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will be the year of big trends — 5G, artificial
intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles (and other
autonomous devices), virtual reality, and the internet of things
(IoT) — that have a significant impact on the electronic com-
ponents industry. Each sector will advance across application
spaces thanks to the critical role that electronic components
play in enabling these technologies.
In January, we start with the IoT, focusing on the value chain
from board-level components to development kits. IoT is already
completely entrenched in our society
across end-market segments, but there
are still enormous challenges around the
design, development, and deployment
of devices and services for the IoT, with
security at the top of the list in 2019.
Starting from a kernel of an idea for a
specific use case, it requires engineers and
designers to have expertise across a range of
technologies from sensors and micropro-
cessors to RF/wireless design and connec-
tivity, security, and even cloud services. In
most cases, it’s not possible to have all of the
required expertise in-house.
Take, for example, an industrial IoT
use case to improve automation and reduce costs. It requires
an understanding of sensors, robotics, remote connectivity,
wireless communications, and cloud-based services. Add the
fact that many of these industrial applications use solutions
that could be more than 20 or 30 years old, and now design
complexity gets that much more difficult. So how do you
bring new technology to an existing install base? Our Outlook
story on Page 8 details what you need to understand to ad-
dress the problem and how to verify the design of industrial
IoT sensor nodes.A new breed of development kits
The IoT supply chain has been moving toward more collabo-
ration to provide development and design kits designed for spe-
cific use cases and industries. A new breed of development kits
is incorporating the three tenets of IoT design — ease of use,
security, and business value — so that design engineers don’t
need to have specialized expertise in several areas like network-
ing protocols or security-related tasks, enabling a much faster
development time. A few examples of dev kits on Page 16 show
that it’s all about simplifying the design work by intelligently
reusing the fundamental building blocks.
Clearly, sensors are a big part of any connected device, and
there is a lot of innovation occurring in this market that deliv-
ers new features — think AI — all housed in smaller packaging.
“AI will be applied to a wide range of IoT information, in-
cluding video, still images, speech, network traffic activity, andsensor data,” said Nick Jones, Gartner’s research vice president,
in a recent report. Gartner expects that there will be 14.2 billion
connected “things” in 2019, climbing to 25 billion by 2021.
Wearables are a good example of an area in which sensor and
MEMS technology innovation is happening fast, wherein new
types of sensors are needed to bring new functionality to wearable
devices. For example, in next-generation personal health-moni-
toring devices, they will likely monitor for a host of health issues
including heart-rate variability, oxygen levels, cardiac health, blood
pressure, hemoglobin, glucose, and body
temperature. This will require new sensing
technologies like MEMS sensors with
algorithms and firmware that intelligently
process, synthesize, and calibrate the output
of sensors (Page 8).
More and more processor manufac-
turers are building their next-generation
chips specifically for AI applications that
can be quite complex. These are built to
meet the computing power requirements
needed for AI algorithms and running
applications. On top of this, there are a
lot of cloud providers teaming up with
processor makers to tie hardware into
their cloud offerings, and all of them are adding robust built-in
security and some form of higher integration (Page 24).
A growing number of embedded systems are open to
security threats as a result of increasing connectivity and IoT
device adoption, said VDC Research in a recent report. And it’s
costing OEMs a lot in terms of money and reputation.
A 2018 VDC IoT and Embedded Engineer survey found
that “a significant portion of OEMs’ existing in-house labor cost
is already dedicated to addressing security” and is rising faster
than development costs. VDC pegs the worldwide embedded
engineering labor spend related to security at $11.6 billion in
2017, representing nearly 8% of the overall cost of embedded
engineering labor.
A 2018 Gartner Inc. survey found that nearly 20% of orga-
nizations surveyed experienced at least one IoT-based attack
in the past three years. The market research firm expects that
global spending on IoT security will rise to $3.1 billion in 2021,
up from $1.5 billion in 2018.
Don’t forget to check out the winners of Electronic Prod-
ucts’ 43rd Annual Product of the Year Awards (Page 18).
Component manufacturers are recognized for their outstand-
ing products that represent any of the following qualities: a
significant advancement in a technology or its application, an
exceptionally innovative design, a substantial achievement in
price/performance, improvements in design performance, and
a potential for new product designs/opportunities.
Gina RoosIoT design: It takes a village
IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK4 VIEWPOINT
JANUARY 2019 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS