Hot technologies for 2012

Category: Industry
Thursday, 05 January 2012

There are a number of technologies which are seeing broad mass market demand.  These are the top seven technologies in 2012 we believe will significantly impact the embedded device space:

  1. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)

    We have seen in 2011 the incorporation of MEMs technologies such as accelerometers and magnetometers in a range of consumer devices from pedometers to iphones.  This trend is likely to continue with a range of body worn medical products leveraging these technologies due to the reduction in cost.
     
  2. Wireless sensor networks

    While not new, wireless sensor networks are starting to appear in a range of applications as industries see the benefits of using small, battery powered, wireless nodes to monitor an environment. Expect to see wireless sensor networks appear in everything from healthcare to industrial control to mining.
     
  3. Embedded Cloud

    With the rollout of more wireless sensors networks comes the issue of device and data management.  The ability to manage of thousands of individual wireless nodes and the data they produce will be a key issue facing many during 2012.
     
  4. Energy harvesting

    While not a new concept, a number of companies have been perfecting energy harvesting using piezoelectric technologies to convert mechanical energy (vibrations) into electrical energy capable of running low power devices.  Expect to see this continue with researchers focusing on energy harvesting within clothing.
     
  5. Processors

    Last year saw the TI take the lead in the 32-bit ARM processor battle with 24% of engineers indicating they would select the TI OMAP for their next embedded product.  2012 will see a growing focus on development environments from the major vendors and a number of advances in multicore and power management to support the growing demands of tomorrows embedded devices.  
     
  6. Operating Systems

    A quick search on Google will show the array of embedded operating systems for the embedded engineer to choose from.  We expect to see a continuing battle between open source packages such as FreeRTOS and commercial operating systems from companies such as Microsoft, Nucleus and QNX in 2012.
     
  7. LTE

    LTE will drive a whole new generation of embedded products interested in high-speed data rates.  The trend towards video over text on the internet and mobile operators allowing users to tap into the benefits of mobile Skype will see more congestion on their data networks.  LTE is a big step for embedded devices and with the adaption of 6lowpan expect to see more a more devices connected to the internet.