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3.4 Brownfield IoT: Technologies for Retrofitting 171
3.4 Brownfield IoT: Technologies for Retrofitting
The Internet of Things aims to be a disruptive technology in many ways and
may change how future industry will work. However, enabling technologies
like RFID or Wireless Sensor Networks are in place, it is often hindered by the
fact that huge investments are needed and the local value is considered too low
for adoption. The creation of a global network of various ubiquitous networks
is one of the driving technological vision behind the Internet of Things. The
economical vision of creating domain-and network-wide business fields and
usage scenarios by pervasive information networking uses the “Internet” both
as a technical and economical analogon. On one hand, as the global IP-based
network that connects over 5 billion devices of different networks, and on the
other the resulting economic growth and business cases. The interesting fact
is, however, that a lot of the enabling technology of the Internet of Things is
made to work in a very resource efficient way that hinders such efforts. Novel
applications are often enabled only by proprietary technology that uses local
optimizations and does not primarily consider inter-networking aspects.
Industrial infrastructures are often older that the networks that formed
the initial Internet. They can by no means be considered a green field, but
consists of a large installed base with machinery that has lifetimes of up to
40 years. Thus many of the applications of IoT technology (as depicted in
Figure 3.7) that we consider to have high potential value involve retrofitting
Fig. 3.7 High value use cases for IoT retrofitting.