1. Last Mile Communication for M2M/IoT Applications in Smart Cities
2. Common Service Layer Requirements in ICT Architecture for Smart Infrastructure
3. Comprehensive ICT Reference Architecture for Smart Cities/Infrastructure

This report is an effort by the members of the Smart Infrastructure Panel under Electronics & Information Technology Division Council of Bureau of Indian Standards, the National Standards Body of India to understand the Standardization activities around the globe in context of Smart Cities & Smart Infrastructure; Smart City Stakeholders, Market & Use Cases; and Identify the Gap Areas in Standardization that are critical to India as a Nation.

This pre-standardization study report is aimed at wider dissemination of the knowledge and concerns as well as to help proceed with Standard Development Activities in the respective Areas.

This Unified Secure & Resilient Framework & Architecture, if implemented in Indian Smart Cities, shall enable optimization of the ICT infrastructure and help bring down the Total Cost of Ownership in terms of capital and recurring expenditure in the upcoming smart cities deployments.

The BIS Study Report on Unified Secure & Resilient Framework & Architecture was released on the occasion of the World Standards Day by Hon’ble Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Shri Ram Vilas Paswan.

The outcome of the study resulted in evolution of a new Architecture Model – 

Classic Saucer Champagne Glass Architecture

The evolved ‘Comprehensively Unified ICT Architecture’ has been modelled as a “Classic Saucer Champagne Glass” with a wide Flat Bottom Base depicting the multitude of Field Devices & sensors etc. The Saucer Shaped Bowl on the Top, depicting being filled with an ever-increasing spectrum of City Applications and Citizens’ Services. The Long Stem depicts all the Common Layers viz.: the Unified Last Mile Communication, Common Standardized Gateways (application or Vertical Agnostic), the Common Service layer representing the Common Service Functions in the Gateways, as well as, in the Cloud… and the Smart City Middleware & City Data Reservoir in the Cloud.

It is the “Long Stem” of the “Champagne Glass Model” instead of the short & Narrow Neck in the “Hourglass Model” that brings the Harmonization, Standardization & Interoperability in the Architecture, leading to optimization in Operational Efficiency & Life Cycle Cost of the ICT Infrastructure in any Smart City.

It is hoped that if Reference Solutions based on such an approach could be developed, they could be used as Road Tests for the standards in the field of Unified Information & Communication Architecture for ‘Smart City’ and ‘Smart Infrastructure’.

This Reference Framework shall help define n create sharable common elements that shall be interoperable across verticals & hence reduce the Infrastructures’ CAPAX & OPEX.

NEXT STEPS: 

•  Develop Comprehensively Granular Reference Architecture for Unified Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone…
• Map relevant Standards to the different blocks & Layers of the Reference Architecture & identify Gaps.
• Develop New Standards to fill the identified Gaps.

Come participate in this crucial National imperative…

To review – download the report:

Unified Secure & Resilient ICT Framework for Smart Infrastructure – Version 1.0 download link:

www.narnix.com/bis-report/

STANDARDS MAKE CITIES SMARTER

It provides insights into the Global Smart Cities Standardization Initiatives under progress and contextualises them to the Indian scenario, challenges and unique perspective…

The Smart infrastructure panel, LITDC/P 2 comprises of a comprehensive mix of experts from government, industry, academia, research, design, management & consulting in the relevant fields. Panel held its first meeting on 29th January 2016, and since then it has held 6 meetings and tracked & reviewed the relevant standardization activities in the Global SDOs, Industry Consortia and other Fora. The panel members also reviewed the needs of Indian Stakeholders in the respective domains and identified the Gap Areas in the Standards to meet the Indian Requirements. To address the extensive work multiple Work Groups, Study Groups and Task Groups have been formed to focus on respective areas and share their learning with other members of the panel.

The essential focus is on “Unified, Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone for Smart Cities/Smart Infrastructure” and members conducted an in-depth study & analysis to Recommend an India appropriate “Reference Framework for Unified, Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone for Smart Infrastructure”, which shall enable optimization of the ICT infrastructure and help bring down the Total Cost of Ownership in terms of capital and recurring expenditure in the upcoming smart cities deployments. Implementing and deploying the proposed comprehensive framework in any city for the multitude of heterogeneous & diverse applications use cases and citizen services can achieve this crucial imperative for the smart city stakeholders.

The evolved Comprehensively Unified ICT Architecture has been remodelled from the Hourglass Architecture to a “Classic Saucer Champagne Glass” Architecture with a wide Flat Bottom Base depicting the multitude of Field Devices & sensors etc. The Saucer Shaped Bowl on the Top, depicting being filled with an ever-increasing spectrum of City Applications and Citizens’ Services. The Long Stem depicts all the Common Layers viz.: the Unified Last Mile Communication, Common Gateways (application or Vertical Agnostic) and the Common Service Layer representing the Common Service Functions in the Gateways, as well as, in the Cloud…

It is the “Long Stem” of the “Champagne Glass Model” that brings the harmonization, standardization & interoperability in the Architecture, leading to optimization in Operational Efficiency & Life Cycle Cost of the ICT Infrastructure in any Smart City.

The major focus of the exercise was to develop the framework for such a unified, harmonized and yet standards based Comprehensive ICT Infrastructure, including:

1. The “end to end last mile communication protocol” defining explicitly and comprehensively layer by layer, frame by frame with complete interoperability at the network, semantic or at syntactic level.
2. The Common Service Layer Framework for Diverse applications and use cases with standardized common service functions.
3. The Unified IT Architecture based on Enterprise Architecture enabled by Service Oriented Architecture Methodology with Unified Data Reservoir/Repository for structured, as well as, unstructured data in the city.

It is hoped that if a Reference Solution based on such an approach could be developed, it could be used as a Road Test for the standards in the field of Unified Information & Communication Architecture for ‘Smart City’ and ‘Smart Infrastructure’.

This Reference Framework shall help define n create sharable common elements that shall be interoperable across verticals & hence reduce the Infrastructures’ CAPAX & OPEX.

NEXT STEPS:

1. Develop Comprehensively Granular Reference Architecture for Unified Secure & Resilient ICT Backbone…
2. Map relevant Standards to the different blocks & Layers of the Reference Architecture & identify Gaps.
3. Develop New Standards to fill the Gaps.

Inviting all Stakeholders of the Smart Cities Ecosystem to contribute in this crucial National Imperative…

STANDARDS MAKE CITIES SMARTER

Download pdf – Pre-Standardization Study Report on Unified Secure & Resilient ICT Framework for Smart Infrastructure

Work Group on Smart Manufacturing under Panel on “Smart Infrastructure” in BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards, the Indian National SDO)

The ‘Smart Infrastructure’ Panel was constituted in April 2015 to cover the Areas of – Smart Cities (ICT Aspects), Smart Energy, Smart Manufacturing and Active Assisted Living under the Convenor-ship of N. Kishor Narang a design engineer with four decades of experience in designing the latest technological solutions.

The panel comprises of a comprehensive mix of domain experts from government, industry, academia, research, design, management & consulting in the relevant fields. Panel has held 6 meetings and tracked & reviewed most of the relevant standardization activities in the Global SDOs, Industry Consortia and other Fora. The panel members also reviewed the needs of Indian Stakeholders in the respective domains and identified the Gap Areas in the Standards to meet the Indian Requirements comprehensively and most efficiently. To address the extensive work multiple Work Groups, Study Groups and Task Groups have been formed to focus on respective areas and share their learning with other members of the panel. Currently, a Task Group has been constituted to prepare a Pre-Standardization Report to provide comprehensive “Actionable Insights for Smart Manufacturing in India” to develop the required Roadmap supported by Policies, Regulations and Standards for the smart manufacturing paradigm.

The Task Group on “Smart Manufacturing” has been constituted to conduct in-depth study & analysis to recommend an India appropriate comprehensive strategy and approach for Smart Manufacturing, which shall enable optimization of the smart ICT infrastructure being deployed in the Manufacturing Ecosystem and help bring down the CAPEX and OPEX in deployment of the Smart Technologies in the Manufacturing. This shall be achieved by proposing a comprehensive strategy to address India Specific problems, challenges and imperatives along with a Standardized Framework for improving the operational & financial efficiency of manufacturing activities. The work flow & plan of the Task Group was decided as:

1. Review the current market trends and technology trends in context of the Smart Manufacturing Paradigm globally.
2. Undertake a comprehensive enumeration of the challenges & requirements to address the current imperatives of the Indian Manufacturing Ecosystem.
3. Provide specific Actionable Insights to enable the Indian Manufacturing to evolve into a globally competitive Manufacturing Destination.
4. Review ALL the candidate Reference Frameworks, Architectures, ICT Technologies and Standards developed either by Global, Regional, National SDOs or any Industry consortia or fora.
5. Recommend the India appropriate Reference Frameworks & Architectures and relevant Technologies & Standards for the Manufacturing Ecosystem of the Nation…

The review of the trends and initiatives contextualized with the ground realities in the nation has given the following initial insights:

• Though globally Smart Manufacturing is being seen as leveraging ICT & automation to improve the overall efficiency in manufacturing ecosystem, which may be sufficient for the developed nations, however, India’s imperatives are much diverse and complex than simply this.
• India is at the cusp of major economic revolution. India is ranked second behind China in manufacturing competitiveness and has already started narrowing the gap over last few years. “India’s rich talent pool of scientists, researchers and engineers as well as its large, well-educated English-speaking workforce and democratic government regime make it an attractive destination for manufacturers”.
• Research and development capabilities paired with engineering, software and technology integration abilities are essential ingredients for manufacturing enterprises. India is today viewed as a country with the capability to design, develop and manufacture innovative products for sale in local as well as global markets.
• These factors explain, in part, India’s rise from a low-cost, back office location to a country that is well positioned to be an active participant in the entire value chain, and is now being viewed as an integral part of the global manufacturing enterprise and location strategy of most of conglomerates with global footprints.
• The recent Initiatives of the Government like Make In India, Skill India, Startup India, Smart Cities supported by enabling Policies & Regulations have truly energized the citizens, the corporates and global organizations to look at India as most conducive destination for setting up business and manufacturing. India being a big consumption market is an additional Bonus.
• To make our industries a significant contributor to the manufacturing competitiveness, we need to build up a comprehensive indigenous ecosystem to cater to local as well as global needs. For this, we need to build a sustainable development mechanism and true technical competence in our engineers, design houses and EMS companies so that they meet the ever growing and changing needs and expectations of the global society.

To make it happen, following are the challenges, which need to be addressed: –

How can Industry adapt and create value? Do we have the skilled resources to make it? Is the present system conducive for evolution? Is there a coordinated approach to address this?

Attempts have been made to analyze the situation in India and to get a snapshot of the current scenario regarding adoption of Smart Manufacturing in India. A caution must be sounded here that the scenario is mixed, as the manufacturing landscape in the country is a mix of very sophisticated large manufacturing units, as well as basic “tool room” type units of the SME segment – which constitutes a significant component of the manufacturing segment in the country.

Primary Drivers Fuelling adoption of Smart Manufacturing process in India:

• Integration of Manufacturing Process with other systems like ERP/CRM – 17.7%
• Reduction of Wastage/Rejections – 17.4%
• Better utilization of manufacturing assets /better uptime – 16.7%
• Integration of Supplies into manufacturing process – 14.9%
• Integration of all shop floor assets into single network – 14.5%
• Efficiency improvement in IT driven manufacturing process – 14.2%
• Others – 4.6%

As we can see, almost all the major drivers are related to integration of information flows between systems and enhancing the ability to integrate real-time information into a Decision Support System for manufacturing – thereby driving efficiency improvements.

Leading inhibitors for adoption of Smart Manufacturing in India:

• Low people & process maturity – 21.7%
• Lack of technology standards -18%
• Budgetary constraints – 16.4%
• Difficulties in tool/process integration – 10.7%
• Lack of IT resources & fear of missed upgrades – 11.5%
• Risks / Lack of top management support / no precedent – 17.6%
• Security Concerns – 4.1%

Potential components for Smart Manufacturing initiatives in India:

• Interconnected machines, assets etc. – 21.9%
• Mobile devices – 16.1%
• Analytics S/W – 15.3%
• Cloud computing (including migration) – 12.4%
• Big Data S/W – 10.9%
• On premises IoT Servers – 8%

As we can see, these are “baby steps” being taken – to get different plant assets to start “talking” to each other. They are leveraging off existing assets (note the reference to cloud computing, big data and mobile device integration) – which points to Step Zero as the integration of existing (legacy) assets into the unified information network, so as to enable seamless flow of data. Note also the concerns with security and interoperability being voiced in the previous table.

Business case – There is a consensus within the manufacturing community and among stakeholders that improved communication, coordination and collaboration would enable better use and leverage of the resources being deployed to achieve common desired goals of more efficient, agile and sustainable global manufacturing systems.

Industry Requirements – Industry seeks to operate safe, secure, sustainable, energy efficient, environmentally conscious manufacturing operations that produce competitive quality product in their target markets. There are published regulations in many geographic markets for many of these system attributes and International Standards available for all of them.

In order for the manufacturing operations to meet the regulations and standards required, all functional elements of the total system need to integrate and interoperate together to achieve a desired system goal derived from the manufacturing business policies and their implementation strategies:

Safety & Security, Sustainability, Energy Efficiency, Environment protection, Materials, Green House Gas, Carbon Foot Print, Waste/ Recycle, Health & Safety…

Conclusion – The Smart Manufacturing imperatives in India are beyond the global imperatives; hence India is looking at Smart Manufacturing as an inclusive strategy (beyond simply leveraging the ICT) to empower the Indian Manufacturing Ecosystem to catapult Indian Economy on a comprehensive growth trajectory…

The standardization initiatives in this domain shall strive to look at enabling Indian companies to leverage the power of ICT technology to improve profitability and achieve sustainable growth. The goal is not to blindly follow western models, which focus exclusively on automation to achieve these goals, but to evolve “India-appropriate” models, which address the unique challenges of the Indian environment. India cannot afford to consider Smart Manufacturing as a separate domain, rather as a homogenous sub-domain in the comprehensive & complex domain of Smart Infrastructure.

Hence, India is looking at a homogenous & harmonized set of Standards, Architectures and Frameworks amongst all individual domains like Smart Homes, Smart Buildings, Smart Grids, Smart Manufacturing, Smart Cities being the complementing components of the uber complex paradigm of Smart Infrastructure.

It is envisaged that common, unified and harmonized Standards shall bring the cost of all products, systems and solutions with multi-domain applications down comprehensively, avoid the market fragmentation & segmentation, and multiply the volume of manufacturing of the respective products and systems hence boosting the Manufacturing Ecosystem…

Interested in being part of the Indian Standardization Journey in Smart Manufacturing and/or Smart Infrastructure??? Connect with me ASAP…

Why Smart City as a System is important?

All Smart Cities programmes and projects pursue many common goals including sustainable development, better efficiency, resilience, safety and wider support for citizen’s engagement and participation. However, each individual city tends to follow its own approach in smart cities programmes and projects. It is not surprising that the numerous technology activists are very vocal on various Smart Cities forums even though cities cannot be reduced to just big data and IoT.

It seems that around Smart Cities there are many wonderful information and communication technologies, high levels of enthusiasm from software vendors, strong support from top leadership, obvious benefits for a significant amount of the planet’s population and no shortage of funding. But, all of these together are not sufficient yet.

The current implementation practices of smart cities are rather disjointed, namely:

• Smart Cities programmes and projects are, primarily, local initiatives;
• Smart Cities programmes and projects are considered as technology projects;
• Numerous Smart Cities interest groups are, primarily, clubs;
• Efforts for the development of a common vision are insufficient, and
• Typical financing patterns do not promote a common vision, namely the government is funding (to some extent) some cities, which engage technological companies, and the government is funding some technological companies, which engage cities.

As a result, there is no agreed basis for efficient and effective cooperation and coordination between different Smart Cities programmes and projects. There is a lot of duplication of work, developed solutions are not reusable, and the same mistakes are repeated.

To address such negative phenomena, the IEC came up with a new approach to standardisation – systems-level standardisation that provides the context for the traditional product-level standardisation. The systems-level standardisation aims to achieve synergy between uniformity (availability of standard products) and diversity (ability to combine standard and customised products to address unique needs).

How Smart City as a System helps your Smart City programmes and projects

The systems-level standardisation which is carried out by the IEC Systems Committee “Smart Cities” will offer to Smart City programmes and projects a coherent set of commonly agreed and fully traceable deliverables, namely:

• Reference Model (actually, terminology and, ideally, an ontology) to enable various stakeholders to communicate and collaborate effectively and efficiently.
• Reference Architecture of a Smart City as a system to enable various Smart Cities programmes and projects to compare their implementations, and find both common and unique needs and solutions.
• A coherent set of use cases (how various actors interact with the Smart City as a system) to be sure that the reference architecture addresses various stakeholders’ concerns in a good, right and successful way.
• A collection of existing and new standards for implementation of common capabilities of Smart Cities to reuse and share the work.

A particular city can easily adjust those deliverables to its unique needs and speed up its implementation by:

• Accessing knowledge from world-wide experts;
• Adjusting the reference architecture to its unique needs;
• Using proven best practices, and
• Re-using some standard building blocks (services, applications, processes, etc.) from other programmes and projects.

From the systems point of view, the Smart Cities vision can be illustrated by the following figure (CUBE stands for City Unified Business Execution). Using the Smart Cities reference architecture as an implementation framework, various stakeholders coordinate and collaborate on standard building blocks to expedite the implementation of a variety of Smart cities.

WHAT is the Smart Cities Reference Architecture

Any Smart City is an uber-complex, socio-technical system of cyber-physical systems (e.g. IoT devices and applications) with the following characteristics:

• Huge volume of digital data and information
• Software-intensive (“software is eating the world”)
• Distributed and decentralized
• Great influence on our society (including economy)
• Ability to interact with the physical world
• Seemingly mutually contradictory requirements

The Smart Cities reference architecture explains to any stakeholder how future implementations (which are based on the reference architecture) can address his/her concerns and change his/her personal, professional and social life for the better.

The Smart Cities reference architecture explicitly links various stakeholders’ needs (or high-level requirements) with the principles of reference architecture to provide end-to-end traceability.

The Smart Cities reference architecture brings a methodological and practical guidance on how to achieve the essential characteristics of your Smart City such as security, privacy, low cost of operations, reduced time to market, etc.

The Smart Cities reference architecture provides a common methodology for architecting systems of systems thus enabling different people in similar situations to find similar solutions or propose innovations that can benefit many cities.

In accordance with ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, the Smart Cities reference architecture is described via several aligned viewpoints. Each viewpoint is a formalised description of some aspects of the Smart Cities reference architecture. Each viewpoint is a tool for various stakeholders to better understand, manage and implement Smart Cities programmes and projects. Some of the many viewpoints of the Smart Cities reference architecture are described below.

Motivation viewpoint

The motivation viewpoint is about linking various stakeholders (persons, groups of persons and organisations), their roles in Smart Cities (beneficiaries, regulators, etc.) and their concerns. Any City governance agency and all other stakeholders can use this viewpoint to build and to monitor an objective understanding of various and contradictory concerns around their city.

The Big Picture:

The big picture viewpoint is an idealised decomposition of the city’s functionality into several areas. This viewpoint is necessary to establish a common-agreed view on Smart Cities as a system.

Taken from the Descriptive Framework for Cities and Communities being standardised by ISO TC 268

Capability Map

The Smart Cities capability map lists all capabilities (abilities to do something) of Smart Cities. Any City governance organ can use this viewpoint to

• Analyse a comprehensive and well-structured set of capabilities
• Benchmark the particular city via the maturity levels of its capabilities (also known as “heat map”)
• Take an informed decision about each capability (dependant on the unique situation of the particular city) either

# To implement it at a particular level of maturity

# To obtain it from business-to-business partners (outsource or insource)

   # To obtain it from commodity markets

   # To ignore it for now

  # To develop an implementation plan and monitor its implementation

Platform-based Implementation

The Smart Cities platform-based implementation viewpoint explains how to achieve collaboration and coordination among many Smart Cities programmes and projects. This viewpoint uses the “platform-enabled agile solutions” architecture pattern, which is based on the following considerations:

• The platform must standardise and simplify essential capabilities of a system. For any capabilities outside the platform, new opportunities should be explored using agile principles.
• These twin approaches should be mutually reinforcing: the platform frees up resource to focus on new opportunities while successful agile innovations are rapidly scaled up when incorporated into the platform.
• To minimise duplication of effort in solving the same problems, there needs to be system-wide transparency and coordination of agile initiatives.
• Existing elements of the platform also need periodic challenge. Transparency, publishing feedback and the results of experiments openly, will help to keep the pressure on the platform for continual improvement as well as for short-term cost savings.

Thus, the Smart Cities platform-based implementation viewpoint proposes a City Unified Business Execution (CUBE) platform. Using this platform, each Smart City can expedite its implementation by coordinating, collaborating and sharing the CUBE platform building blocks.

It implies that each Smart City uses its own “copy” of the CUBE platform, which is built from standard, commercial or open source, off-the-shelf and specific-for-a-particular-city building blocks (or tools). By starting small, any Smart City can build-up its own platform incrementally by using building blocks developed in from other Smart Cities programme and projects.

Does it excite you? Then why not get involved?

Contact your respective National Standards Body immediately and get yourself nominated as an expert in the IEC Systems Committee on Smart Cities…

We are encouraging National Standards Bodies to join in this vital piece of standards work and assign representatives from cities and city service providers to our Working Group, so that the smart city reference architecture will reflect the varied needs of cities globally and the knowledge and insights of as many experts as possible.

For more details about the Smart City Reference Architecture work contact:

Convener:              Narang N. Kishor  –          kishor@uat.narnix.com, +91 9810163990

Co-Convenor:          Heng Qian,             –          qianheng@sdis.cn , +86 1330531968

For more details about the work of the IEC Smart Cities Systems Committee in general, contact:

The Chairman:         Fumio Ueno,        –   fumi.ueno@toshiba.co.jp, +81 3 3457 3014

To join the next face-to-face meeting of Working Group 3, along with the other Working Groups, in Shanghai for the 28th June to 1st July 2017 please contact the IEC

http://www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=103:186:11952116655756::::FSP_ORG_ID:13073

 The importance of this work

The Smart Cities reference architecture will provide an implementation framework to allow all the various smart city stakeholders to coordinate and collaborate on developing and utilising standard technology and process building blocks to expedite the implementation of a wide variety of Smart cities.

It will also allow all smart city standards, along with standards that are relevant to smart cities, to be systematically mapped in a way that is aligned to the concerns and aspects of smart cities, and so make it easy for stakeholders to identify those standards that will help them in their work.

Guiding Principles:

The Smart Cities reference architecture shall be developed (in collaboration with the SRG) in methodologically sound, explicit, reproducible and transparent way to allow the usage of this Reference Architecture by any city in its journey to smart city.

The guiding principles for defining the Reference Architecture shall be:

• Interoperability,
• Integrity,
• Safety,
• Security and privacy,
• Simplicity,
• Low cost of operation, and
• Short time to market.

Deliverables

1. A Unified Reference Model
2. The Reference Architecture with multiple Viewpoints.

3. System (or reference solutions) Architecture(s)

4. Framework(s) for Security, Privacy & Safety.

5. Framework(s) for Resilience, Integration, Interoperability & Unified Platform

6. Framework for Unified Data Semantics for Smart Cities Infrastructure

7. Standards inventory for Smart Cities Infrastructure

* * * * *

As they say – “Rome was not built in a day” neither did narnix reach this pinnacle overnight… it was with great amount of fortitude, patience, perseverance, and utmost single minded dedication towards design that narnix today is undisputed pioneer & leading Independent Design House – with unique distinction of NOT being a Typical Design Services company or a Design Factory rather a technology and design support partner to the industry and serving its clientele as a Friend, Philosopher & Guide to realize their respective visions and dreams with its comprehensive design & technology enabling support…

In recent years, narnix has identified STANDARDIZATION as another crucial pillar of Innovation; and committed itself to evangelize the standardization paradigm in India to enable India take a pole position in Global Standard Development Organizations. This is imperative to get Indian perspective and requirements comprehensively addressed in the upcoming Global Standards in subjects of interest to India specifically in ICT and Smart Secure & Sustainable Cities…

In spite of the fact that in INDIA true respect for Innovation is conspicuous by its absence, narnix has been able to sustain its commitment to building hardcore “competence to innovate”, and hence mentored and groomed more than 200 research & design mentees in last 25 years, some of whom are the Shining Stars of Indian & Global ESDM (Electronics Design & Manufacturing Ecosystem), building NARNIX’s & India’s Brand Equity in Design Competence. 

So, we also celebrate our design, research and innovation Mentees… the real torch bearers of the ethos of narnix “LEARNING CONTINUUM” ….

           celebrating “35 years of designing with secure & sustainable dna”

Come connect, collaborate n create with narnix…

Let us Innovate & Design to enable

“MAKE in INDIA” & thus “MAKE INDIA”

“design is our religion n we are fanatically religious”

rededicating ourselves to disruptive & sustainable innovation

Unless some pupils or students would have risen to get unprecedented recognition in their chosen fields, no one would have even learnt about how good their respective gurus/teachers were…

Not to marginalize the ethos & values of those teachers that grind their students into shining stars; they essentially are not driven by any desire to get famous or make lot of money… They are a breed of passionate, dedicated & committed individuals pursuing a deep learning in their chosen subject areas of interest… They don’t do it for any rewards or recognition… they just do it because they enjoy it & believe in it… in their journey, whichever self-motivated and/or dedicated students/pupils/mentees come in contact with them, get influenced by their passion and immense knowledge. And as a result, start getting honed into a fine person & professional… Such pupils actually motivate their gurus to continue treading the same path with much more vigor and enthusiasm..

In last 25 years of training, guiding & mentoring 200+ fresh electronics engineers at narnix, I have become much better engineer, design engineer, professional and last but not the least, a more mature and compassionate Mentor – all thanks to my Mentees, who with their zeal, inquisitiveness and dedication made me learn more to help them come out as better design engineers… my credibility in the industry and ecosystem has grown, because of how they perform in their future employments and professional career.

So, when do we celebrate the Students Day???

On the second thought, why don’t we call it “The Teachings Day” to celebrate the process, the phenomena that helps the Teachers, as well as, the Students to evolve into better persons & better professionals ???

@narnix – “design is our religion & we are fanatically religious”

designing with sustainable n secure dna

The extensive work done by various global SDOs has very comprehensively defined the framework & roadmap for future ICT Infrastructure. However, the new paradigm of “Internet of Things” has given rise to a new aspect of the way human, machines and things are going to communicate with each other in the very near future.

IoT in Smart Cities:

Homogeneous Communication Architecture Imperative for the Heterogeneous Environment…

This note comprehensively summarizes the problems being caused by lack of Standardized, Harmonized and Unified ICT Infrastructure, which is the backbone of any Infrastructure being deployed in any Smart, Sustainable & Secure city, district, nation, or any earmarked geographical territory.

It emphasizes the need for a Unified Solution approach along with Architecture and Protocols derived from, and based on ONLY the open standards developed or being developed by the global SDOs to achieve the similar goals to address the upcoming paradigm of Internet of Things. The interoperability required under this approach is comprehensive, including but not limited to ‘Semantic’ as well as ‘Syntactic’ interoperability.

The imperatives of building a sustainable and secure planet have given rise to new paradigms like green movement, DC power, renewables, microgrids, networking devices, network & cyber security, smart homes, smart buildings, smart grids and smart cities. All these shifting and rising paradigms are ultimately converging into the new & much larger paradigm of ‘unified and secure’ Smart Infrastructure.

Internet of Things is all about “heterogeneous” and “aware” devices interacting to simplify people’s life in some way or the other. The Heterogeneity of the IoT paradigm has made it imperative to have a fresh look on the prevalent architectures & frameworks of the ICT Infrastructure being deployed or being developed.

The IoT value chain is perhaps the most diverse and complicated value chain of any industry or consortium that exists in the world. In fact, the gold rush to IoT is so pervasive that if you combine much of the value chain of most industry trade associations, standards bodies, the ecosystem partners of trade associations and standards bodies, and then add in the different technology providers feeding those industries, you get close to understanding the scope of the task. In this absolutely heterogeneous scenario, coming up with common harmonized standards is a major hurdle.

The Rationale:

• Smart cities development & deployments announced without any groundwork on preparedness of the stakeholders and the ecosystem…
• In a smart city, multiple utilities are going to leverage and deploy similar technologies & solutions to improve the operational efficiency
• The technological trends in “smart Homes”, “Smart Buildings”, “Smart Grid” “Smart Water” “Smart Transport” and “Smart Cities” are being considered and pursued in isolation from each other, by the respective stakeholders. This is in spite of the fact that they form a very tightly interwoven and homogenous confluence of similar technologies being applied in different domains for a common cause of making our planet earth   “smart-n-green”.
• There is no common framework and architecture defined for the various physical infrastructures to be deployed in the proposed smart cities to work in an integrated, harmonized and optimized manner…
• Since, there is NO standardization or Harmonization groundwork undertaken to cater to the physical infrastructure’s comprehensive and heterogeneous needs of the smart cities, most of the systems & solutions deployed shall have to be procured which are based on respective vendors’ proprietary technologies with limited or NO interoperability with system/solution components from other vendors.
• Each city shall always be dependent on the respective vendors throughout the lifecycle of such systems/solutions for their Operation & Maintenance, and more so for their up gradation…
• Lack of harmonized standards in the respective “SILO” ecosystems of the Smart Infrastructure shall ensure that the smart nodes of one network cannot talk to smart nodes of the other networks.
• Thus, Data sharing amongst the multiple stakeholders of a smart city shall be a major challenge.
• In fact, there is a recursive cycle to the data in a Smart City. Information that is generated, is information that is consumed, which in turn adds to the information generated, which becomes information used again.

The Imperative:

• All sectors in the infrastructure framework are influenced by the unified ICT backbone paradigm.
• However, a common infrastructure pool enables the creation of a interconnected and truly homogenous system with seamless communication between services.
• Coordination, collaboration and harmonization can be better implemented by the effective use of standards based open, common and shareable, information and communication technologies.
• The disconnect amongst technological trends being pursued by the stakeholders of the now homogenous smart infrastructure needs to be bridged without any further delay to maintain the Lifecycle Cost or TCO (total cost of ownership) of these individual components within viable economic thresholds.
• In this context, we need to redefine our individual perspectives of smart grid, smart building and smart cities.
• Now, they have to work in close harmony with each other to fulfill the homogenous functioning of the smart infrastructure in any given geographical territory.
• To optimize the resources and costs, we need to design and deploy an integrated common ICT backbone for all the different components of the smart infrastructure.
• This shall need to be capable of meeting the needs of all the independent (till now) & individual stakeholders’ applications and use cases like smart grid, smart water, smart health, smart transportation, smart street lighting and or smart buildings.
• Integrated Management Centre: At its very foundation, it will integrate with and ingest data from all possible sources, then apply various data models, processes and tools and ensure quality with an aim to provide insight and intelligence on various city resources and services while at the same time establishing a sharing and serving mechanism for all information resources and services in the city. Different sources of information can blend together, in some ways compensating their own   deficiencies, enriching the larger information pool and therefore providing the ability to offer services more efficiently.

A systems level approach in design and standardization is likely to not only enable newer and better services, but also allow far greater synergies and cost-effective deployments, reducing the lifecycle (total) cost of ownership of any Infrastructure, be it the electricity, water, a transport, sewage disposal or safety & security in a city, with attendant environmental benefits, including carbon reductions. There is a need to focus on the creation of a secure, standardized and open infrastructure model for the delivery of services. The concept combines standards-based, end-to-end software with a converged smart infrastructure gateway/DCU design with unified Last Mile Communication Protocol & Data Semantics to establish a common, open framework for secured service delivery and management.

• Whatever architectures and frameworks we design that provide overseeing guidelines to the stakeholders of respective components and layers of the overall smart infrastructure paradigm; yet it is imperative to work on the finest granularity of each component and layer for standardization, as well as, harmonization, and ensuring the interoperability among various similar components addressing different applications at semantic as well as syntactic levels. Further the standards being adopted for the smart homes or smart buildings deployments must be harmonized with standards in all other relevant ecosystems and integrated smart infrastructure paradigms. There is a need to create and suggest frameworks to achieve the Interoperability among all the devices & layers at every interface in the networks, be it a smart home network, a smart building network, a smart city/community network or the smart grid network that shall enable the stakeholders to prepare a set of detailed standards based specifications to cater to specific/defined/fixed use cases followed by development of a Compliance Testing Framework.

“A ‘box’ (or service gateway) built on such a platform can consolidate boxes from utilities and/or multiple service providers into a single, unified BOX that can support multiple service providers and utilities. In wake of the proliferation of ‘IoT’, a new paradigm of “Fog Computing”, beyond the “Cloud Computing” is evolving rapidly. In this paradigm where the storage and intelligence moves from the “cloud” to the “edge” the standardization, harmonization and the interoperability take a pivotal role for operational efficiency of the “Smart Infrastructure”.

Internet, I believe is the second most profound technology after the Electricity, that mankind has seen in last couple of centuries..

Why? Because, the most profound technologies are those that disappear… They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it… Internet is one such profound technology that has weaved itself into the fabric of our everyday life, and, we have started taking it for granted…

Can you think of leading your daily lives without the Internet???

Our personal, as well as, professional life comes to a stand still in the absence of Internet…

And yet, for 3.27 Billion people on the planet, out of total world population of 7.26 Billion, equivalent to 45% of the global population, even the imagination of minimal access to Internet is too profound… or even a fantasy..

And, this is impacting “their” social, as well as, economical lives…

Internet could be real enabler to empower the underprivileged communities for their respective Social and Economic upliftment…

What are we individually or collectively doing towards this social & moral imperative???

Initiatives like Digital India are not the prerogatives of the government agencies only; we as individuals, could really play a pivotal role in making this initiative a grand success with our individual bits n bytes of contribution in someway or the other, enabling and empowering the underprivileged masses with our respective technological domain expertise…

There shall be enough big guys to build the smart cities, but who shall make our nation a smart nation? Incidentally, in our nation 68% population lives in rural areas, and 400 million people do not have even access to the electricity… So, unless we make our villages smart and empower the rural population with a sustained safe, healthy and economical independent life locally, our nation shall not be considered really smart. 

Let’s take a few steps beyond merely providing them access to electricity & Internet, and empower n enable them to lead a healthy, safe and economically prosperous life, LOCALLY… 

Let’s take a pledge to move beyond the paradigm of using Internet for merely self-progress and gratification to leveraging the Internet for the upliftment of our fellow unprivileged citizens and empowering & enabling them in someway or the other…

In the meantime, have great fun with Internet… Remember, your one google search consumes energy equivalent to what you consume in boiling Two Kettles of water for your Tea/Coffee…

Coming next.. Safe Internet Day in February …  Safer Internet Day 2016 will be celebrated on Tuesday 9 February 2016, with a theme of ‘Play your part for a better internet!’.

HAPPY SURFING….

With the evolution of the converged and networked society, further fueled by the Internet of Things era, a multitude of new applications of the Information and Communication Technologies have changed the way we live, work, play, interact and even think.

But, true convergence is still eluding the evolved citizens of today’s global village because of a lack of harmonized standards in the respective ecosystems of the smart homes, smart buildings, smart grid and smart cities. The smart nodes of one network cannot talk to smart nodes of the other networks. A wide array of proprietary systems/solutions, or ‘systems/solutions with very limited interoperability’ are being deployed in each application areas for the today’s home automation, building automation, industrial automation or even the infrastructure automation needs of the society. This is definitely going to ensure that we shall not be able to derive the maximum benefits of these technologies.

A major disconnect which has recently become apparent is: the technological trends in ‘Smart Homes’, ‘Smart Buildings’, ‘Smart Cities’ and ‘Smart Grid’ are being considered and pursued in isolation from each other with ‘silo’ approach, by the respective stake holders. In fact, they form a very tightly interwoven and homogenous confluence of similar technologies being applied in different domains for a common cause of making our planet earth ‘smart, green and secure’.

While the roadmaps and even pilots have focused on functionality, there is limited clarity on technology solutions, architectures and protocols that might best meet the goals of open standards, modularity, inter-operability, and price-performance. The claim of “following standards” is insufficient because it doesn’t answer the question of which standard and why. In fact, it is unlikely to be which standard but rather which standards since most Architectures (e.g., NIST’s and ETSI’s frameworks) do not pick one standard but have a layered approach, capable of using multiple standards in the portfolio. The existing and future Frameworks and Architectures for Smart Infrastructure need to be studied and a comprehensive robust architecture and framework for the upcoming Smart Infrastructure deployments needs to be developed.

Different communication technologies and protocols are being discussed or even advocated as the most suitable or most cost effective communication technologies for the upcoming Smart Infrastructure deployments. In India, in all the discussions and deliberations, two things are most conspicuous by their absence: “Standards for Communication Network Architecture” and the “Business Model” for deploying and running the communication infrastructure. For example, under R-APDRP we saw the limitations of a cellular (mobile) based communications system. This was even before extending services to rural areas or adding smart functionalities, with stronger requirements.

The relationship between Smart Grids and Smart Cities needs to be understood in this context: “In a smart city, energy, water, transportation, public health and safety, and other key services are managed in concert to support smooth operation of critical infrastructure while providing for a clean, economic and safe environment in which to live, work and play”. Hence, the perspective in Infrastructure Design for any city has undergone a paradigm shift with advent of convergence and networking technologies, solutions for information, communication, entertainment, security and surveillance; which are beginning to have a profound impact on the way we look at the buildings’ design (be it residential or commercial) and town planning.

Whatever architectures and frameworks we design that provide overseeing guidelines to the stakeholders of respective components and layers of the overall smart infrastructure paradigm; yet it is imperative to work on the finest granularity of each component and layer for standardization, as well as, harmonization, and ensuring the interoperability among various similar components addressing different applications at semantic as well as syntactic levels. Further the standards being adopted for the smart grid deployments must be harmonized with standards in all other relevant ecosystems and integrated smart infrastructure paradigms. There is a need to create and suggest frameworks to achieve the Interoperability among all the devices and layers at every interface in the networks, be it a smart home network, a smart building network, a smart city/community network or the smart grid network and hence prepare a set of detailed standards based specifications to cater to specific/defined/fixed use cases followed by development of a Compliance Testing Framework.

A systems level approach in design and standardization is likely to not only enable newer and better services, but also allow far greater synergies and cost-effective deployments, reducing the lifecycle (total) cost of ownership of any Infrastructure, be it the smart grid, a home, a building or even a city, with attendant environmental benefits, including carbon reductions.

Defining a unified, harmonized and interoperable communication protocol for seamless communication among diverse, as well as, heterogeneous devices, sensors, controllers and nodes is the toughest challenge in front of the designers today. This is because; different applications’ stakeholders have been till recently, working in silos, to address their respective communication needs, be it communication technologies or the protocols or even semantics. 

Standards-development organizations (SDOs) are busy mapping the Imperatives for standardization…

Standards are highly crucial for the Indian Smart Infrastructure Ecosystem, as in India most of the utilities are State owned. They cannot choose any single vendor for End-to-End solution, if it is not based on Open and Harmonized standards. They are obliged to provide equal & fair opportunity to all the stakeholders, and thus need to declare the specifications of any product, system or solution with utmost granularity to enable End-to-End Interoperability, even in a multi vendor deployment scenario.

Dichotomy: There is clearly a dichotomy between, on the one hand, the question “Who is going to invest in developing New products, systems and solutions based on the ‘UNIFIED, HARMONIZED & SECURE Information & Communication Architecture or even a Framework’ for such a heterogeneous scenario with such diverse challenges, when there is absolutely NO Co-ordination or even realization of the problems each stakeholder is going to face in the very near future?” and on the other hand, the question “Who is going to create the Architecture and/or Framework, if there is no demand or even realization of this NEED?”  

Strong, clearly understood, tangible benefits to be gained from the adoption of the “Unified & Secure Communication Architecture, Protocols, Interfaces and Standards” for the “Smart, Green & Secure Community” will be needed in order for both questions to be answered.

Nonetheless, the evolving focus on Energy Efficiency and “smart, sustainable & secure” Planet shall bring the stakeholders on common platforms to arrive at new solutions and consensus on conflicting aspects of such technological innovations….

“designing with secure n sustainable dna”

Thirty-eight years back when I chose design as my profession, and later in 1981, when I started my design and technology consultancy (Narnix Technolabs), instead of an industrial or commercial enterprise, the real driver was – my passion for new technologies and design.

I wanted to always stay on the forefront of technologies and a few steps ahead of the market. 
I have never regretted that decision, and no professional or financial hardship has ever been able to deter me from this very exciting, though tough, career in design and technology.

Take great pride in being able to sustain thru the changing ethos of Indian society, education and engineering community with my perseverance and faith in the values of unstilted commitment to the chosen field and building hardcore “competence to innovate”.

Proud to be one of the pioneer Independent Design House in INDIA… 

Take further pride in having mentored and groomed more than 200 research & design mentees in last 25 years, some of whom are the Shining Stars of Indian & Global ESDM (Electronics Design & Manufacturing Ecosystem), building NARNIX’s & India’s Brand Equity in Design Competence.

Happy to observe the recent changes in Indian Engineers, who are starting to re-discover their “competence to innovate”. However, comprehensive system & product design capabilities need yet to be developed, if we truly wish to see India leading in the field of Technology.

Unique design Strengths of narnix are:

• Hardware Critical Embedded Designs
• Mixed Signal Designs
• Power n Energy Efficient Designs
• MEMS Sensors based Designs
• Communication Stacks n Libraries for Embedded Designs
• Solution Design Architectures
• Homogenous Solutions Design for Heterogeneous environment
• System oriented Approach based Architecture for Product Design

In the fields of High Frequency Power, Industrial, Smart Metering, Smart Lighting, Smart Building, IoT (Internet of Things), Smart Infrastructure, Telecom, Convergence Defence, Medical, Environment, Energy & Consumer Electronics.

Current focus of narnix is:

• To design the “most versatile” products, systems & solutions in the fields of Smart Grid, Smart metering, Smart Lighting, Energy efficiency, Renewable energies, Smart Home, Smart Building, Smart City, Convergence, Internet of Things etc.; and enable seamless integration & blend of various layers of “convergence networks” from consumer layer to service provider layer and even City-wide & Nation wide infrastructure Layer.
• Design, develop n deploy products that contribute in INDIA being recognized as a hub for International level design n manufacturing activities.
• To be able to play a major role in defining Technological Trends in deployment of latest innovations in different aspects of society, business n industry.

A glimpse into the current activities at narnix:

•  Developing a comprehensive Energy Efficiency/Carbon Footprint Monitoring framework for Nationwide Building Energy Management Systems & Streetlight Management System in a unified & scalable Architecture for Measurement & Verification Framework.
• Developing 6LoWPAN based DLMS Server & Client stacks for Smart Metering Eco-system in India and other countries.
• Developing unified last mile communication Stack for Smart Homes, Smart Buildings, Smart Grids and Smart Cities Applications.
• Developing a Framework for “Unified & Secure Communication Architecture, Protocols & Interfaces for Smart & Green Community” to be followed by a Unified Stack for all kind of Network Nodes at every layer in any Network.
• Developing a Comprehensive Cyber Security Framework & Architecture for the “Critical Information & Communication Infrastructure” in India.
• Developing a reference design platform for a Gateway/DCU based on OneM2M Framework and homegrown ‘Unified & secure Last Mile Communication’ Architecture
• Developing a reference design platform for Autonomous Vehicles, Robots and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
• Developing a Smart Watch based reference platform for Non Invasive Study of different analytical parameters related to human body to enable Diagnosis of various physiological ailments & monitoring of vital human body parameters. 

Come connect, collaborate n create with narnix…

Let us Innovate & Design to enable

“MAKE in INDIA”

& thus

“MAKE INDIA”

“design is our religion n we are fanatically religious”

narnix technolabs pvt. ltd.

india