Sensors are like human eyes, ears, mouth and nose, but they are more than just human senses, they can even collect more useful information. Since this is the case, it can be said that these sensors are the foundation of the whole IoT system, and it is because of the sensors that the IoT system has content to pass to the “brain”.
In the past, sensors were more often used in industry. But as time goes by, it has slowly come into our lives.
Sensor is the cornerstone of IoT development
With the official commercial license of 5G issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on June 6, the arrival of 5G seems to push the Internet of Things to a windy place, and what are the small wings of the Internet of Things, perhaps different people have different answers, and sensors are undoubtedly one of the important options.
IoT Hierarchy
From the IoT hierarchy diagram, we can see that IoT is mainly composed of four parts: sensing layer, network layer, support layer and application layer. There is a common saying that the lower layer foundation determines the upper layer architecture. As one of the important components of the perception layer of IoT, the sensor, as the foundation of the whole IoT, is self-evidently important. The massive data information in the IoT system comes from the end device, and the end device data source can be attributed to the sensor, the sensor gives everything “sensory” function, such as humans rely on vision, hearing, smell, touch perception of the surrounding environment, the same object through a variety of sensors can also perceive the surrounding environment. And more accurate than human perception, perception of a wider range. For example, humans can not accurately perceive the specific temperature value of an object through the sense of touch, nor can they perceive thousands of high temperatures, nor can they identify subtle temperature changes, but sensors can. It can be said that the sensor is the “Internet of Everything” era between objects and objects to communicate the “language”.
The role of sensors in the Internet of Things industry
The Internet of Things is a huge network formed by combining various information sensing devices and the Internet, which is the upgrade of the Internet and the core of the information age. The development of the Internet of Things needs intelligent perception, identification and communication and other technical support, and the key to perception is the sensor and related technologies, it is no exaggeration to say that without the progress of the sensor, there is no prosperity of the Internet of Things. With the development of the Internet of Things, the sensor industry will also usher in an explosion. Sensors are the key components of the Internet of Things to collect data and play an indispensable role.
As the world begins to step into the information era of high-speed development, the first thing to solve in the process of acquiring and processing information is to obtain reliable and accurate information, and sensors are the main means and ways to obtain information. For example, in the era of Industry 4.0, sensors should be used to monitor and control the parameters of the production process so that the equipment can maintain normal working condition; in the field of smart home, sensors are the basis for realizing the interaction between users and home individual products (lights, TV, refrigerator, stereo, etc.); in driverless, the collection and processing of traffic and environmental data through sensors are needed so as to ensure the safety of the car on the road Driving …… can be no exaggeration to say that the future of the Internet of Things how big the market, the sensor can be as big.
With the increase in demand for the Internet of Things, the current domestic sensors show a high-speed growth trend. According to statistics, is expected to increase to 593.7 billion yuan by 2021, the next five years China’s sensor industry compound annual growth rate of about 30%, much higher than the global average level.
Sensor development history
The Internet of Things has been proposed since now for more than two decades, but the scale of sensor deployment has not been popular, resulting in insufficient physical layer, resulting in insufficient data, which restricts the development of the industry from the source. Sensor deployment as IoT infrastructure, years ago, a country proposed a trillion sensor revolution, aimed at promoting the use of 1 trillion sensors per year in social infrastructure and public services, and is expected to embed 100 trillion sensors into various places after 2030. China began to get involved in the sensor manufacturing industry as early as the 1960s, has experienced years of development, can be broadly divided into three generations: the first generation: is a structural sensor, which uses changes in structural parameters to sense and transform signals.
The second generation: the sensor is the 1970s began to develop a solid sensor, this sensor consists of semiconductors, dielectrics, magnetic materials and other solid components, is the use of certain characteristics of materials made.
The third generation: sensors are just developed in the 1980s smart sensors. The so-called intelligent sensor refers to its external information has a certain detection, self-diagnosis, data processing and self-adaptive capabilities, with high accuracy, low cost, functional diversity, automation and other characteristics, is a product of the combination of microcomputer technology and detection technology.
Intelligent sensors with information acquisition, information processing, information exchange, information storage functions of multi-component integrated circuits, is a collection of sensing chips, communication chips, microprocessors, drivers, software algorithms equal to the integration of system-level products. In the Internet of Things, an era of intelligent sensing, intelligent sensors are one of the key technologies to achieve the Internet of Things. In many IoT scenarios, sensors have the characteristics of intelligent sensors, which will play a huge role in industry, agriculture, medical care, transportation and other fields, and in the future sensor market, the proportion of intelligent sensors will become larger and larger.
The development of the Internet of Things era for the sensor requirements
Since its birth in the 1860s, the history of sensors has been more than 150 years, in the era of mobile Internet, the popularity of cell phones has promoted the great development of sensors, but also decided that many types of sensors are designed for cell phones. The “things” of the Internet of Things era are very different from cell phones in terms of sensing and connectivity needs, so they also put forward more and higher requirements for sensing technology. To sum up, sensors are evolving towards high precision, miniaturization, low power consumption and intelligence.
1、High precision and high quality
If the data information collected by the sensor is wrong, then it is equivalent to the error from the source, and all the data transmission, analysis and application will be meaningless later, so the accuracy and quality of the sensor is an important baseline to guarantee the vision of the Internet of Things. Imagine if the accuracy and quality of a smart Internet-connected car sensor is not up to standard, which means that the system can not make the right decision in the milliseconds of the accident, thus seriously threatening the safety of the driver.
2、Miniaturization
With the development of smartphone-centric mobile devices to multi-functional, high-performance, requiring a greater number of components within the circuit board, smaller size. Therefore, sensors are gradually using integrated technology to achieve high performance and miniaturization. Integrated temperature sensors, integrated pressure sensors, etc. have long been widely used, and more integrated sensors will be developed in the future.
3、Low power consumption
Cell phone microblogging, WeChat, video, games, are the big power consumers, we have long been accustomed to the daily charging, out of the door rechargeable batteries do not leave the body of the day, but you can imagine if smoke alarms, smart cameras and other connected devices also need to change the battery every day will be what a crappy scenario? Unlike cell phones, many IoT devices are located in areas that people do not often contact, so there are extreme requirements for power consumption, which determines the power consumption of the sensor should also be very low, otherwise the operating costs are too high.
4、Intelligence
With the proliferation of connected devices, the data is exploding, the centralized cloud has been “overwhelmed”, more importantly, for smart manufacturing or intelligent transportation and other application scenarios, the delay in cloud analysis will make the value of data show a “cliff” down, so the edge of intelligence began to rise. Thus, edge intelligence began to emerge.
The sensor is a good edge node, with embedded technology to integrate the sensor and microprocessor into one, so that it becomes an intelligent data terminal device with environmental awareness, data processing, intelligent control and data communication functions, which is the so-called intelligent sensors. Such sensors have self-learning, self-diagnosis and self-compensation capabilities, compound sensing capabilities and flexible communication capabilities. In this way, the data fed back to the IoT system by the sensor in sensing the physical world will be more accurate and comprehensive to achieve the purpose of accurate sensing.
The demand for smart sensors is skyrocketing in five major areas
Smart sensors have high accuracy, low cost, functional diversity, automation and other characteristics, it is a kind of sensor with information processing functions, is the integration of sensors and microprocessor combination of products. In many IoT scenarios sensors have the characteristics of intelligent sensors, the future of the Internet of Things era, intelligent sensors will be the mainstream of the market.
The future of the most promising IoT scenarios, smart industry, smart home, smart medical, smart cars, smart agriculture, etc. is the most likely to be popular in the future of the Internet of things.
1、Intelligent industrial sensors are the basis for the realization of Industry 4.0
As we all know, Industry 4.0 has become part of the national strategy, smart manufacturing is the key to national industrial change, and the role of smart industrial sensors in manufacturing is becoming more and more important. Industrial sensors are characterized by high performance indicators and accuracy requirements, which do not allow for errors in data collection and processing. Unlike traditional industrial sensors, smart industrial sensors will be used in smart manufacturing, which puts forward more demanding requirements in terms of accuracy, stability and impact resistance.
In the future, the demand for intelligent industrial sensors based on Industry 4.0 will increase significantly, and this is the biggest opportunity point for industrial sensor manufacturers.
2, Smart home to these sensors bring growth space
A major feature of the smart home is to achieve control of household items, with the development of the Internet of Things, more and more sensors will be used in home appliances, such as washing machines, TVs, refrigerators, lighting, air conditioners, hoods, etc., the original products without sensors will become the main battlefield for sensors due to the popularity of smart home.
Sensors will be standard for smart home products, for example, pressure sensors can be used in washing machines to monitor the amount of foam; photoelectric sensors for light bulbs to achieve control of lighting; electromagnetic sensors used in dishwashers to achieve the movement of the spray arm, etc., and flow sensors, intelligent gas sensors, etc. are of great use.
3, Intelligent medical needs a variety of intelligent sensors
Smart medical is the use of Internet of Things technology to achieve interaction between patients and medical personnel and medical equipment, the core part of its work is the collection, storage, transmission and processing of patient information. In the process of image transmission as well as massive data calculation and processing, sensors with intelligent processing functions are needed in each of them, such as MEMS pressure sensors for measuring patients’ blood pressure, thermoelectric sensors for studying sleep asphyxia, and temperature sensors for monitoring and measuring body temperature on the body surface.
With the development of the Internet of Things technology, wireless medical sensors are gradually developing in the direction of intelligence, miniaturization and low power consumption, and the application of sensors in the field of intelligent medicine will become more and more widespread. According to foreign media reports, scientists have studied a new type of sensor that can be used to diagnose eye trauma, which determines the severity of eye trauma based on the measurement of the concentration of vitamin C contained in human tears. Scientists have recently researched a swallowable heart rate sensor that is only the size of a capsule, which can be swallowed by patients to measure their vital signs and other data and transmit the information to a receiver for remote monitoring by doctors.
With the progress of technology, the application of intelligent medical sensor types will be more and more, but their commonality is a major characteristic of intelligent sensors.
4, Intelligent sensors to help the car’s intelligence
Although many domestic cars realize some basic networking functions, they are not really intelligent cars. With the development of AI and IoT technology, smart cars will become the mainstream in the future. Smart car is a comprehensive system integrating environmental perception, multi-level assisted driving and other functions. One of its major features is that it can realize networked control, and the key to control and operation is inseparable from intelligent sensors, and the popularity of smart cars will bring an increase in intelligent sensors.
Inside the smart car, the future application of the most intelligent sensors will be the air flow sensor, odometer sensor, oil sensor, brake pressure sensor, position sensor and collision sensor.
5, Intelligent agriculture sensor market prospects
Intelligent agriculture is the key to building China into an agricultural powerhouse, and in the future of agricultural production, many types of IoT sensors and related technologies are needed. The composition of the agricultural Internet of Things includes intelligent water quality sensors, wireless sensor networks, wireless communications, etc. Together they form a complete intelligent agricultural system, and sensors are the first step to achieve these.
IoT agriculture is characterized by information technology based on the collection of data and quantitative analysis and intelligent decision making through sensors in the agricultural production process. The environment of agricultural production is very complex and different scenarios require different sensors, such as air temperature, humidity, light intensity, carbon dioxide concentration, etc. The collection of these data requires the use of corresponding intelligent agricultural sensors.
Sensors play an increasingly important role in the field of science and technology, industrial and agricultural production, as well as in daily life. Human society’s increasingly high demand for sensors is a strong impetus for the development of sensor technology, while the rapid progress of modern technology provides a strong backbone for its development.
In the Internet of Things strategy, the urgent need for sensor localization, the sensor industry’s domestic leaders are more supported by the government; as the key to the Internet of Things, sensors become the advantageous link of the entire industry chain, but also represents the core competitiveness of enterprises.
