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Introduction:

Embedded Systems are part of our lives. We can find them in several

applications, like home appliances, industrial plants, medical equipments,

communication devices, and automotive applications, among others.

Some embedded systems are generally located remotely from people that

service or operate them. In such cases, tasks like monitoring their operation,

checking their performance, collecting data, or upgrading the application

software can be a costly and time consuming process. Also, some

applications could get great benefits if they could remotely report their

status, get remote data to process, or even send remote messages to have

their administrator informed about some incidents.

Many applications require huge memory and processing power necessary to

run complex algorithms that generate certain results. Due to embedded

systems limited resources, those kinds of applications are restricted to only

certain microcontrollers' families. If we provided internet-connectivity to

those embedded systems, they could use the internet resources, so these

complex algorithms could be resolved remotely in external servers. In this

way, with few resources we could get great results using external

intelligence stored in Internet.

The demand for internet connected products is growing. Internet is seen as

the most cost effective way of remotely monitoring and controlling

embedded systems. As internet has grown, it has become the world's low

cost network, allowing data to be passed relatively cheaply across

continents. So, there is no doubt at all, that while the embedded system

applications are still growing, the internet connected embedded systems are

the next step, in the near future.

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Protocol overview:

Devices must communicate with each other (D2D). Device data then must

be collected and sent to the server infrastructure (D2S). That server

infrastructure has to share device data (S2S), possibly providing it back to

devices, to analysis programs, or to people. From 30,000 feet, the protocols

can be described in this framework as:

MQTT: a protocol for collecting device data and communicating it to

servers (D2S)

XMPP: a protocol best for connecting devices to people, a special case of

the D2S pattern, since people are connected to the servers

DDS: a fast bus for integrating intelligent machines (D2D)

AMQP: a queuing system designed to connect servers to each other (S2S)

Each of these protocols is widely adopted. There are at least 10

implementations of each. Confusion is understandable, because the high-

level positioning is similar. In fact, all four claim to be real-time publish-subscribe IoT protocols that can connect thousands of devices. And its

true, depending on how you define real time, things, and devices.

Nonetheless, they are very different indeed! Todays Internet supports

hundreds of protocols. The IoT will support hundreds more. Its important

to understand the class of use that each of these important protocols

addresses.