Since the 1980s, telemetry has become ubiquitous. It is expected to be able to undertake a wide range of tasks, from monitoring pumping stations and vending machines to the remote monitoring of ticketing equipment and all manner of unattended devices.
Machine to Machine – or M2M as it is more commonly known – is responsible for more modem activity in the 21st Century than even personal computers. Think back to when connecting to the internet (or BBS systems before that) required the squawk and burbles of the modem over the PSTN line. Today, cable and ADSL modems have replaced much of this activity for personal and business computing use. Not only that, today’s personal computers come equipped with Wireless LAN (802.11b, a and g) to make connectivity even easier for the user. Gateways in the home allow portable, wire free connections where once the user was tethered by a modem cable.
But whilst the pc’s operating system contains all of the stacks and control required for connection to the internet, our lowly embedded microprocessors do not – and, in most cases, simply cannot accommodate them. Do we throw more computing power at our meters, telemetry systems and so on to achieve connectivity? This has held back connectivity developments for some time, but there is a change taking place in communications devices which is breaking down these barriers for system designers.
