Viable Sensor Network Industrial Ecosystem

& Role of Zigbee/TinyOS

Technology Exchange 2005

Jim Schoenduve
Chipcon

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005

 Industrial Ecosystems?
• An industrial ecosystem is a community or
network of companies and other organizations in
a region who choose to interact by exchanging
and making use of by-products and/or energy in
a way that provides one or more of the following
benefits over traditional, non-linked operations:
– increased systemic energy efficiency leading to
reduced systemic energy use,
– increase in the amount and types of process outputs
that have market value.

(Gertler 1995, as cited by Lowe et al. 1997)

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005

 Industrial Ecosystems Viewpoints
• Perscriptive or Descriptive?
– Prescriptive
• The way things oughtta be!
– Descriptive
• The way things are now.

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005

 Chipcon’s Unique Perspective
TinyOS vs. Zigbee
Chipcon is agnostic!
TinyOS
TinyOS Zigbee
Zigbee

Chipcon
Chipcon
Defacto
DefactoRadio
Radio

Chipcon has a broad view of industry efforts; has over 5000 customers doing
chip level adaptation of various Chipcon devices.

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005

 The Industrial Ecosystem
• Prescriptive (The way things ought to be):
– A self sustaining ecosystem is when there is a
convergence in maturity of the following:
– Markets
» An economic imperative exists to deploy solutions
– Capital
» Sufficient capital is available to fund development and
deployment of solutions
– Technology
» Hardware and software maturity exists such that
solutions can be deployed to serve an economic
imperative
– Ideally, all three reach maturity simultaneously.
UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005
 TinyOS Descriptive View
(the way things are!)
• Markets
– Economic imperatives for deployment are being validated for
‘small’ networks
– ‘Huge’ sensor networks are not so prevalent as candidates for
possible deployments
• Capital Funding
– Academic and Government Sources
– Internal Corporate Funding
– Venture Capital Funding
• Technology
– Hardware availability accelerating.
– Software ‘infrastructure’ still in a very dynamic state of change

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005

 Zigbee Descriptive View
(the way things are!)
• Markets for Zigbee
– Existence of a ‘standard’ is causing exploration by
Fortune 100 corporate interests.
– Those owning huge sensor networks are exploring
Zigbee
• Capital
– Internal Corporate Funding
• Predominant Source of Funding
– Venture Capital Funding
• Too much to too few companies!
• Technology
– Hardware availability accelerating.
– Software ‘infrastructure’ just emerging now
UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005
 Threats to the Stability of the
Industrial Ecosystem for TinyOS/Zigbee
• Markets
– ‘Overhype’ may threaten reputation of the community.
– Economic imperatives for deployment for large
networks are still being assessed. (and have been
abandoned by some already.)
• Capital
– Academic funding in jeopardy?
– Will the time horizons of software and hardware
maturity match the time horizons of the VC
community?

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005

 Threats to the Stability of the Industrial
Ecosystem for TinyOS/Zigbee
• Hardware maturity on track (little threat)
– Hardware adaptation from other markets supporting
the Tiny/OS Zigbee effort
• The software systems are always the critical
path
– Software development is still a multi-year effort for
products designed for industrial product deployments.
– Will the ‘standards tube sock’ be sufficient to drive
adaptation of a common set of hardware and software
or will it fragment?

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005

 What to watch?
• Market hype…
– Let’s match expectations to reality
• Venture funding
– Watch inflows and breadth of companies
funded.
– Watch time horizon expectations
• Technology
– Consolidation or Fragmentation of Software?
– [will the tube sock standard fit enough applications?]

UC Berkeley Technology Exchange 2005