Intensive Data Monitoring and Analysis using IoT

Industry 4.0 has been a hot topic from the time when it was first introduced, and which primarily focuses on the automation of factories and the implementation of IoT in industries. It enables industrial advancements with the help of advanced computing, analytics, low cost sensing, and new levels of connectivity enabled through the Internet. Some of the technologies supporting this revolution are cloud services, big data analytics, and pervasive, intelligent, sensing technologies. The significant benefits of using intelligent sensing technology in industries are accuracy and consistency, which enable functions such as picking, placing, labeling, and printing to be performed at higher production rates, leading to low wastage, minimal down time, and better quality control. These capabilities have made industrial smart sensors capable of more complex data processing enabled within the sensor unit while being independent of PLC. Given these abilities, it is quite certain that the manufacturing industry majorly depends on smart sensor devices in ensuring the accuracy and efficiency of the source data, and eventually will hinge on the reliability of the information for the process chain. Though intelligent sensors are indispensable in Industry 4.0, there still exist obstacles for sensors to be widely adopted in the production environment. These days, two trends are extremely popular in researching and developing sensors. First is developing integrated sensors, which is inclined to supplying an advanced level of Information by directly estimating the sensed data. Second is the augmentation of multisensory systems, which allows huge quantities of data to be acquired in the system. With the integration of microcontroller and other electronic components, industrial smart sensors are proficient in performing significant functions such as data conversion, bi-directional communication, and taking decisions in an industrial set up. Nevertheless, these microprocessors are empowered with the IoT-enabled chipset for faster communication between the sensor devices and the control systems. There have been several developments in these chipsets, and one of it is the integration of intelligent sensors and other transduction essentials composed in one silicon chip; the broad system is called System-on-Chip (SoC). Some of the advantages of using System-on-Chip enabled industrial smart sensors include reduced costs of bulk connectors and cables, better signal to noise ratio, costs improvement, self-calibration, system reliability and multi-sensing.