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New Sensor Capabilities Enable Faster Adoption of IoT Technologies

The smart-home scenario will provide users with a more com- come from sensors, many of which are not yet installed, and some of
fortable environment precisely tuned to their preferences while which have not even been invented. In lighting systems, for example,
reducing energy waste or water usage, eliminating the need for what smart automation requires highly accurate information about the
will become old-fashioned user controls such as light switches and spectral composition and intensity of ambient light. Likewise, smart
thermostats. ventilation systems need to “smell” the air that users are breathing
This vision responds to users’ desire for an IoT system that is invis- and analyze it. Smart traffi c controls need to “see” and locate vehicles
ible and automated. Just by walking into the room, the user would on the roads to maintain safe operation and keep traffi c fl owing.
trigger the heating, ventilation, sound, lighting, and other systems to In other words, sensors play a “human” role: to see, smell, feel,
change their settings. and hear what is happening in the real world in real time. In that
sense, sensor technology and solutions are as much at the frontier
of IoT technology as low-power radio ICs and cloud computing
systems are. And these sensors must be precise, highly accurate, and
always reliable.
SMART LIGHTING CONTROL
Traditional, manual lighting controls are limited in their scope to
turning a light on or off and dimming it.
Sensor-driven smart lighting embedded in an IoT infrastructure
promises to transform the user’s experience of lighting. One of
the most interesting use cases of smart lighting is “human-centric
lighting,” a concept grounded in the belief that the spectral con-
tent of artificial light has an important impact on users’ health or
well-being.
It is important to note that human-centric lighting is an emerging
fi eld, and the science underlying functions such as blue-light suppres-
sion at night is not yet proven. Nevertheless, research has indicated a
connection between the spectral content of light and well-being, the
result of the body’s method for regulating its circadian rhythm. Bright
blue daylight triggers hormonal responses that awaken the body,
Figure 1: Smart-home features today are often discretely managed and the golden yellow of dusk or of fi relight prompts relaxation and
or still visible to the user. Key technological developments are need- restful behavior.
ed to realize the autonomous smart home. (Image: iStock.com/ams AG) As a result, some users are concerned about exposure to specifi c
wavelengths of blue light in sources such as white LEDs. To regulate
the color of artifi cial lighting, some early smart-lighting implemen-
While some luxury accommodations might offer many of these fea- tations have used simple RGB color sensors or XYZ color sensors
tures today, the features are often discretely managed or still visible (such as the TCS3430), which provide more accurate measurements
to the user (Figure 1). What are the key technological developments of chromaticity than RGB sensors offer. Today, lighting equipment
needed to realize the vision of an autonomous smart home? Machine manufacturers are successfully implementing human-centric lighting
learning and sophisticated software hosted in the cloud will be cru- with the accurate color measurements provided by an XYZ color
cial. Another important element is the ability to sense a huge range of sensor. Spectral analysis provides more detailed information about
real-world phenomena so that machines can respond to the world in a luminaire’s light output and ambient light for even tighter control
the same way that a human does.
This will require a host of new, intelligent sensors. This article out-
lines new sensor capabilities that will enable IoT-based technology to
provide personalized and intelligently confi gurable operation. It also
suggests applications in which they are likely to be deployed.

THE CLOUD IS NOTHING WITHOUT DATA
Cloud-connected IoT technologies are already transforming the
effi ciency, responsiveness, and convenience of common systems and
services. In the smart-city domain, Uber’s taxi-on-demand service is a
prime example, showing how coordinated user requests and real-time
data processed through sophisticated algorithms in the cloud can
transform transportation usage and patterns.
More generally, the IoT will trigger the deployment of millions of
cloud-connected services, performing the trick of combining multiple,
disparate streams of data to provide personalized, prompt service.
IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK has understandably been on technologies and systems for connecting Figure 2: Spectral measurements obtained by an AS7350 sensor
In discussions about the proliferation of IoT technologies, the focus
nodes to the cloud, as well as the analytics capabilities required to
make sense of the big-data input from user devices and other types of
IoT nodes.
But what makes cloud-based intelligence useful and effi cient is
usable data input. A large part of the data input to cloud systems will
(Image: iStock.com/ams AG)
www.eetimes.eu | FEBRUARY 2020