An Important Class of IoT Devices

nternet of Things (IoT) refers to a large class of devices that can be sprinkled throughout a region of activity where we'd like the sensors to capture detailed information about the interesting region. The 'region' could be a farmland, a bridge, railroad tracks, structural parts of aircraft, and almost anything where there is interest to understand any measurable activity. The sensors achieve particular value if they are completely passive, i.e., do not require battery or any power that requires manual replenishment. The sensors are able to provide important site-specific data than can then be transmitted over the Internet, stored, analyzed, and harvested for important macro observations that could be gleaned from such data, sometimes also known as Big Data.


The importance of IoT can be appreciated by knowing, for example, that Cisco's market research of 2011 predicts the worldwide IoT market to be $14.4T in the subsequent 10 years, i.e., by 2020. (As a comparison, recall that the entire US economy is about $17T as of Q1 2015, and the US healthcare market is about $3T today (17.2% for GDP)).

The CardioMEMS™ HF System by St. Jude Medical

The CardioMEMS™ HF System Patient Electronics Unit
by St. Jude Medical

This post is about those class of IoT devices that do not require any battery for their operation. One such device is the CardioMEMS™ HF System by St. Jude Medical. This device is implanted into a heart patient's body and can remain in the body during the patient's life. It is complemented by a bedside Patient Electronics Unit monitor that is able to read the blood pressure information from the implanted device.

Cardiologists at the Sutherland Cardiology Clinic have recently -- April 2015 -- implanted this device into a cardiac patient.

Such battery-less sensors, wherever they are deployed, can provide lots of important site-specific information without the need for any manual intervention for gathering of the information. Once such data is stored in the cloud, the limitations are only in processing the information.