Achieving global sustainability through IoT technology

Innovation and technology supporting sustainable development

Today, we are facing a massive energy crisis, driving the need for a more sustainable global ecosystem to reduce humanity's carbon footprint. Many individuals, organizations, and governments are striving to better understand humanity's impact on the ecosystem and to contribute to changing our world for a better future. IoT devices can help reduce demand and utilize existing resources more efficiently. With rapid innovation and the swift release of new technologies, more sustainable energy can be developed, minimizing humanity's carbon footprint and improving the impact of our society.

There are three ways to make an impact on sustainable development. First, there is the opportunity to reduce the demand for resources, achievable through virtualization and smart solutions. Another way is to enhance efficiency by improving how humanity operates. For example, replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors or generating electricity through renewable energy sources such as wind power are environmentally friendly methods of energy production. The third approach is managing pollution, which can be achieved through monitoring and sequestration. All three methods require innovation and technological advancement.

To meet the demand for efficiency, electronics have undergone several transformations. With IoT, we will see the greatest opportunity for positive impact on sustainability. The implementation of IoT and edge computing represents a paradigm shift, transferring energy usage from moving physical objects to moving data. This shift allows IoT to optimize current processes to improve efficiency and to adopt new processes for betterment. Both have meaningful impacts on sustainability, but the introduction of new processes represents transformative development.

Accelerating innovation and overcoming challenges through industry standards and alliances

Driving the creation of industry standards and alliances is one way to accelerate innovation and overcome challenges. The market needs faster and shorter design cycles, as well as more ecosystem partners to push competitive solutions in a timely manner. For IoT devices embedded in physical infrastructure to achieve rapid scalability, an open architecture must be adopted, leading to the formation of industry standards and alliances.

The O-RAN (Open Radio Access Network) Alliance is a great example. It is an alliance initiated by telecom industry operators with the goal of providing intelligent, open, virtualized, and fully interoperable mobile networks. Members and contributors are involved in developing and promoting a white-box ecosystem for 5G infrastructure, a market traditionally dominated by large telecom companies deploying proprietary black-box solutions. The O-RAN Alliance will provide interface standards and white-box reference designs to foster broad participation and accelerate the speed and diversity of 5G innovation.

An important responsibility of industry standards and alliances is ensuring the development of reliability and maintainability, as well as addressing fluctuations in future demands. Standards and alliances also define security requirements to protect our future from both inadvertent and malicious attacks. The security components of these working groups should be capable of assessing security risks and defining interoperability.

The impact of security on sustainable development

One of the fundamental principles of security is applying the right security measures in the right place within a system based on the risk and value of the asset. As we continue to develop connected solutions residing in traditional or new physical devices, the attack surface is constantly expanding, making security one of the foundational elements for enabling the Internet of Things (IoT) and having a meaningful impact on society and the environment.

Playing a role in alliances and standards organizations is a primary opportunity to influence good security practices, and consciously implementing security measures can directly impact sustainability in three ways. First, is the reduction of e-waste. E-waste is often not considered a significant environmental issue, but it is an area full of opportunities. Today, the cost of recycling e-waste is very high, even with proper handling. Better methods for recycling e-waste need to be found, but the right security solutions can help reduce the total amount of waste generated. This can be achieved by extending the lifespan of products and developing hardware platforms that allow for software-defined solutions. Combining security subsystems that support both methods can prolong hardware lifecycles and provide ways to use second-life solutions to reduce e-waste.

Reducing operational waste is another way in which security impacts sustainability. Defining security standards for small-scale IoT applications can reduce the overall size and power consumption of devices. The data center approach is commonly used to define the interfaces for edge devices, specifying security requirements to include more necessary algorithms and additional interfaces. If only the minimum number of interfaces and cryptographic processes are specified, the overall product size will be reduced.

Security also has a significant social impact, as it needs to ensure secure operations and protect user privacy. Whether for end users or development teams, security must be made more intuitive and simpler. Most people are not security experts and do not understand the implications of security configurations and settings, so finding ways to seamlessly integrate security from the user's perspective has a major impact on their overall well-being.

As the pace of innovation accelerates today, ADI is making significant contributions to technology in the area of sustainability. ADI's wireless battery management systems are transforming the automotive industry by reducing material costs and improving design flexibility, enabling more efficient scaling of electric vehicles. Energy Storage Systems (ESS) are facilitating the integration of renewable energy with mainstream energy sources by mitigating the intermittent nature of renewable sources like wind and solar. Additionally, ADI EagleEye^™ occupancy monitoring solutions unlock insights and analytics capabilities, enabling more effective building management. These are just a few examples of using ADI solutions to improve efficiency and mitigate environmental impact through meaningful insights.

ADI's approach to security is designed to create a more sustainable global ecosystem by allowing rapid innovation and waste-reduction practices. These practices are rooted in industry standards while contributing to the formation of new standards for secure and sustainable edge solutions. ADI's security solutions are highly reusable across many different applications to ensure teams can innovate quickly while being confident that security solutions meet standards and are robust in architectural design. ADI’s security architecture will support dynamic lifecycles and enhance software capabilities as the industry continues to uncover potential needs. ADI is committed to helping customers introduce transformative solutions by changing patterns to make old processes more efficient.

Trusted computing solutions improve end-to-end security issues

ADI is committed to placing security at the forefront of all its work, with security solutions that set expectations for trust and assist customers in addressing evolving threats. ADI is dedicated to providing innovative resources and technologies to select the trust foundation that plays a role throughout the entire security journey. ADI’s solutions are optimized to enhance the customer’s end-to-end security journey while accelerating time-to-market.

ADI has launched a set of trusted computing solutions called ADI Assure^™, a suite of products offering robust protection against security threats, providing a persistent state of assurance. With ADI’s trusted edge solutions, customer security boundaries will be closer to the origin of the data, helping to increase confidence in its authenticity and trustworthiness.

ADI has established a trusted foundation that helps customers quickly meet industry standards and regulatory requirements while enhancing their defenses against evolving security threats throughout the product lifecycle. ADI’s advanced technologies, such as ChipDNA^® PUF, tamper-resistant NVM, and advanced encryption algorithms, strengthen security architectures and improve defense against both invasive and non-invasive attacks. ADI’s extensive product portfolio includes flexible, scalable security solutions combined with hardware-based Root of Trust that offer continuous protection and ease of integration, ultimately safeguarding the system and improving long-term resilience.

ADI shortens customers’ time-to-market through industry-standard and compliant security solutions, providing trust assurance via embedded security and secure lifecycle management, and enhancing security status through innovation at the intersection of analog and digital.

ADI’s security products for the smart edge are called Trusted Edge Security Architecture (TESA), seamlessly bundled with CodeFusion Studio. This product combines industry-standard crypto APIs with ADI’s hardware security features to provide customers with a foundational security layer. Accelerating edge innovation means enabling customers to focus on their core competencies. ADI’s trusted edge security architecture allows customers to scale edge applications across a single security API while offering flexible hardware platforms and methods for security assurance levels.

CodeFusion Studio (CFS) is an embedded software development platform built on Microsoft’s open-source development environment, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), and designed for heterogeneous environments. CodeFusion Studio provides intuitive development tools for ADI’s embedded processors and MCUs. It features the Trusted Edge Security Architecture (TESA), multi-core heterogeneous debugging tools, Zephyr support, integrated pin and clock configuration, modern UI, ELF file visualization, open-source tools, and more. Built by developers and serving developers, CodeFusion Studio is designed to accelerate development and adopt modern software development processes.

Conclusion

IoT technology provides a powerful push for achieving global sustainable development. By connecting devices, data, and systems, IoT not only improves the efficiency of resource utilization but also drives the development of green energy, smart cities, and circular economies. At a critical moment in facing global environmental challenges, the innovative applications of IoT are accelerating the construction of a more environmentally friendly and efficient ecosystem. ADI assists customers in building secure IoT environments by providing trusted computing solutions. IoT will play an increasingly important role in achieving sustainable development goals, creating a better future for both humanity and the planet.