santa and the internet of christmas (iox) digitising the

Santa and the Internet of Christmas (IoX)Digitising the delivery side of Christmas operations

Charles Sturman, Senior Director International Marketing, HiSilicon

Security Level:

Since the time of Saint Nicholas in the fourth-century AD, world population has grown from 200 M to 7.8 Bn and is expected to reach 9 Bn by 2037.

Although Father Christmas has done a fantastic job through ever faster sleighs with increasing load capacity, this exponential rise is unsustainable using current delivery methods.

Multiple inter-governmental studies have proposed various technology assistance schemes to the elf council:• Wide-Area Cellular IoT based real-time Reindeer tracking• Semi-autonomous last-yard precision guided present delivery• Benefits of an overarching fully connected Internet of Xmas (IoX) solution• The ‘good-behaviour-analysis -> logistic-scheduling -> present-delivery’ cycle

HiSilicon (Shanghai) Confidential | 2

The Corporate overview bit .....Enabling smart devices for a fully connected, intelligent world

Chipsets & core parts for smart devices

Smart

City

Smart

Transport

Smart

Home

Enable connected smart devices as the foundation for digital transformation.

All things

sensing

All things

connected

All things

intelligent

Bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.

Smart

Industry

Huawei Confidential3

The scale of the operation

More than 2.2bn children on Earth• ~ 2bn live in developing countries (humanium.com)

Average number of children per household = 2.3• Average household size (inc adults) = 4.9 (Statista 2020)

• 2.3 children on average within the range of 0.5 to 5 (UN, DESA, Population Division 2019)

So, the number of households to be visited = 1bn

In a delivery time available of 32 hours• Flying E to W = 2x Night time on 24th Dec. = 2x 16:00 to 08:00 (timeanddate.com)

57.6 houses visited per μs with 1 to 5 presents delivered per house

Assume ~ 30m km covered in 32 hours = 937,500 km/h = 0.1%C • Earth circumference : 40,000 km, Surface area : 510m km² (Google)

• Inhabitable land : 65m km² (University Texas @ Austin)

So, good news - the laws of physics still work for wireless communications !• Let’s not worry too much about relativity


Autonomous delivery operation (on-device)

• Chimney recognition, trajectory and route-planning

• Correlated with GPS position and target recipient details

Sleigh Area Network

• Local control & telemetry for route planning & delivery

• Rudolph Nose Hub (RNH) for local telemetry & control

• Reliable multi-source fused positioning• GNSS / Cellular positioning / Cloud location

Local-area delivery

• Up to 300 presents per drop to ~60 households• 20~100 households per village / hamlet

(Towns-Cities broken-down on a grid system)• Must complete in 1 μs

• We need a parallel delivery system (drones)

Cloud management system

• Present requests –> good list correlation

• Real-time process

The quick brown foxjumps over the lazy dogThe quick brown foxjumps over the lazy dogThe quick brown foxjumps over the



Present Wish Lists

Good / Naughty Lists

Inventory

Elf ManagementSystem


Cellular IoT Comparison5G NR

(eMBB/URLLC)LTE Cat-19

LTE Cat-16(Cat-12 UL)

LTE Cat-12LTE Cat-4 /

Cat-6LTE Cat-1

LTE Cat-M1(half dup)

LTE NB-IoT

R15 / R16 R13 R12 R11 R8 / 10 R8 R13 R13 / 14

Application Ultra Broadband Broadband Moderate broadband Mobile connectivity MTC

Bandwidth Up to 400MHz (NR) 20 MHz 20 MHz 1.4 MHz 200 kHz

Average Latency (depends on net cfg)

1 ms 2 ms 10 ms 20 ms < 50 ms < 50 ms 20 ms 1s ~ 10s

Data Rate Mbps: DL 4 Gbps 1600 1000 600 150 / 300 10 375 kbps 127 kbps

Data Rate Mbps: UL 1 Gbps 1350 100 100 50 5 375 kbps 159 kbps

Penetration Low Moderate In-building In-buildingBasement

(LTE Cat-0 +15dB)Underground

(LTE Cat-0 +23dB)

MobilityVehicular (300kmh)

(handover)Vehicular (300kmh)




(Cell selection)

UE Cost Adder/Power consumption

Ultra High Ultra High Very High High High Medium Medium Low

Battery life hours hours days days 5-10yrs 10yrs+

Use CasesAutonomous vehicle control / Industrial

robotics / Digital twin

Automotive, UHD real-time video (cctv), Wireless Router

Real-time video (cctv), Wireless

Router

Wearables, Smart Home / City / Retail / Health, Asset Tracking

Wearables, Smart Home / City / Retail / Health, Asset Tracking

Smart Home / City / Metering / Health,

Asset Tracking

5G mMTC

5G (Ultra Broadband)

Broadband

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA)

Key requirements: Reliability, Low latency, Low power, Moderate bandwidth

• Short term: LTE Cat-1 (4G sweet-spot for IoT), Longer term: 5G NR URLLC


Local Area Wireless Comparison

Source: ieeeExplore

Latency

Zigbee Bluetooth LE WiFi HaLow (802.11ah)

2003 2010 2016

Frequency 2.4 GHz 2.4 GHz 700 – 900 MHz

Bandwidth 2 MHz 20 MHz 1 – 16 MHz

Average Latency

~ 100 ms < 10 ms 10 ms

Data Rate Mbps 250 kbps 1 Mbps4 Mbps (2MHz,2x spatial,QPSK)

up to 234 Mbps claimed

Range 10-100 m (line of site) 30 m Up to 20 km

Cost / Power consumption

Low Low Low-Medium

Device intelligence

• Low power optimised positioning

• Inertial sensing

• Image sensing

• Autonomy

Sleigh-telemetry

• High-precision GNSS start point

• Target position and identity

• Real-time good list status

• Drone tracking & guidance

Several trade-offs, but BLE or HaLow look like a good match • For battery longevity in a sleigh-area network with moderate data

requirements, BLE wins

• High bandwidth processing on-board; only moderate data TRx required• Data processing needs to be on-device


Satellite (GNSS) Positioning• Multiple constellations (BeiDou, Galileo, GLONASS, GPS/ QZSS) are

typically combined for high availability and 1~5m accuracy

• Enhanced techniques (eg RTK) and inertial sensor fusion can enable

sub-metre, even cm level precision

• On the other hand, integrated Soft-GNSS solutions can provide

5~10m accuracy with low additional cost and power draw

• E.g. HiSilicon NB-IoT Chip receiving GNSS signals during NB-IoT DRX/PSM

Indoor

1,000

500

100

50

10

0

Base station location

E-CID/OTDOA

Outdoor

Precision (m)

GNSSBLE

Cloud-Loc

Real-time Positioning

LTE Positioning Protocol (3GPP Rel14)• OTDOA (Observed Time Difference Of Arrival)

• E-CID (Enhanced Cell Id)

• Accuracy: ~50m

Cloud based location inference• Measuring available cellular signals at UE &

communicating key metrics back to cloud server for

location analysis and response; E.g. Polte / Skyhook

• Accuracy: ~10m

Fusion• A real-time positioning solution for a critical dynamic IoT system should

take advantage of all available reference points and inertial sensors to

achieve accuracy, availability and especially reliability

Bluetooth (BLE5.0) indoor positioning• BLE antenna can be shared with others (e.g. NB-IoT)

• Distance measurement based on RSSI from Beacon

• Accuracy: 5 – 10m


Smart Vision

Enabling real-time localised route guidance and object avoidance(Similar approach to Advanced Driver Assistance System / ADAS)

• Sensors to identify and track static and moving objects• Object classification & recognition to target the delivery point (Chimney -> Tree)

An example: HiSilcon HiSpark Smart vision platform – ‘other solutions are available!’• Heterogeneous computing platform:

• Neural processor (NPU), Digital signal proc’r (DSP), Intelligent video engine (IVE), CPU and Image signal proc’r (ISP)• 1 to 4 TOPS scalable compute, efficient AI development platform and mainstream algorithm frameworks

• High image quality / low bit rate with adaptive enhancement and video coding for complex lighting and low operation cost• AI performance, power and area (PPA) trade-offs to meet wide-ranging requirements

Visual perception for intelligent recognition and detection on device side• Reduces processing latency and security / privacy-related

risks since visual data stays on-device• From ADAS to process inspection, to battery-powered

smart home devices (doorbells, locks, video games)

• And Intelligent Santa Drone Delivery !

Up to 4TOPS NPU (Da Vinci)

Automotive capable

• Up to 8x 1080P

• HDR/LED de-flicker / de-noising

• AI powered pedestrian detection

• Front fusion ADAS, AVM/APA/AVP

• Live rearview & Drive recording

• Driver monitoringHiSpark Smart Vision Platform

Image process Feature detect

Object recognition

Classif-ication

Decision / Action


Smart Presents

And how does Santa know that you actually got the present, opened it and loved it ?

• An emerging use case for NB-IoT entitled ‘Last-gasp’

• Each present is fitted with a unique logistics tag using an ultra-low cost NB-IoT chip with in-built CPU

1. Enabled after pick-up (sleigh) and drop-off (tree)2. When stationary, a multi-second GPS signal integration process obtains a high-quality position fix3. Later, when the gift-wrap breach sensor triggers:

• A short burst of audio capture records the pleasurable yelp of excitement• The position fix and ‘I love it’ proof-of-receipt are transmitted to Santa via NB-IoT (in-building / underground no problem)

• Acquire GPS → Sleep → Wake on open → Record sound → Transmit → Die

Powered by a one-shot ~ 60,000 µF capacitor

• Total energy ≈ 730 mJ [using C = ]

• Low power Rx & Sync (eDRX) energy ≈ 160 mJ over 10s• 16 mJ /s @ 16 mW per 160 ms

• GPS fix (ttff + 5s integration) @ 25mW ≈ 250 mJ

• Power Save Mode ≈ 1µA (negligible)

• Tx Energy for 1200 bytes ≈ 320 mJ• Tx power @ raw data rate of 30kbps ≈ 1 W• GPS position + 2s speech burst @ 4.75kbps (AMR codec)


Conclusions

The Internet of Christmas requires a number of complimentary technologies• Each one best suited to the specific needs of the problem

• Multiple connectivity techniques create a scalable heterogeneous network

(this is ultimately the vision of 5G / 6G)

The sheer scale and speed of the operation demands intelligence throughout the network• At the edge and in the device

• Avoid transmitting raw data unnecessarily (process and infer first)

• Autonomy enables delegation and distribution of responsibility

A critical system also requires multiple points of failure (Cloud / Edge / Device) and resilience• Process data and infer locally, don’t always rely on round-trips back to HQ

Ultimately digitalisation can reach all the way to the end of the supply-chain• Disposable NB-IoT logistic stamps are already here !

santa and the internet of christmas (iox) digitising the

Documents