Connected Edge covers everything between the sensor and the dashboard: data acquisition, embedded firmware, wireless links, gateways, device protocols, provisioning, over-the-air update and cloud ingest. It is the platform that decides whether a connected product is a product or a prototype, because the difference is almost entirely in fleet management, update and lifecycle.
Range, power, infrastructure and data rate pull against each other. The choice is usually forced by the site, not the datasheet.
| Link | Typical range | Power profile | Infrastructure needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| NFC | Under 10 cm | Passive or near-zero | Reader at the point of use |
| Bluetooth Low Energy | 10–100 m | Years on a coin cell | Gateways or receivers on site |
| Ultra-wideband | 10–50 m | Higher; duty-cycled | Anchor network on site |
| Wi-Fi | 30–100 m | Mains or frequent charge | Existing WLAN |
| LoRaWAN | 2–15 km | Years on primary cells | LoRaWAN gateway and network server |
| DECT NR+ | Per hop, extended by mesh relay | Months to years; relaying nodes drain faster | None — autonomous mesh, no operator |
| LTE-M / NB-IoT | Wide area | Months to years, duty-cycled | Operator coverage only |
| NTN satellite | Global | Highest per message | Sky visibility |
Each unit receives its identity and credentials during manufacture, in a process that is auditable and does not depend on a technician getting it right.
The device reaches the platform, authenticates and registers itself without a truck roll or a smartphone app the installer has never seen.
The fleet reports health, not just payload. Connectivity quality, battery state, reset causes and firmware version are all first-class data.
Firmware and configuration are delivered in stages, with rollback, so that a bad release affects a canary group rather than the installed base.
Reporting intervals, thresholds and behaviour are changed remotely, per device or per group.
Decommissioning, credential revocation and data retention handled deliberately rather than by abandonment.
It sits between local sensors or devices and the network, translating protocols, buffering data when connectivity drops, applying local processing or filtering, and forwarding to the cloud over MQTT or a similar transport. Custom gateways are built where the sensor set, environment or protocol mix does not match a standard unit.
MQTT and MQTT-SN, CoAP, HTTP and WebSocket transports on the device side, and Modbus, OPC UA and common fieldbuses on the industrial side. The IoT Simulator product covers MQTT, MQTT-SN and LoRaWAN 1.0.3 Class A and C with both OTAA and ABP activation.
Yes. Ingest, device registry, fleet management, over-the-air update, analytics and dashboards are part of the platform, on AWS or Azure.
Tell us the specification, the constraint and the deadline. Programmes that cross silicon, radio, embedded and AI are where Faststream is strongest.