Towards a Sustainable IoT with Last-Mile Software Deployment

Billions of sensor-enabled IoT devices generate extreme amounts of e- waste. Because of the low cost and short lifespan of electronic components, it is often more convenient for consumers to buy a new device instead of re-using or re-purposing the old one. With the increased computing and connectivity capabilities, IoT devices can already receive code updates for new purposes (and thus extend their lifespan), but the cost of such operations often exceeds the price of device replacement due to constrained resources, hindered network connectivity, and distributed placement. This paper describes how these existing capabilities can enable last-mile software deployment at scale. We propose a hierarchical architecture for provisioning software updates from the cloud to terminal devices via edge gateways in a scalable and targeted manner. By enabling such an end-to-end software deployment architecture, the approach promotes hardware re-use via re-purposing and thus contributes to the creation of a more sustainable IoT.