The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to accelerate at lightning rates, with a predicted 40 billion connected devices by 2030. At the heart of the success of IoT is efficient data transmission. Yet, with such vast volumes of data created, exchanging this information becomes a challenge! One technology making significant contributions to this data efficiency goal is MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport).
Our partner, Symes, recently tested and successfully integrated MQTT into their satellite service solution, provided by EchoStar Mobile. Below, we share their experience of adopting this technology, its impact and future plans for MQTT.
But first, let’s take a closer look at MQTT, exploring what it is, how it works and what applications it is designed for.
What is MQTT?
MQTT is a lightweight messaging protocol that has become highly valuable for real-time communication in IoT applications. It works on a publish-subscribe model, where devices send messages to a central broker, which then routes them to the appropriate recipients based on topics.
MQTT offers excellent value in IoT applications where reliable, low-latency data transmission is essential. It is particularly beneficial for remote monitoring, industrial automation, smart cities, and asset tracking, where real-time communication between devices and servers is necessary.
The Benefits of MQTT
MQTT offers several advantages that make it ideal for IoT applications:
- Lightweight and Efficient: MQTT protocol packets are designed to be much smaller than those of traditional models, thus reducing bandwidth usage. This advantage is critical in large IoT networks when numerous devices are frequently sending and receiving data.
- Faster Data Transmission: Traditional messaging models are based around a request-response approach, meaning servers must check for updates. This can introduce delays. In contrast, MQTT devices are continuously connected to a server. Data is transmitted as soon as it is available, significantly reducing latency.
- Bi-Directional Communication: MQTT allows both sending and receiving data between devices and servers, making it ideal for remote device management, command execution, and real-time monitoring.
- Quality of Service Levels: MQTT provides three levels of message delivery assurance:
- QoS 0: At most once delivery (fire and forget)
- QoS 1: At least once delivery (acknowledged delivery)
- QoS 2: Exactly once delivery (assured delivery) – This approach gives developers flexibility, which is highly beneficial for IoT as the conditions and connection of devices can vary.
- Scalability: The publish-subscribe model enables easy scaling by decoupling publishers (devices sending data) and subscribers (systems receiving data), allowing each component to scale independently. Since all messages pass through a central broker, it efficiently manages multiple connections and message distribution without devices requiring direct links with one another. This reduces system complexity and improves performance as the network grows.
- Security: MQTT can be secured using TLS/SSL protocols, ensuring data encryption and secure communication between devices.
These benefits collectively make MQTT a robust and versatile choice for IoT deployments.
Symes Testing: Faster, Lighter, and More Efficient
Previously, Symes relied on the AWS SQS request-response model when using EchoStar Mobile’s LoRa®-enabled satellite IoT network for its IoT message handling. With this approach, their systems sometimes saw delays of up to two minutes before messages were received. In some use cases, such as security alerts, these delays could cause significant issues.
As EchoStar Mobile rolled out updates to its LoRa®-enabled satellite IoT network, integrating MQTT to enhance the data transmission process, Symes opted to transition to this model to address its current latency and efficiency concerns.
During their testing phase, the team measured notable improvements:
- Faster message delivery: MQTT reduced the speed of message delivery to just a few seconds.
Seamless integration: Symes found MQTT easy to implement, requiring minimal changes to their existing infrastructure. The documentation provided by EchoStar Mobile allowed them to transition within just two days. - Cost efficiency: Previous messaging protocols issue fees based on message volume. By using MQTT, connected through EchoStar Mobile’s network, this cost was eliminated, making it a commercially attractive solution for expanding IoT networks.
- Scalability: In addition to the reduced complexity of the MQTT model, its ability to route messages based on topics meant that only relevant messages were processed. This enabled more efficient data management, supporting the scalability of Symes’ operations.
Current and Future Uses
Following successful testing, Symes has now fully transitioned to MQTT, with all devices utilising the new protocol. This shift marked a valuable step forward for Symes in providing improved efficiency for its end clients with no service disruption experienced during the transition. Moreover, Symes’ operations benefitted from access to a more cost-effective, scalable IoT solution.
On a wider scale, MQTT offers significant benefits for advanced IoT applications, such as real-time remote asset tracking, emergency alerts, and environmental monitoring. Furthermore, MQTT supports the continued growth of IoT adoption, achieving favourable cost-efficiency and scalability while maintaining high performance in data transmission.
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of adopting MQTT for your IoT applications, please get in touch with the EchoStar team.