Sensing as a service (S2aaS) is one of the specific categories under the anything (or everything) as a service (XaaS) umbrella. With the Internet of Things (IoT) as its backbone, IoT-based S2aaS includes a variety of offerings and tools that can be purchased and enabled by cloud computing.
One market research forecast predicts that the broad XaaS market, valued at $595.78 billion in 2022, is expected to reach $3958.99 billion by 2032, growing at a 20.77% CAGR during the forecast period, 2023-2032. As a part of this total forecast, the researchers state that sensor technology combined with IoT devices will advance, become more inexpensive, and be widely available. As a result of the combined technology’s availability and low cost, it will enable innovative sensor applications such as large-scale monitoring, detection, and decision making.
Since all XaaS categories are highly customizable and scalable, each easily meets specific evolving demands and business needs by adding or removing capabilities. For S2aaS, today’s target users include military, healthcare, security (secure access), and manufacturing for specific monitoring and detecting applications.
Military usage
In a 2014 paper, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance of the U.S. Air Force predicted that S2aaS, the combination of sensing with multi-user services, could dramatically compress decision loops, support distributed mission teaming, and make relevant information discoverable by authorized users. In addition to the development of novel platforms and sensors, he identified six tenets that define the essential characteristics of S2aaS solutions to ensure their successful integration:
- Embedding in closed-loop decision systems
- Responsive sensing automation
- Streaming analytics and multi-modal fusion
- Accessible across domains
- Multi-user support
- Comprehensive assessment
Healthcare applications
S2aaS provides healthcare professionals improved capabilities for health data exchange with the means to change the way technology is developed and leveraged across enterprises. Since 88% of hospitals already use health data exchange in their electronic health record (EHR) systems, expanding interoperability provides a key opportunity for hospitals to optimize their systems and improve patient care.
Bluetooth® sensing
Also for healthcare, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has identified and developed Bluetooth® Service Specifications for several healthcare applications. For example, the Blood Pressure Service exposes (or makes discoverable) blood pressure and other data from a blood pressure monitor for use in consumer and professional healthcare applications.
Also, developed by the SIG’s Medical Devices Working Group, the Continuous Glucose Monitoring Service exposes glucose and other data from a personal Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) sensor for use in consumer healthcare applications.
Secure access
Creating a global, secure IoT-based S2aaS scheme involves four main aspects: users, cloud services, fog (the edge of an enterprise’s network), and sensor nodes. The process starts when s user subscribes or registers for a desired public service. To benefit from this service, the user logs in and sends a request to a cloud-service. Then, the request is sent to the corresponding fog and sensor nodes. Sensor nodes that contain interesting data notify the fog, cloud service, and the user and prompt the user to log in to access the data.
Sensing microservices
Sensors comprise a growing, multi-billion-dollar industry and provide autonomous vehicles, humanoids, industrial manipulators, mobile robots, and smart spaces with the data needed to: (1) assess the physical world and (2) make informed decisions. Recognizing this, NVIDIA recently announced Omniverse Cloud Sensor RTX that provides a set of microservices to enable physically accurate sensor simulation and accelerate the development of fully autonomous machines.
They expect that the microservices will enable sensor manufacturers to validate and integrate digital twins of their sensors in virtual environments and reduce physical prototyping development time.
References
Global Everything as a Service (XaaS) Market Forecast 2023-2032
What is Anything as a Service?
Sensing as a service in Internet of Things: Efficient authentication and key agreement scheme
Sensing as a Service, An ISR Horizons Future Vision
Sensing-as-a-Service Empowers Data Analysis in Healthcare and Commerce with Integrated Data Exchange
Featured image source: How IoT Sensing-as-a-Service Solves Key Industry Challenges
