Qual è il ruolo dello smart gateway?

Smart gateway , as a new term, plays a very important role in the coming era of the Internet of Things. It will become the link between the sensing network and the traditional communication network. As a gateway device, smart gateways can realize protocol conversion between sensing networks and communication networks, as well as different types of sensing networks, and can achieve both wide-area interconnection and local-area interconnection.

In the Internet, a gateway is an intermediate device that connects an intranet to other networks on the Internet, also called a “router.” In the architecture of the Internet of Things, a gateway is needed between two different networks, the perception layer and the network layer. The intermediate device is the “intelligent gateway”.

Gateways and routers are similar in that they can both be used to regulate traffic between two or more independent networks. However, a router is used to connect two similar types of networks, and a gateway is used to connect two different networks. Because of this logic, a router may be considered a gateway, but a gateway is not always considered a router. Routers are the most common gateway used to connect a home or business network to the Internet.

Compared with the Internet era, the communication protocols of the Internet of Things have added some diversified modes, especially the fragmentation of things has entered a serious state. However, the importance of gateways has also begun to highlight. If smart gateways can integrate many The information collected from different objects is comprehensively integrated and then smoothly transmitted to the next level. Only in this way can the information be ensured to be transmitted in an orderly manner between each part.

Smart gateway functions

Broad access capabilities

There are currently many technical standards for short-range communications. Common WSNs (wireless sensor network) technologies include Lonworks, ZigBee, 6LowPAN, RUBEE, etc. Various technologies are mainly developed for a certain application, and there is a lack of compatibility and system planning between them. At present, standardization work for smart gateways has been carried out at home and abroad, such as 3GPP and sensor working groups, to achieve the interconnection and interoperability of various communication technology standards.

management ability

Powerful management capabilities are essential for any large network. First, the gateway must be managed, such as registration management, rights management, status supervision, etc. The gateway implements the management of nodes in the subnet, such as obtaining the node’s identity, status, attributes, energy, etc., and remotely realizing wake-up, control, diagnosis, upgrade, and maintenance. Because the technical standards of subnets are different and the complexity of the protocols is different, the management capabilities of the gateways are different. A modular intelligent gateway method is proposed to manage different sensing networks and different applications, ensuring that unified management interface technology can be used to uniformly manage peripheral network nodes.

Protocol conversion capability

Conversione del protocollo da reti di rilevamento diverse a reti di accesso, incapsulando uniformemente i dati nel formato standard del livello inferiore, assicurando che i protocolli di reti di rilevamento diverse possano essere convertiti in dati e segnalazioni unificate; parsing dei pacchetti di dati inviati dal livello superiore in segnalazioni di rilevamento e istruzioni di controllo che possono essere riconosciute dai protocolli del livello.

The importance of smart gateways

All networks have a boundary that limits communication to devices directly connected to it. Therefore, if the network wants to communicate with devices, nodes, or networks outside of this boundary, then they need the functionality of a gateway. A gateway is often referred to as a combination router and modem. In our future Internet of Things era, smart gateways will play a very important role and a very important part, and they will also play an important role as a transmission link between the sensing network and the traditional communication network. , which is also a network path for storing information, and its application scope will be wider.