What is an IoT gateway?

What is an IoT gateway What are the functions of an IoT gateway

　　 IoT gateways will also become an important link for connectivity. As a gateway device, in addition to being responsible for the protocol conversion between different types of perception networks, the IoT gateway can integrate the information collected by different things and transmit it to the next level, so that the information can be Transmission between the various parts. The IoT gateway can realize protocol conversion between perception networks and communication networks, as well as different types of perception networks; it can realize wide-area interconnection as well as local-area interconnection.

　　 The gateway plays a very important core role in the system. What are the types of gateways? 

　　 Let’s also briefly talk about it here:

 　　 Wireless to wireless: WiFi to 433MHz, infrared, ZigBee (common at home) 

　　GPRS (2G, 3G, 4G) to 433MHz, infrared, ZigBee (common in industry) 

　　Wireless to wired: WiFi to RS485, RS232, CAN (mostly industrial) 

　　 Wired to wireless: Ethernet to 433MHz, infrared, ZigBee (common in home) 

　　 Wired to wired: Ethernet to RS485, RS232, CAN (industrial mostly 

　　The role of IoT gateway 

　　 Now that you know what a gateway is, you might be wondering what is the benefit of taking extra steps between the sensor/device and the cloud. 

 　　 Battery Life 

　　 If the sensor/device is located in a remote area, a remote connection may be required, such as a satellite connection to talk to the cloud. As mentioned here, a longer range usually means increased power consumption (and cost); this can be a problem for small sensors/devices with limited battery life.

 　　 IoT gateway

　　 If the sensor can last for years, instead of months or weeks. By using an elevated gateway installed on the periphery or near the top of the barn, the sensor/device only needs to send data to the gateway for a short distance, and the gateway can transmit the data back to the cloud through a single higher bandwidth connection.

 　　Gateway allows sensors/devices to communicate within a short distance, thereby improving battery life.

 　　Different protocol conversion 

　　 A complete IoT application may involve many different kinds of sensors and devices. To use smart agriculture again, you may need sensors for temperature, humidity and sunlight, as well as equipment such as automatic irrigation and fertilizer systems. 

　　All different sensors and devices can use different transmission protocols (basically the rules and formats for transmitting information). Protocols include LPWAN, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, etc.

 　　The gateway can communicate with sensors/devices through different protocols, and then convert the data into a standard protocol (such as MQTT) to send to the cloud. 

　　 unfiltered data 

　　Sometimes, sensors/devices can generate so much data, which is a situation where the data overwhelms the system or the transmission and storage costs are extremely high. Usually in this case, only a small part of the data is actually valuable. For example, security cameras do not need to send video data of empty corridors.

 　　The gateway can preprocess and filter data generated by sensors/devices to reduce transmission, processing and storage requirements.

 　　 high latency 

　　Time may be critical for some IoT applications; sensors/devices cannot transmit data to the cloud and wait for a response before taking action. This is true for life or death situations in the medical field or fast-moving objects such as cars. 

　　 By processing the data on the gateway and issuing commands locally, higher delays can be avoided. However, many sensors/devices in IoT applications are too small and the battery is too low for processing.

　　 Gateways can reduce the latency of time-critical applications by performing processing on the gateway itself instead of in the cloud.

 　　 Safety

　　 Every sensor/device connected to the Internet is easily hacked. The hijacked sensor/device is broken. Not just for the owners, but for everyone.

　　 The gateway reduces the number of sensors/devices connected to the Internet because the sensors/devices are only connected to the gateway. However, this makes the gateway itself the target and the first line of defense. This is why security needs to be a priority for any gateway.