Alaa Bawab, Vice President for Enterprise Networking Business for Huawei Middle East, offers Intelligent CIO his opinion on Wi-Fi and IoT network convergence, exploring the benefits of network convergence and the impact on different industries.
In today’s digital industrial era, the transformation of enterprises, the economy and the whole society have brought enormous opportunities and challenges to vertical sectors across the Middle East.
One of the most significant transformations has been between human and machine collaboration. In our own Global Industry Vision 2025 report, we estimate that there will be an average of 103 robots for every 10,000 employees in the manufacturing industry alone by 2025.
Underpinning that relationship is the strength of IoT and wireless technologies. IoT spending in the Middle East and Africa region was anticipated to grow 15.9% year on year in 2019 and could reach US$17.63 billion by 2023 as governments and businesses ramp up their investments in Digital Transformation projects, according to IDC. The impact of these investments extends from manufacturing to healthcare, banking, transportation and energy.
As detailed in Forrester’s Internet-Of-Things Heat Maps for Operational Excellence, 2019 report, more than 70% of enterprises have already implemented or plan to implement IoT solutions and applications. It’s worth noting that such a notably high – and growing – adoption rate is mainly driven by rising requirements from service departments, rather than coming from IT departments.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for IoT networks, however. Solutions must be tailored to individual enterprises since requirements for bandwidth, reliability, transmission distance and power consumption of IoT terminals vary depending on production needs. But the abundance of aspect-specific IoT protocols makes finding the optimal solution a challenge for any enterprise in the Middle East today.
IoT protocols are largely divided into two kinds, based on transmission distance: Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) and Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networking (LoWPAN). LPWA is applicable to long-distance Wide Area Network (WAN) coverage, while LoWPAN performs better in medium and short distance indoor coverage scenarios.
Furthermore, typical LoWPAN protocols include Bluetooth for precise locations (with metre-level accuracy), ZigBee for mesh networking at low-power consumption, power-hungry Wi-Fi technologies for providing large transmission bandwidth and low-power Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).
The transmission distances of these protocols are at different tiers, ranging from 10 centimetres to 200 metres. Most LoWPAN protocols comply with IEEE 802.15.4, which means they can be applied on IoT networks connected to the same gateway.
The wide range of deployment modes for these IoT networks, however, can lead to unnecessary IoT network reconstruction, complicating network construction and management. Enterprises would therefore certainly benefit from an open network architecture that is compatible with multiple, mutually independent IoT networks.
What does this all mean on a practical level? At the heart of the matter is that creating an open and well-performing network architecture requires Wi-Fi and IoT converged deployment and management. Enterprises in the Middle East are particularly well-positioned to leverage this strategy as many are not over-encumbered with complex legacy IT systems that have been heavily customised over time.
The benefits of this network convergence are clear:
Reduced construction costs: Built-in or external IoT modules on Access Points (APs) enable Wi-Fi and IoT networks to share network infrastructure, including sites and backhaul lines. This effectively reduces hardware investment, cuts down on hardware installation time and reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by 50%.
Reduced management costs: A Wi-Fi and IoT converged management platform offers an intelligent analysis that optimises network planning. For example, wireless technologies with similar frequency bands are selected to minimise interference; when interference does occur, it can be automatically detected.
This new approach is vastly superior to traditional networks, where multiple siloed management platforms can only detect and rectify interference after services have been affected, and administrators have to go through the arduous process of collecting information on each platform, manually analysing and troubleshooting faults.
Wider business opportunities: With the agreement and approval of customers, terminal data such as location and status is integrated and sent to the service platform. This approach improves the accuracy of customer profiles and customer behaviour analysis, enabling enterprises to provide personalised services.
Making this convergence a reality across vertical industries in the Middle East will also depend on ecosystem co-operation. We have seen this firsthand in speaking with partners across the public and private sectors. All share a desire to co-create, test and trial applications in the wireless and IoT domains, building a real use case for commercial deployment.
It is why we have created entities like the 5G and IoT OpenLab together with the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, providing an important cross-industry innovation platform for operators, third parties and vertical industries.
Moreover, this kind of co-operation will help develop the best possible industry-specific solutions, recognising again that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for IoT networks. By enriching local IoT industry ecosystem we can better address challenges and future demands in line with the requirements of local industries and keep driving the market forward.
