Future of Using FPGAs in Internet of Things Applications

Nowadays, with the advancement of technology and population growth,the dramatic increase in energy consumption and the number of powergrid subscribers has created a large amount of new data. Naturally,managing and securing this data is essential. Therefore, optimalmanagement and real-time decision based on this data leads to increasedproductivity and improved overall performance of systems and, thus,the power grid. On the other hand, maintaining the security of this datais very important for various reasons. This data describes subscribers'behavior and habits, and important decisions of control centers are madethrough this data. To this end, multiple concepts and systems, such asthe Internet of Things (IoT), are used to provide the infrastructureneeded for these systems with better quality. To use these systems, likeproviding smart meters to subscribers, different hardware and softwareplatforms with different conditions and adaptations are required. One ofthese options is using the field programmable gate array (FPGA). Theseprocessors are a good option to use in these systems for various reasons,which are also discussed in this article. In this article, we first introduceFPGAs in brief, describe their internal structure, and describe theiradvantages and disadvantages over other options like microcontrollers.In the next section, we review several IoT projects implemented byFPGAs. Finally, we summarize and predict the position of FPGAs incurrent and future IoT applications.

Keywords:

Internet of Things , FPGA , Information Security , Smart Meters