Instrumentation • Electronics
4Manufacturers of everything from cars to factory automation and domestic washing machines are finding that wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) communications technologies offer a number of benefits for manufacturers and
customers alike. Jon Severn reports on some of the latest developments.
How machine-to-machine communications benefit suppliers and customers
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or many years high-value products such as aero engines have been supplied on the basis of ‘sale of service’ rather than ‘sale of goods’ - by which it is meant that the customer pays an ongoing fee
for the use of an aero engine, while the supplier provides an engine and a full support service for the contracted period. Now the concept is spreading to cater for customers of lower-value products. The ‘sale of service’ model is a step beyond
conventional leasing, as the supplier can take responsibility for the operating costs as well as the capital cost. This means that the supplier needs detailed knowledge of how the products are being used. Furthermore, collecting diagnostic data can enable the supplier to schedule a service visit instead of having to respond in the event of a breakdown. Whatever those products may be, from industrial
robots and cars, to refrigerators and office printers, the supplier needs to collect the data without hindering the consumer’s use of the products, and at as low a cost as possible. Remote monitoring using machine-to-machine (M2M) communications is becoming increasingly popular for this task. Machine components such as programmable
logic controllers and industrial drives are often available with an Ethernet port, with the
manufacturers highlighting the benefits of remote communications via the factory’s local area network (LAN). However, factory IT managers do not always permit industrial equipment to be connected to the network, citing security concerns. Ethernet connections offer many advantages,
including providing access via the internet so a product can be monitored automatically - or by a service engineer, regardless of where the product and engineer are located. One way to provide an Ethernet connection without accessing a LAN is by using the same data communication technology found in mobile telephones, typically GSM (the Global System for Mobile communications), which is incorporated within the second-generation, 2G, mobile telephony standard, and is the standard still supported in 3G systems. GPS now has extensive coverage worldwide and support for it is likely to continue even after service providers have introduced 4G.
Market growth
Berg Insight, a firm of market analysts specialising in telecommunications, estimates that the number of cellular network connections worldwide used for M2M communication will grow from 47.7 million connections in 2008 to 187.1 million connections in 2014, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
Fig. 1. Eseye is working with Liberty Electric Vehicles to develop M2M-enabled features for cars such as this pure-electric E-Range, which is based on a Range Rover.
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