Finding
Sensor data rates span eight orders of magnitude, so most data must be processed where it is collected and only summaries sent upstream
A software-defined system sees the world through sensors that range from a temperature probe sending a few bits per second to a camera producing about 2 gigabits per second of raw video. That span of eight orders of magnitude means no system can send everything to the cloud. Gateways and edge computers filter, compress and analyze locally, uploading summaries and triggered events.
Choosing sensors is therefore a systems decision: adding cameras to a depot or vibration monitoring to a factory line also adds network, storage and compute. Battery systems rely on dense, low-rate sensing - every cell voltage and many temperatures - while vehicles and robots rely on high-rate perception. Accuracy and calibration matter more than count: a mis-calibrated current sensor corrupts every state-of-charge estimate built on it.
Sensors
Common sensors
Data rates are typical.
| Sensor | Measures | Data rate | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature, voltage, current | Cell and component state | Bits to kbit/s | Batteries, chargers, motors |
| Vibration, acoustic | Bearing and machine health | ~1 Mbit/s | Factories, motors |
| Meters | Energy flows | Low | Depots, sites |
| Lidar, radar | 3D geometry, range | ~10-100 Mbit/s | Vehicles, robots |
| Cameras | Images, video | ~1-2 Gbit/s raw | Vehicles, robots, inspection |
Sources
Sources and scope
- Scope
- Sensors and IoT in Software-Defined Systems
- Sources
- ElectronsX arithmetic; typical sensor specifications
- Updated
- October 2026