WI-FI & Internet of
Things
Ajay Malik
SVP Engineering & Products, Meru Networks, Inc.
April 2015
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
Overview
IoT is an intelligent and invisible network of things that
communicate, directly or indirectly, with each other or with
the Internet. IoT-enabled products employ embedded
technology that allows them to sense as well as be
programmed and controlled.
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Challenges
Complexity of Environment
Sensing and Connecting to the Cloud
Security
Protecting privacy and preventing malicious
Scalability
Integration across vertical systems
Power Mgmt
Days to years of battery life
Rapid Evolution
Unknown devices. Unknown applications. Unknown use cases
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Complexity of Environment
Sensing & Connecting to the Cloud
Sensing Technologies
Connectivity Technologies
• Biosensing
• Pressure/Humidity/Temperature
• Gas/Chemical
• Presence/Proximity/Location
• Motion/Dwell Time
• Current/Power
• and more…
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee
• loWPAN
• EtherCAT
• GPS
• NFC
• RFID, Sub-1GHz,
• and more…
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Security
Protecting privacy and preventing malicious
Too many devices
• Incredible number of devices - Smartphones, sensors, fitness bands, vending
machines, thermostats, weather stations, Internet cameras etc.
• Unknown security of the device’s firmware and operating system
There is no border
• Too many cloud apps
• Too many data centers
• Too many Web APIs
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Scalability
Integration across vertical systems
Not limited to interesting demos
• Large scale of devices has to be supported
• Integration has to happened across vertical systems across many layers
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Power Mgmt
Days to years of battery life
Stretching battery life or harvesting power
• Low power usage technologies
• Harvesting power using solar, wind, thermal, and other energy mechanisms
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Rapid Evolution
Lot of unknown
Creation of IoT devices has just started
• Unknown Applications
• Unknown Devices
• Unknown Use cases
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Wi-Fi & IoT
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Wi-Fi for IoT Environment Complexity & Scale
• Environment Complexity
– Tolerates high degree of interference
– Reliable
• Scale
– Theoretically, one Wi-Fi access point can handle up to 255 connected
devices per radio.
– Performance is a function of total network traffic
• Rapid Evolution
– Interoperability & Standards based
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Wi-Fi for IoT Security
• SDN Enablement of Wi-Fi
– Security at the network entry point
• IoT device traffic can be scanned and secured at the network entry point.
• Deep packet inspection and decision making for incoming and outgoing packets
– Policy management
• Policy based on device, user, application, location, time or network.
– Virtual network extending to the end Device
• Policy based on device, user, application, location, time or network.
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Wi-Fi for IoT Power Mgmt
• Low power Wi-Fi
– Low power Wi-Fi Chipsets for existing Wi-Fi standards
– Emerging standards using sub-1GHz band (802.11ah)
• No battery Wi-Fi
– Emerging innovative Backscatter Wi-Fi
© Copyright 2015. Meru Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Meru Networks –
Connecting People,
Cloud and Things
merunetworks.com
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