IoT: Wi-Fi, Ethernet and cellular protocols dominate in Libelium survey

Wi-Fi, Ethernet and cellular protocols are currently the most popular means of connectivity for Internet of Things (IoT) projects, followed by LoRaWAN, according to a survey conducted by Libelium, which focused on the main challenges, concerns and barriers faced while developing technological projects related with the IoT.

The full breakdown was as follows:

A large majority of respondents (78.70 per cent) indicated that choosing the connectivity between data capture devices (e.g. sensors) and the IoT project’s data storage cloud platform is one of the most difficult decisions that has to be made when planning and implementing an IoT project. However, 76.8 per cent of respondents said that they knew the different connectivity options in sufficient detail to be able to choose the option(s) that are most suitable for each project.

In addition, 86 per cent said that they required more accurate sensors to obtain reliable data, but somewhat confusingly, 82 per cent said that durability is more important than accuracy when it comes to devices.

Respondents’ top five concerns were connectivity, integration of hardware devices, interoperability between platforms, security and total cost. While 91.4 per cent said that their projects use sensors, only 3.6 per cent reported the use of gateways. 73 per cent said that they prefer sensors to be pre-programmed or to be easy to configure, compared with the 27 per cent who said that they preferred them to be unprogrammed because their project has one or more programmers.