Out in Front: IOU on IOE

Alan Cameron

Here it comes right at ya, down the cable into your living room, over the radio waves into the coffee shop or airport and your car: the Internet of Everything (IOE).

The term connotes adding connectivity and intelligence to just about every tech device in use at home, office, or out on the street, to enable special functions, reporting, and command/control. From kitchen appliances to cars, it’s anything with “smart” in front of its name, tied to the Internet and interconnected to tech-ecosystems of software, services, data warehouses, and yet other smart devices, starting but certainly not ending with your phone, watch, tablet or PC.

Most semiconductor companies have fielded new processors aimed at IOE. Broadcom’s new chip, reported in this issue, folds GNSS into the digital cake mix. Market research predicts 220 billion connected devices in use by 2020, and market size in the trillions. Trillions.

The bandwidth to run this new ecosystem is truly staggering. Available spectrum just won’t do it, not in the way we’re using it. Far more precise timing of data packets shot through the cloud will be necessary.

Thus our cover story. GNSS — well, GPS so far — is tightly woven into the fabric of financial and security infrastructure because it furnishes micro- and nanosecond synchronization. Nanos ain’t where it’s at in another eyeblink more. Picoseconds will be the new standard.

GNSS as currently constituted cannot do picoseconds. Another technology or technologies will be required.

This is true on nearly every front, every sector in which GNSS has enabled so much that previously was inconceivable or just plain unconceived. We’re headed further in all those directions, and GNSS can’t get us there alone. Aided and abetted by other positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies, it can.

The magazine has long covered other PNT technologies, but starting in November you’ll see a whole lot more of this. Every PNT technology, in every issue, in some way. That’s my IOU. Because, after all, it’s a World of Everything.

Pink for a Cure

Our cover logo this month signals that North Coast Media (NCM) is doing something to help  make a difference. Because October is our company’s largest revenue month each year, our leadership team has  committed to donate a portion of the company’s October revenues to cancer research. In 2014, NCM donated $8,000  to this very worthy cause. The disease has touched the lives of nearly everyone on the NCM team; we’re very excited to be able to  do something that matters.