smart buildings. In short, choosing sensors for your building that require battery maintenance may cause you to relive the most unpleasant moments of Christmas morning every day.

New standard offers cost-effective, reliable option

The recently released IEEE standard 802.3cg™ 10BASE-T1 single-pair Ethernet standard provides a cost-effective and reliable option to not only power sensors but also provide data communications. Sensor data is already being transferred to Ethernet either directly or through some form of gateway.

Single-pair Ethernet devices and device interfaces take up less space than traditional 4-pair RJ-45 Ethernet connections. Single-pair Ethernet components are approximately half the size of traditional 4-pair Ethernet, making it an elegant and efficient solution for small devices. Other benefits of the standard include:

1. Support for both point-to-point and multi-point bus topologies provides flexibility in transitioning legacy non-Ethernet applications to Ethernet.
2. Extends the reach of Ethernet copper LAN cables to 1000m, allowing perimeter cabling inside buildings, as well as network devices/sensors outside buildings.
3. The extended standard IEEE802.3bu™ Power over Data Lines (PoDL) class provides up to 7.7 watts of DC power at distances up to 1000m. Shorter reach (15m) provides up to 50 watts of PoDL DC power over the same balanced single pair cable used for data.
4. In IEEE802.3SPE applications, Ethernet still continues to use the seven-layer OSI model, and several layers of security are built into the protocol, extending strong security to the device level.
5. Compared to many traditional operational technology (OT) networks, the operation and management of the network by personnel familiar with Ethernet becomes easier and more reliable.

TIA is developing three documents that address single-pair Ethernet implementations and use cases for generic structured cabling.

• ANSI/TIA568.0-E-1 is a proposed addendum to the recently released Common Cabling Standard that will describe use cases, topologies, and architectures associated with single-pair cabling.
• The next revision of the ANSI/TIA-862 Intelligent Building Systems standard (ANSI/TIA-862-C) is expected to include SPE cabling recommendations
• Work will soon begin on a new standard, likely to be called ANSI/TIA 568.7, for single twisted-pair cabling for industrial applications.

The seamless integration of Ethernet from the device level to the cloud can reduce costs and complexity. IEEE is developed based on IEEE802.3cg, which supports more multi-branch nodes, long distances, and "plug and play" remote power operation to cover most use cases in transportation, enterprise buildings, and industrial spaces.

According to market trends, IEEE802.3 is currently dedicated to low-speed single-pair applications on copper media types. For SPE, the integration of the sensor industry with this trend will be an important milestone in the evolution of the SPE ecosystem.