Essential IoT standard gets a second edition

A much awaited second edition of a foundational standard for the IoT.

When the first edition of ISO/IEC 30141 was published in 2018, both IEC and ISO knew that they were paving the way for technologies related to the IOT to be used across many different areas, from the industrial IoT to automotive and consumer applications. As the Chair of the Committee François Coallier explained at the time, "One of the challenges we faced was that the market for the IoT was growing and evolving rapidly, thanks to ever more powerful computer systems and the lowering of sensor prices and other devices, but technologies were still immature in many respects. We had to keep track of all these developments and reach a global consensus before publishing."

But he also acknowledged that the document would have to be regularly updated as the technologies in the IoT space were rapidly evolving. "We left many points out for the revision work which had already started, even at the time we published. We knew it was imperative to continuously update this crucial document to keep up with the rapidly changing technological landscape."

From single architecture to patterns

The much awaited second edition of this foundational standard is now about to be published.

According to the experts who worked on the document, the new standard is based on the concept of patterns, instead of one all-encompassing architecture, making it more adaptable and flexible to the evolving IoT environment. It is a comprehensive revision, which took into account more than 1500 editorial comments from National Committees.

"The technological environment for the IoT is changing rapidly. Systems are becoming more complex, and their architectures are more diverse. Edition 1 was trying to capture the diversity of IoT architectures with a single model and is therefore monolithic in its approach. Edition 2 supports the diversity of modern architectures, enabling a system architect to better leverage existing knowledge when building new systems," explains Torbjörn Lahrin, who was the main project editor.

According to the experts, who are also working on a technical report to explain how to use the standard, "Patterns can be understood as reusable solutions to a particular problem. They reflect the knowledge gained from past experience and allow this expertise to be effectively leveraged for new designs." By providing a set of patterns that can easily be composed into different architectures, 30141-2 makes it easy to leverage existing knowledge to solve new and future system design problems.

Antonio Kung was one of the main experts working on the new edition. "Some of the examples of patterns in Edition 2 are enterprise pattern, IoT component capability pattern and digital twin pattern," he lists.

A new edition is already on the cards. "IEC 30141-3 is under development. The major structure will remain unchanged, while a pattern repository will be added. We are also putting in place a structure for adding new patterns in a short cycle, without the need to update the standard each time," says Eric Simmons who was one of the leading experts on the project. This will allow the standard to keep pace with the fast pace of new developments in the IoT space.