Electronic Environment #4.2016
SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS ON EMC FOR
INTERNET OF THINGS The ongoing technical development towards the full vision of the Internet of Things will affect the area of EMC in the way that an increased consideration of social and organizational aspects will be needed in addition to the more or less traditional engineering approach that has characterized the EMC area up to now. The term Internet of things (IoT) refers to the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. Kevin Ashton, one of the founders of the original Auto-ID Center, was the first to use ”Internet of Things in a wider sense in 1999. The overall goal of Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) is the correct operation of different equipment in a common electromagnetic environment. The common way to achieve this goal is today typically solved by a pure technical engineering approach where standards, regulations and proven design criteria play a fundamental role. This approach may in most cases achieve EMC, at least for static cases and scenarios that do not change significantly over time. However, the more unpredictable scenarios we have, the more difficulties this static approach will experience. The current development towards Internet of Things (IoT) where a massive increase of wireless technology via the 5G telecommunication development is foreseen, is expected to pave the way for the so called Networked Society. The Networked Society could therefore be seen as the realization of the full vison of the IoT. This development will highlight several new challenges for EMC. The vision of the Networked Society involves, in principle, all sectors of society. Examples are smart
cities, e-health, smart homes, smart grids, smart agriculture, intelligent transport systems (ITS), logistics, industrial control, environmental monitoring, education, entertainment and media. Forecasts of the growth of the number of connected devices are done continuously by different actors. A few years ago, forecasts were in the order 50 billion devices 2020, but those forecasts have now been considered as too optimistic. Fig. 1 shows a typical example of current forecasts. The largest growth in Fig. 1. is due to IoT-applications and the growth of PC/laptop/tablets and mobile phones is typically estimated only to a few percent from 2016 to 2020.
Fig. 1: Typical forecast of the total number of connected devices in the world.
This development will create a complexity of co-location scenarios that has never been seen before. New electronic devices, both non-wireless and wireless will be co-located almost everywhere in the society and these scenarios will be highly random and dynamic, strongly affected by the habits of the consumers. Co-location scenarios will be largely driven by customer instant needs and social habits and will thus be characterized by being flexible, mobile and unpredictable. The challenge to achieve EMC in such an unpredictable environment will require new ways of thinking and planning in addition to traditional regulations and technical engineering. Social behavior and organizational issues will be of increased importance. EMC by regulations, standards and technical engineering practice is state of the art but the involvement of social and organizational aspects requires new knowledge to be considered. With the on-going rapid increase of electronic products among consumers, all possible co-location scenarios cannot any longer be foreseen. Thus, the consumer behavior will play a more and more significant role whether or not EMC is achieved. Furthermore, even if we rely on standards, regulations and engineering practices, the human being can strongly affect the probability of achieving EMC. For example,
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