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Fig. 1. Left.  Key Challenges to “Massive IoT” : Energy, Complexity, Density + Security.
Fig. 2. Right. Nature's Massive IoT uses light, power constrained, cryptic receiver biased messaging.


Fig. 3. Soft Chip^TM  - Imprinted Sensor Patches -> Data Logs -> Pigeons -> Cloud  -> Intelligence


Fig. 4. Left.  Logically Contiguous Cloud - where the Cloud joins "broken" connections.
Fig. 5. Center Cloud Orchestration Model - where RF channels, task schedules driven by cloud intelligence. 
Fig. 6. Right. Soft Chip^TM Work Flow - How Edge Intelligence is harvested by Cloud Subscribers. Enlarge
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This glossary explains terms - some unfamiliar, some being used differently  - to describe the Cloud Orchestration Model and 
Soft Chips - Trusted Edge Intelligence operating semi-autonomously in remote, harsh, hostile regions.
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Abstracted Internet. A radio hardware and radio protocol abstracted world where cloud servers manage last mile network topology, RF channel diversity and the timing of when Edge devices speak, listen and relay. This timing is based on application awareness - when Edge sensory data is needed to be delivered.

Ant-like. See also Deterministic Finite Automata Specific Purpose Reprogrammable behaviors. 

Back Off devices must be polite -listen first and wait for silence before talking. This uses more power and processing than simple modems that are listen on cloud scheduled time reservation slots like TDMA. The Cloud Orchestration model sets RF channels (to avoid RF interference) and scheduled time reservation slots.

Carrier Pigeons, Pigeons, Propagators. The packet transport from rudimentary edge protocol to cloud. RFID readers encapsulates the raw signals into a useful format. Similarly Pigeons, over a rudimentary - and legacy supported - serial modem, take in Chirp packets, tag and prune them and put them on a shuttle bus to interested subscribers. Illustration.  
   
Chirps. Taking cues from Nature, (digital) Chirps are terse, cryptic receiver oriented messaging. Birds chirp - and while we can distinguish species of birds we do not understand the meaning. Distinguishable yet Undecipherable. Innately secure. Combined with imprinting at birth, this ensures end-to-end security. Chirp Devices - are imprinted – establishing provenance to “Mother”. On power up chirp devices first scan/listen for “Mother” on private channels and cryptic protocols. Receiver radios on phones or drones respond and imprint the devices. If RF interference occurs, the cloud directs them to other channels or schedules - teaches them new tricks.  Imprints provide an end-to-end trusted system. See Pollen and its use cases.

Cryptic. Chirps are cryptic 1-2 bytes – compare to IPV6 40+. Schedules ensure collision avoidance. Ossified CSMA/CA not needed.+ RFID is a static GUID identification scheme. The tags is applied to boxes in transit and when energized, transmit a code to the reader.
 
Cloud Orchestration. See Illustration, Fig 5. The model manages collision avoidance proactively by:

. RF channel diversity and network topology management - as in scalable O(nlogn) tree structures. More
. Cloud application awareness - when data from the edge is needed - time window of relevance. More
. Addressing conflicting objectives or RF interference by re-imprinting RF channel and schedules. More

Cloud->Edge Thinking. Shifting radio intelligence to the receiver and cloud is functionally equivalent to CSMA/CA and DCF for minimal power Edge. Human driven RF chatter required smarts in phones operating in congested, dynamic RF and this drove BLE etc. devices to use MAC based protocols. In non-urban spaces, RF patterns were learnt, predicted and drove schedules and channels. More: Evolutionary Mesh Networks)
   
Collision Avoidance. Shifting radio intelligence to the receiver and cloud is functionally equivalent to CSMA/CA and DCF for minimal power Edge. Human driven RF chatter required smarts in phones operating in congested, dynamic RF. This drove BLE devices to use MAC based protocols that phones understood. In military environments RF patterns were learnt, predicted and drove schedules & channels. Evolutionary Networks.

Incumbent Edge Based processing for Collision avoidance is inherently inefficient see Backoff for reasons why. In contrast Cloud driven collision avoidance has processing power for all devices under its care. 

Discovery (Fellow Chirpers). Digital version of Bird Call registries will empower discovery of hidden corroborating intelligence. Symbiotic signaling - as in Nature - is currently lost. More.

Design Implosion in this context relates to reducing the design search space by breaking log jams between conflicting objectives. For example low power usage consumption is difficult with the processing power needed for high security in an Edge->Cloud paradigm. Shifting to Cloud->Edge reduces the variables and such conflicting objectives, simplifying the problem space.

Edge. In this context it implies low power consumption IIoT devices operating in remote, harsh, hostile or under-developed regions e.g. where our natural resources are mined or cultivated. They have:

. Need for minimal power usage - use terse protocols and infrequent data log deliveries.
. No one single piece of sampled data is critical - delivery that don't sometimes happen is OK.
. Regions serviced are remote - carrier pigeons visit infrequently and schedules may slip.
. Data logs delivered on a best efforts intermittent connectivity basis and it suffices.
. The primitive Ant-like intelligence is reprogrammable by Cloud agents - carrier pigeons.

Edge->Cloud thinking. Last mile connectivity is challenging in logistic supply chains because pick up and delivery are predicated on available bulk transport (planes, trucks, ships) and distribution from hubs. As a result IoT radios use congested and short range BLE Protocols. Phones - Ubiquitous Pigeons - support it. The cost is "heavier" hardware and power usage. This is edge to cloud thinking and is not sustainable. CSMA/CA and DCF are inherently inefficient - the radios are "polite" and listen/wait till the shared RF medium is silent and available - see Backoff. Conversely Serial Modems are "dumb" - the external environment ensures the time and RF Channel reservation slots- the orchestration of RF chatter is cloud managed.

1. Today: Radios with BLE,Zigbee,Lora=>Proprietary Gateways=>Fractured Markets and Silos=>Not Scalable.
2. Chirp: Low Power/Cost Modem=>All Available Pigeons=>Globally Contiguous Clouds=>Massively Scalable.

Edge Intelligence. The rapidly accelerating confluence of  Distributed AI  with Software Defined Networking (SDN) prompted a shift to Cloud->Edge thinking where networks coalesce as logically contiguous across walled gardens - Global Scale Edge Intelligence. See these  Slides.  Small, Dumb, Cheap, Copious  types of Connectivity then drives new - and currently unimaginable - efficiencies.
 
Evolutionary Networks - combination of the 'How' of network connectivity - topology, channel diversity, bridging across networks is managed and the "When" related to when the data logs are needed - collaborative scheduling. And how the system adapts based on AI forward Distributed sensing and control systems. 

Imprinting.  Right after birth, a bird is imprinted and thus learns cues that differentiate friend (mother) from foe (predator). It is fundamental to their survival. Next, birds of a feather flock together - form trusted private communities. While everyone hears their chirp, it is cryptic and only they know the full meaning of what is being said. Illustration. Distinguishable - for routing - but Undecipherable.

Imprinting establishes Provenance. No third party pre-assigned ID (RFID, MAC etc) needed. Enterprise defines the topic headers that it needs to have the topic based addressing scheme to deliver where requested.

Last Mile Logistics. Bulk  transport (plane, train, trucks) is efficient. The final "edge" delivery is not and has resulted in specialist courier services from Fedex, UPS, Whole foods etc. Similarly IoT Edge "last mile" transports - based on Edge->Cloud thinking are specialists and proprietary, neither sustainable nor scalable. Nor can it address Globally Relevant Challenges we are facing. Hence Cloud->Edge thinking.    

Logically contiguous  - see Fig 4 and explanation in Abstracted Internet

 Locally Unique Identification - see Security . Globally unique ID like MAC-ID not needed when third party identification schemes are not needed because  Enterprises do their own imprinting.

 Pollen a form of Receiver Oriented messaging, intended as a seasonal, (timed) broadcast storms. The network is temporarily congested but the lightness & Elegance of Pollen ensures that the "Network Reach" of pollen is extended by flooding all available carrier pigeon transports - including us and thus allergy season. Chirp protocols take this a step further by adding a short 1-2 byte topic based addressing header so the carrier pigeons make more selectively route to intended recipients ("subscribers"). Pollen are tagged (GPS, timestamps) when forwarded by pigeons to effectively "lost mailboxes" - where intended recipients are covertly watching incoming IoT chatter. Imagine a blank envelope with neither to or from information - and so flooding - as in nature - is the only recourse. Pollen Networks^TM  are used in covert surveillance.

 Provenance. Chirp products are imprinted – establishing provenance to “Mother”. On power up chirp devices first scan/listen for “Mother” on private channels and cryptic protocols. Receiver radios inside phones or USB attached respond, then imprint devices. If RF or schedule interference occurs, the cloud directs them to other channels or schedules - teaches them new tricks.  Imprints provide an end-to-end trusted system.  Establishing provenance of sourced materials - which tree in which forest - has to come from imprinted tags that follow the tree from the forest to the lumber yard and onwards to Consumer. Provenance chains kick in when the tree is first felled - e.g. with RFID++ data logs go back to birth. 

Receiver Oriented See Illustration and Book

Radio Agnostic: Chirp protocols are primitive - all radios support serial modems. Chirp versions of Apples' Airtag may run on existing radios. The Chirp is tagged by the carrier pigeons and the imprinting approach is vendor neutral. Apple and Amazon networks may use existing radios, now Chirp aware. Radio not supported by either family of devices can be USB attached - a simple fix. Networks now extended for both. 

RF Interference. The core reasons resulted in MAC and CSMA/CA  Edge->Cloud thinking.

Scheduling. Control systems need timely inputs from the field – this is back scheduled from when carrier pigeons arrive, the size of the data logs to be stored etc. The entire data logistics supply chain is visible and used to imprints both sensors and pigeons. The Enterprise tunes it to avoid RF interference by changing channels and schedules.

Security. Chirp protocols are receiver oriented. Cloud driven scheduling provides dynamic collision avoidance in both time and RF channels. Thus both the USB powered receiver radio pigeon unit and the chirpers have to know both when, where or how to chirp- both being imprinted by trusted hosted PaaS. 

Additionally, Chirpers don't use MAC ID or other third party UUID Identification. See MAC spoofing and 
Man in the Middle Attack for reasons why. Instead, Chirpers provide a minimal Chirp-ID  - the species ID.  Carrier Pigeons fill in authenticated tagging - GPS location, timestamps and route the IPV6 packet. The Chirp-ID may be generated by the cloud based on the deployed environment. If less than 255 unique species are operating at the same schedules and RF channels ranges - Co-location in time and RF space - then 1 byte suffices as a Chirp-ID. Soft Chips Work Flows and Cloud Orchestration Models leverage cloud intelligence.   

Soft Chips. Chirp protocols are generic and intentionally rudimentary. However simple ant-like edge intelligence is easily imprinted to provide When-this-then-that and If-when-this-then-that processes. Soft Chips are a set of sensors that can be activated by imprinted code to perform specific tasks e.g. make data logs, relay "fire!" alerts. The chipsets may be made in millions because they support multiple use cases.

The intended features - and value - in Soft Chips is in them being:

  . Small             Small Radio Power Usage and Footprint - Long Battery life
  . Dumb            Limited Ant-like processing capabilities - but re-programmable
  . Cheap            Intended to be produced in billions since multi-use sensors & reprogrammable
  . Copious         Densely spread -like seeding crops - to provide dense Edge Intelligence
  . Secure           Imprinting process - end-to-end - is innately secure. See also Provenance
  . Custom          No central standards committee needed. Serial Modem & Open Chirp protocol enough.
  . Agnostic        Chirps are both radio & protocol agnostic. Coexists with all, simple software fix.

Soft Chips is a "natural" alternative to key challenges in remote edge asset management.

     1. Today: Edge with BLE, Zigbee, Lora  => Fractured Markets and Silos   ==  Not Massive versus
     2. Chirp: Edge with Imprinted Pigeons  => Contiguous Clouds and Pub/Sub ==  Massive and Trusted.     

Soft Chips Work Flow. See Fig. 5, 6. Sensor-Pigeon-Cloud flow harvests Global Scale Edge Intelligence.

Stealth Pollen - indiscriminate use of any available transport (Carrier Pigeons) and no filtering - e.g.  Chirp-ID - is wasteful since it is temporarily flooding the network. Intended recipients, watching traffic coming into specialized "lost" mailboxes in hosted services do get the message covertly - as intended.  

Standards. Nature's Massive IoT grew organically, managing collision domains in time and region by evolved differentiated "tunes". The Chirp protocol does not need standards bodies - for these reasons.