Digital World meet the Physical World
There is an increasing bridge between the digital and physical worlds. Its components are 3D and digital twin technology. Digital twins are among the leading technology trends, especially in the industrial sector.
It is without dispute that digital twins adds value to any industry by accelerating time to market, streamlining processes, lowering maintenance costs, boosting user engagement, and integrating information technologies.
The market for digital twins was valued at USD 3.1 billion in 2020 and is predicted to increase rapidly in the years to come. The COVID-19 pandemic epidemic altered how production and maintenance were perceived, which sped up the adoption of digital twins.
It is also crucial to comprehend what the effects of digital twin implementations might or might not be, depending on the nature of the sector in which they are used. For example, they open up possibilities for testing and simulating the outcome of the behaviour of an industrial plant.
IoT becomes the glue that holds the world together
This trend quite literally ties all of the others together. It’s the network of connected sensors, devices, and infrastructure that gathers the data we need to build the metaverse, create digital twins, train intelligent machines, and design new ways of enabling digital trust.
This is what is known as the Internet of Things (IoT), and its impact on our lives will continue to be felt strongly in 2023.
The focus will continue to grow on enabling more useful and complex machine-to-machine interactions.
Today, we are used to filling our homes with smart gadgets and appliances and our workspaces with smart tools and applications. But we often run into problems when machines have difficulty communicating due to different platforms and operating systems.
In 2023, we will see further work on the development of global standards and protocols that devices can use to talk to each other. This means they will work more effectively and be capable of assisting us with a broader range of tasks.
Global spending on the Metaverse is expected to reach $5 trillion by 2030. However I suspect in 2023, the direction of the Metaverse will be determined. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies will continue to develop and be used as part of the move towards digital twins and metaverse platforms will become the conduit to join these systems together.
Goodbye 3G hello 5G
EE was the first UK mobile operator to set a date for the retirement of its 3G services, with customers set to be phased off the third-generation mobile technology by 2023.
These 3G retirement plans comes amid low demand for the connectivity, with 3G representing less than 2% of data traffic over its EE network, according to BT, which said that the spectrum will be repurposed to enhance 5G capacity. The sunsetting of 3G services will also allow BT to focus on developing opportunities such as Open Radio Access Network (RAN).
Finally the United Kingdoms Telecom operators has started to embrace IoT with the introduction of NB-IoT and LTE-M ( sometimes referred to at Cat-M1). Vodaphone have rolled out NB-IoT almost nation wide according to coverage maps and Telefonica O2 are close behind with LTE-M, so I thought it might be useful to explain the difference between the two when it come to use with IoT.
Both technologies are 3GPP standardised technologies designed to support a massive IoT strategy which is the deployment of a huge amount of low-complexity devices that do not need to communicate with high frequency.
High Performance and low transmission latency are not a requirement. The two technologies are complimentary to each other and address different use cases based on the strength of the capabilities of the two technologies.
They do however both have some common use cases:
- Inexpensive.
- Can run for a decade or more using only battery power.
- Can connect to cellular networks even if there are hundreds of devices like it nearby.
- Can be reached in remote rural locations, inside buildings, or underground.
LTE-M and NB-IoT technologies both provide low bandwidth cellular communication but there are important differences to decide when choosing the right cellular protocol for your industrial IoT or Wearable applications.
However many solutions exist in the market that only use 2G and 3G data connectivity to expect to see a rush of companies trying to develop LTE-M and NB-IoT solutions in 2023.
We are really looking forward to what 2023 holds for Ignys and we really can’t wait to see what are customers are up to.
If you want to know more about any of the technologies I have mentioned please contact us today for a no obligation chat.