What are the big opportunities after NB-IOT in the field of Internet of Things?

With the freezing of the R3 core standard of NB-IOT in 2016, a wave of IoT enthusiasm has been ushered in. This round of NB-IOT has lasted for more than a year and will soon enter the next stage. After NB-IOT, which technologies in the field of IoT will have great opportunities?

Of course, the Internet of Things platform and edge computing are definitely opportunities for the future. Anyone with a little common sense will know that these two are opportunities for the future, so I won’t talk about them here!

Search by NB-IOT characteristics

Let’s take a look at the five characteristics of NB-IOT:

• Low power consumption: 10-year battery life
• Low cost: extremely low module cost
• Wide coverage: 20dB+ enhancement, 10km coverage
• Large capacity: 50,000 terminals have not been eliminated.

Grasp the two important features of NB-IOT: low power consumption and low cost.

The communication mode of future devices requires low power consumption and low cost. Low power consumption and low cost will be the main features of the future Internet of Things.

Look at the development bottleneck of the Internet of Things

Looking at the development of the Internet of Things from a timeline:

• The first bottleneck encountered is the connection bottleneck, so the first step is to solve the connection problem and realize the connection of a large number of devices.
• The second step will encounter the bottleneck of perception. In the second step, there will be more perception of the status of objects, forming big data.
• The third step will encounter the bottleneck of intelligence. The initial intelligence has been achieved, and self-learning and two-way linkage intelligence will be more important in the future.

NB-IOT solves the connection problem of low-power, low-cost devices, but how to solve the perception problem of low-power, low-cost devices?

Grasping three key words: low power consumption, low cost, and perception, I believe MEMS will be the next explosive IoT technology.

What is MEMS

Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology is a high-tech technology with characteristic scales spanning the two tiny fields of micrometer and nanometer. It is a key core technology for the informatization of weapon equipment, including: MEMS electrostatic motor, silicon micro transmission mechanism, MEMS smart dust, silicon micro gyroscope, and chip atomic clock.

As technology has developed, it has followed Moore's Law over the past 20 years: when the price remains unchanged, the number of components that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit will double approximately every 18-24 months, and the performance will also double.

With the development of the IC industry, will Moore's Law become invalid?

But beyond Moore's Law, there will be three development directions:

1. The feature size continues to be proportionally reduced and three-dimensional;
2. Integrated circuits (ICs) will evolve into systems on a chip (SoCs);
3. The combination of microelectronics technology and other fields will produce new industries and new disciplines. Microsystem technology represented by MEMS is one of the important disruptive technologies.

The difference between MEMS and IC is that MEMS has a movable structure and uses micro-nano technology to simultaneously process the mechanical structure and circuit system.

MEMS Features

MEMS features:

1. Miniaturization, low cost, low power consumption, and high reliability.
2. High precision.
3. High integration.
4. high performance.

There is no need to talk too much about the other features: low cost, low power consumption and high integration. These three features are worthy of attention.

After NB-IOT communication is perfected, it will inevitably stimulate the demand for low-power, low-cost, and small-sized sensors. MEMS technology has been developed for many years and is widely available. Now there are many MEMS sensors on mobile phones. The popularity of the Internet of Things will inevitably stimulate the demand for MEMS sensors.