IoT Gateways Overview: Intel, ARM mbed, Eurotech and Nexcom

With the IoT industry getting much attention in recent times, the mode of connection of IoT devices has advanced from cellular and Wi-Fi to more complex wireless communication modules such as Wi-Max, NFC, ZigBee, etc. IoT gateways serve the important purpose of connecting such devices to the Internet irrespective of the radio/wired technology used by them. Gateways provide provisions for communication between either wireless interfaces utilizing ZigBee, Wireless HART, Wireless USB, Bluetooth, Body Area Network, MiWi, Wi-Fi Direct, NFC, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, etc. or hard-wired interfaces like USB, SPI, I2C, X-LINE. Apart from building a channel for exchange of information in the IoT ecosystem, gateways also have hardware and software level encryption to secure this communication channel.

Let's review some of the most popular IoT gateways!

Intel IoT Gateway Technology

Intel provides many hardware and software products such as the Intel processors, network controllers, and Intel IoT commercial kit that software developers can use to build their own IoT gateways and solutions. The solutions offered by Intel provide advanced scalability and manageability which aids its applications across a wide range of industries such as energy, retail, automotive, transportation, and retail.

The wide range of Intel processors provides robust applications in setting up gateways to power applications that require low-power computing to more complex and demanding applications. The Intel Quark Processors provide flexible, low-power and low-cost computing for integration of IoT devices. The next set of processors, the Intel Atom processors and the 6^th generation Intel Core processors, provide higher performance, superior graphics, and richer I/O integration with more flexibility, security, and manageability of the devices across the ecosystem. The Intel Xeon Family helps in building gateways for infrastructures with in-memory computing, real-time analytics, exceptional graphics and enhanced agility and security.

ARM mbed IoT Device Platform

The ARM mbed IoT Device Platform uses ARM microcontrollers to build nodes and cloud services with a high degree of interoperability. ARM uses its own mbed OS, mbed Device Server and mbed Community Ecosystem to build secure and efficient applications that are able to utilize the full potential of IoT. The common OS across all the IoT components helps to solve the fragmentation issue. Besides this, ARM aims to make its applications compatible with future developments as it supports all the open standards for connectivity and device management. The ARM-Cortex-M-based MCU provides low power consumption and automatic power management in an energy-constrained environment.

The mbed OS provides a C++ Application framework that eliminates the low-level work associated with MCU code development. Similar to its Intel counterpart, the ARM platform supports BLE, cellular, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, ZigBee and most other connectivity protocols. The platform is compatible with the ARM Cortex-M based hardware platforms from almost all MCU vendors.

Eurotech

Eurotech provides a number of M2M/IoT gateways suited for a wide range of applications. Starting with the ReliaGATE 10-11 series and ReliaGATE 10-05 series, which serve as a low-power gateway for light industrial or home-based applications, Eurotech also serves more complex demands with its ReliaGATE series of 20-11 which has extended temperature operation, broader range of communication interface, and is compatible with Eurotech’s Everyware Device Cloud (EDC). Eurotech also distributes DynaGATE 15-10 which is primarily focused on IoT applications in the transportation industry.

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Nexcom

IoT gateways by Nexcom are based on Intel Quark processors to provide flexible connection amongst the different sensor nodes and devices in an ecosystem. With intelligent Big Data analysis and data-driven decision making, Nexcom IoT gateways are perfect for critical industrial applications which rely heavily on data and real-time computing. Nexcom gateways provide flexibility in their configuration with various modules and cloud servers through a variety of communication protocols as the user demands.

And what IoT gateways have you used / are you going to use on your IoT development project? Please share as a comment below or send us a tweet to @Intersog.