What is an IoT gateway? What are the functions?

IoT Gateway as a new term will play a very important role in the future era of IoT. It will become the link between the sensing network and the traditional communication network. As a gateway device, IoT gateway is able to complete the protocol transformation between sensing network and communication network as well as between different types of sensing networks.

Gateway can complete both wide-area interconnection, but also can complete the local area network interconnection, with device handling function. Operators can handle the underlying sensing nodes, understand the relevant information of each node, through the Internet of Things gateway device to complete long-distance control.

This part emphasizes a key point, that is, the IoT gateway to complete the interconnection of the sensing network and the communication network, but there are many different protocols in the sensing network, such as LonWorks, ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, rubee, etc. to complete this kind of Internet, it is necessary for the gateway to have the ability to transform the protocol. Together, the gateway has two key points to complete the wide area interconnection. When WAN is not available, gateways can often accomplish LAN interconnection, i.e., interaction and collaboration between proximals.

lora gateway

I. Wide range of access capabilities

Now, there are many skill specifications for short-range communication, only LonWorks, ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, rubee, and other commonly used wireless sensor network skills, a variety of skills are mainly developed for a particular application, the lack of compatibility and system planning. Now, domestic and foreign has now carried out the standardization of the Internet of Things gateway operations, such as 3GPP, sensor operating group, in order to complete the interconnection of various communication skills specifications.

II. Processability

Strong processing capabilities are essential for any large network. First of all, the gateway needs to be handled, such as registration processing, permission processing, state supervision and so on. The gateway completes the processing of nodes in the subnet, such as obtaining the node's identification, status, characteristics, energy, etc., as well as the long-distance completion of waking up, manipulation, confirming diagnosis, upgrading and protection because of the different skill specifications and protocol complexity of the subnetwork, and the gateway has different processing functions. According to the modular gateway of the Internet of Things to handle different perception network, different applications, to ensure the use of consistent processing interface skills to handle the terminal network nodes.

III. Protocol transformation ability

The protocol transformation of different perception network to access network, the consistent encapsulation of low specification pattern data, to ensure that the protocols of different perception networks can become consistent data and signaling; the data packets announced by the upper layer will be analyzed into the signaling and control commands that can be recognized by the perception layer protocol.

Summary of these basic gateway talent is no problem, but one of the key points about the IoT gateway is that the gateway itself is the only entrance and exit channel to complete the perception layer and communication layer. The outside only needs to deal with the gateway, which is used to schedule and manipulate the various types of sensing devices accessed and registered below.

Therefore, the gateway has the key ability similar to the API gateway, that is, a variety of sensing devices in the sensing layer to provide different types of protocols for access and adaptation, together with the protocol access can be transformed into a standardized interface protocols and communication layer interaction. On the real-time interface, it can choose a similar HTTP

rest interface, on the audio integration, it can choose a similar specification mqtt audio, etc., which is often said when we talk about the smart home. IoT gateway is more concerned with the hardware layer drvier

API registration and access, including follow-up processing.

Generally speaking, the IoT gateway will provide hardware devices in the architecture and realization process to achieve protocol conversion, routing, forwarding, automatic registration and handling, and North-South integration interface capabilities. This gateway is usually a device arranged at the LAN end. For the entire cloud architecture, only the gateway device and the cloud can interact.

The final landing of edge computing can be realized in the IoT gateway layer, that is, to further improve the IoT gateway storage and accounting capabilities. On the one hand, in the gateway layer to realize the local collection of data after the automatic collection, secondary processing after the collection of uploading to the cloud. On the other hand, the key accounting rules and logic of the cloud are scattered to the gateway layer to support the localized accounting of the gateway layer. This is also a key extension of the gateway layer function.