Increasing Internet connectivity is the new reality of modern life and transforming the way we live, the way we do our business transactions and create million of opportunities. With the availability of Internet, it is ever easier to connect and monitor your assets remotely and increase the productivity. We can’t take risk of unplanned network downtime.

In this IoT Network ecosystem, the assets are the sensors, the connectivity that links them to remote application, a wealth of third party data and service integrations those are facilitated by cloud can be leveraged.

For a sense of scale, consensus estimates for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices range between 20 billion and 30 billion in the early 2020s, worth around $5 trillion, with Arm saying that there will be a trillion connected devices by 2035.

While choosing an alliance infrastructure for IoT Network, the primary requirement dictates how much bandwidth is needed, how long a battery-powered device will last in the field, and ultimately the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the given application.

Choice of Network Infrastructure:

There are plenty of choices available for choice of Wireless network ranging from Private Network to the latest standards of WiSUN Alliance. While selecting a Wireless protocol most applicable to utility, smart city, and industrial IoT are Wi-SUN Field Area Networks (FAN), LoRaWAN, and NB-IoT (LTE Cat-NB).

WiSUN ALLIANCE PROTOCOL:

Currently more than 95 million Wi-SUN-capable devices are deployed globally, operating in some very challenging environments.

Wi-SUN FAN is a mesh network protocol, meaning each device in a network can speak to its neighbors, which allows its messages to travel a very long distance –hopping between each node in the network.

Mesh networks, like Wi-SUN FAN, when deployed with sufficient density, will have multiple paths back from
the end-device to the backhaul network via a router (aka border router) that links it to the Internet of a private wide area network. If the usual route back to the gateway is blocked, the end-device should have plenty of other pathways available, providing excellent redundancy.

Wi-SUN FAN is self-forming, which makes adding new devices to a network easy, and self-healing, so that if a pathway fails, the network will automatically re-route to the gateways.

Wi-SUN FAN is the most flexible technology and can adopt a hybrid approach, utilizing a mesh for dense
networks, such as smart meters in a neighborhood, and then a star topology for linking assets deployed out in the field. Wi-SUN FAN operates in unlicensed spectrum; that is, the sections of the radio frequency spectrum not sold under licenses. The cellular mobile network operators are the most common licensed spectrum operators.

Application areas of WiSUN:

Smart City: Wi-SUN is a low-power IoT mesh network targeting smart-city operations. Its scalability, security, interoperability, and breadth of existing and emerging apps it supports enable users to increase cities’ sustainability and residents’ quality of life. Smart cities can leverage the existing wireless communications infrastructure provided by Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or street lighting networks to enable other applications, such as smart traffic signals, public transit signs, parking spaces, electric vehicle charging stations and more.

Smart Lighting: Wi-SUN technology is making day-to-day smart city applications for municipalities more efficient. Smart city street lighting is a key application area becoming a major financial contributor for municipalities as well as providing energy savings because the return on investment can be seen quickly.

Smart Utilities: Smart utility networks and smart cities have many common communications requirements and can be supported by  the same networking architecture.

WiSUN Field Application Network (FAN):

Wi-SUN FAN the latest Wi-SUN international wireless communication standard, which eliminates the communication costs associated with conventional LPWA (Low-Power Wide-Area) wireless standards. At the same time, Wi-SUN ensures superior reliability through multi-hop networks that automatically switches destinations after signal verification. As such, this communication technology is expected to see widespread use in large-scale mesh networks for smart cities and smart grids.

Furthermore, it also provides certification to Wi-Sun Enhanced Home Area Networks, an interoperable and scalable low power wireless standard for Home Area Networks, which supports communication between Home Energy Management Systems or HEMS and any HAN devices.

WiSUN MARKET PARTICIPATION:

The major strategies followed by the market participants are Partnerships. Based on the Analysis presented in the Cardinal matrix; Cisco Systems, Inc. is the major forerunners in the Wi-SUN Technology Market. Companies such as Toshiba Corporation, Analog Devices, Inc., Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. are some of the key innovators in the Market.