Ten strategies to reduce the complexity of IoT cross-platform design

Each project may be subject to many factors in the development process. The three most important factors are performance, power consumption and price. People usually need to balance and compromise these factors. With these three factors as the vertices to form a triangle, each project has its "focus", but there will be different relative weights depending on the product, market and time.

The potential growth of Internet of Things (IoT)-related applications provides new opportunities for vendors and their design teams, but it also further expands the challenges of hardware and software engineering. Hardware and software are closely related to each other and form a platform that requires multiple strategies to minimize the complexity of cross-platform design. These strategies include:

Limit Sensor and Transducer Input/Output (I/O)

First decide whether your input/output requirements are fixed or limited in number and type, or whether you need to scale and increase the flexibility of the type. This decision affects your choice of microcontroller (MCU) and external interface devices. This is especially important if the input/output includes not only simple low-voltage digital points, but also temperature sensors, motors, and even communication lines in serial and parallel formats.

Use an externally certified radio frequency (RF) module

In many cases, modules that are independent of the core application processor are important. While highly integrated single-chip solutions are attractive in terms of board space, power, and cost, significant changes to the design are required if there are any changes or extensions in the wireless communication protocol, scope of requirements, and even regulatory requirements. Or need to adopt new MCU and RF link related firmware. Even if the coding part is simple (not likely), the MCU may not be able to meet the new requirements and needs to be upgraded, thus increasing development time and risk.

In exchange for power

Figure out the correct position of the selected MCU in the power and performance matrix. As you move up the curve of the desired performance, you will encounter threshold points, so you have to use MCUs that are larger in size and power consumption. As you move down the curve and the resources required are reduced, consider using a small, low-power, and inexpensive MCU.

Make sure that the specific MCUs selected support a variety of complex speed, function, and power modes to optimize the sequence of operations, minimize total power consumption, and handle operations that require high power.

Simplify security

Some processors have dedicated hardware embedding features that provide automatic security and are independent of any application software, even the chosen real-time operating system (RTOS). This approach may simplify the security challenges you face. It's even better if all of the MCUs you choose have the same embedded security features, because no matter which processor you choose, you can span this important part of the IoT challenge.

System standardization

As the size/performance requirements change, it is necessary to standardize low-power 8/16-bit MCUs and then use different memory sizes (on-chip memory or external memory); a larger 32-bit MCU can also be used, although Low-end applications waste some capacity, but have the advantage of consistent code and drive, while simplifying the bill of materials (BOM) and testing process.

Operating system selection

In some cases, a simple, low-cost single-threaded operating system is sufficient, but there are many projects that require a real-time operating system. Regardless of which operating system you use, you need to evaluate the scalability and availability of small, medium, and large operating system versions. You must be aware of the size of the minimum version and its corresponding functionality - you certainly don't want the "ability bottleneck" in the operating system's capabilities when the project is 80% complete.

Hardware upgrade VS software upgrade

At some key points on the software resource curve, you need to complete some additional tasks (development time, processor resources). In this case, you must make the following choices: either add peripheral ICs to offload the fully loaded MCUs; choose one. An MCU with a faster instruction cycle. When making decisions, analyze when you need a more powerful MCU to explain that you are returning hardware tasks to the software, reducing component cost, board size, and power consumption (in principle), but you may want to extend development and removal. The time of the debug.

Carefully choose the communication protocol

Use the "lighter" IoT to optimize communication protocols instead of the client/server HTTP-based Internet browser model, which reduces stack and processing requirements by a factor of two or more, making it easy to handle multiple IoT devices and their interfaces equipment. As market demands become more demanding, it is also important to consider what happens when the connection requirements (communication protocol, speed, and integrity) increase.

Develop a test plan as early as possible at design time

This is very important and complex, especially when the design includes wireless applications. How to informally and then formally verify that the final product meets market, technology, industry standards, and regulatory requirements, will affect the "adjustment and repair" cycle and time to market. If you want to add functionality to different applications in your product, you need to make changes to the prototype test program or production test setup, which increases the workload while adding uncertainty and risk. The use of pre-certified pre-certified hardware and software modules ensures consistency and compliance in many aspects of the final design, but not all. If any high-level regulatory guidelines for design and verification (such as guidelines for the reliability of medical products) affect the software, it should be clear to the heart. If these guidelines do not apply to all products, be aware of which products they apply to.

Security issues are the top priority

The software technologies and strategies employed should be able to meet application requirements across products and match IoT user interfaces (if any), such as firewalls, authentication, and passwords. Identify the required security resources from a hierarchical list, including secure boot, authentication, secure communication, firewall, tamper detection, incident reporting, remote command review, and policy management, ensuring the actuality of each item based on the software resources it has. The implementation is correct and feasible. Evaluate whether it is necessary to adopt a larger or faster MCU to improve the safety of various products, and whether the safety steps for planning verification implementation are reliable.

in conclusion

With the development of new or add-on products, the "sweet point" will undoubtedly need to be changed accordingly to meet changing requirements while avoiding excessive compromise. Designers should look at current and future products, choose the right platform, minimize rework and increase reuse, ensuring that these changes do not unnecessarily impact cost, schedule or workload.

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