The automotive industry is rapidly evolving and embracing the concept of connected mobility technology to ensure higher level of automation. Think of an instance where the driver knows the traffic ahead and changes the route after receiving alerts from the fleet manager in real time.  

Or maybe, a situation where EV fleet operators can remotely diagnose the State of Charge (SoC) of their vehicle’s battery. Later, they could send alert drivers to swap it from the nearest battery-swapping station via live location.  

Just imagine how efficiently the entire fleet management system will work to ensure last-mile deliveries and better customer experiences. Sounds impressive right? Well, these are just a few instances, the list of such mobility-specific use cases is huge.  

However, innovating the existing connected mobility network to reach this level of automation has a lot of upcoming challenges. One of them is the failure of communication protocols like HTTP for handling volumes of real-time data traffic. Let’s explore the shortcomings of HTTP protocols and how MQTT protocols create a secure, reliable and scalable communication network for mobility data migration.  Bottlenecks of HTTP Communication Protocol for Migrating Mobility Data  Although HTTP communication protocol can seamlessly transfer mobility data from telematics devices to the cloud, the vice versa isn’t the same. Enlisted below are a few reasons why establishing a C2D (Cloud-to-device) communication network using the HTTP protocol is a complicated process:   Relies on a stable and consistent network connection which is difficult to maintain in mobile or remote scenarios.

Don’t work effectively in a bandwidth-limited environment leading to increased data latency, further affecting real-time responsiveness, such as safety-related alerts   Establishes separate connections for separate requests due to its unidirectional communication that makes it inefficient for real-time use cases like connected mobility   Requires additional security measures other than HTTPS, such as Transport Layer Security or other encryption mechanisms to ensure data integrity and authentication which is a complex process   Ensuring compatibility between HTTP-based communication systems across different vehicles can be difficult due to fragmentation and lack of standardized approaches  All in all, HTTP-based communication fails to work efficiently in real-time scenarios which require instant actions. Here is where alternative protocols like MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) play an essential role. MQTT protocol facilitates secure and efficient communication between vehicles and a central server. Scroll down to understand more about MQTT communication protocols and their role in IoT (Internet of Things). 

What is MQTT Protocol and its components in Connected Mobility Ecosystem?  

MQTT or Message Queuing Telemetry Transport is one of the most standard messaging protocols for verticalized mobility IoT platforms. All thanks to the lightweight publish-subscribe messaging model it follows to connect IoT devices with utmost scalability, reliability, and efficiency.  

MQTT Broker and MQTT Client are the two major components of this protocol which uses a pub/sub communication method. For instance, the in-built speed sensor of a delivery truck publishes its odometer data to the MQTT broker which a client-server can receive after subscribing to the speed data topic.  

This process reduces the unnecessary data traffic, further reducing latency that was actually a matter of concern in HTTP network communication. What more? The fleet managers can utilize this data to monitor the fleet speed in real-time and take quick decisions if an event occurs. But is this the only reason why an MQTT protocol is better than HTTP? Of course, not.   

Let’s discuss the other perks of MQTT communication protocol in the connected mobility ecosystem.  

Ensures stability in a bandwidth-constraint network environment   

MQTT is a lightweight and efficient protocol that runs efficiently in a bandwidth-constraint network environment. It uses a binary format with small message headers for minimizing the protocol overheads, reducing data size transmitted over the network.   

Consequently, it conserves the network bandwidth and decreases the possibilities of data latency which is essential in some mobility-specific cases which require real-time insights.   

For instance, fleet managers can leverage these real-time insights to send live notifications to fleet drivers about various live events like route diversions. Ultimately, it will ensure efficiency in last-mile deliveries. 

Works efficiently in complex device networks with QoS support.

QoS Level 0 QoS Level 1 QoS Level 2 Role: Message is sent once without acknowledgement or retries Role: Message is acknowledged by the receiver, and if no acknowledgement is received, it is retransmitted Role: Message is guaranteed to be delivered exactly once by using a four-step handshake mechanism. 

Pros: Minimizes the network traffic 
Pros: Ensures message delivery 
Pros: Ensures reliability in highly constrained network environments 

Cons: Might lead to message loss  
Cons: May result in message duplication  
Cons: Might lead to network overheads  

The MQTT protocol provides 3 levels of QoS (Quality of Service) for communication, enabling reliable messaging in various network environments. It allows the devices to select the relevant QoS level according to their network constraints and message criticality.  

All in all, this plays an essential role in controlling the amount of network traffic generated during message transmission. 

Provides a Clean Session Mechanism  

Another benefit of using MQTT is its clean session mechanism while transmitting vehicle data. It allows MQTT clients to establish new connections without any need to retain the previous session state or data. 

It facilitates fast recovery from network interruptions without waiting for historical data.  As a result, this clean session mechanism in MQTT increases the vehicle’s data security and efficiency in real time.   

Supports a Plethora of IoT Device Connections at Scale  

MQTT Brokers are both horizontally and vertically scalable, depending on the protocol type and its use case. Vertical scalability in MQTT focuses on handling the increased IoT connection demands within a single MQTT broker by expanding its capacity.   

Whereas, horizontal scalability in MQTT refers to the distribution of workload across the MQTT infrastructure by adding multiple MQTT brokers. Furthermore, these brokers work together as a unified system. For instance, the Mosquitto protocol scales horizontally.   

Shortcomings of MQTT Communication Protocol  

Although MQTT protocols ensure secure and reliable communication, there are still some challenges associated with it. One of them is the interoperability issues due to their different versions. Besides that:  

Higher QoS levels of communication in MQTT require additional processing and storage resources that are time-consuming and costly  Some implementations of MQTT protocols might have limitations or variations in their QoS support, further leading to data inconsistencies in message delivery guarantees or behaviors  Sometimes, the usage of TCP/IP as the transport layer for MQTT can introduce delays and retries in the congestion control mechanisms, affecting the performance and efficiency of the connected mobility IoT systems    Unifying Protocols from Various IoT Devices with Zeliot’s Device-agnostic Approach.  

No matter what the communication protocol is, each of them has some pros and cons. Here is where we need to switch to a device-agnostic platform that unifies disparate protocols from various devices, further overcoming compatibility issues and data inconsistency. Zeliot’s Condense is one such platform.  

By unifying the protocols of various devices, Zeliot’s Condense enables higher-level applications to access the functionalities of various telematics devices in a versatile manner. This device-agnostic approach eliminates compatibility and interoperability issues, further streamlining the development process for application developers.    

Besides that, it Condense scales automatically, further reducing the load of IoT devices and overcoming data latency issues. Ultimately, it allows the OEMs and enterprises to receive rich datasets. Furthermore, they can apply custom business logic on top of these datasets to derive actionable insights in real-time.   

Wrapping it up,  

As the connected mobility network is rapidly evolving, there is no day when connected vehicles will reach the 5th level of automation. Reliable and efficient protocols like MQTT will play an essential role in it, and how you already know after going through this blog post.   

With Condense's out-of-the-box protocol connector models & blazing-fast data pipelines, you can effortlessly extract and streamline mobility data from multiple sources directly into your existing IoT infrastructure.   

Later, you can convert your data into valuable business insights by connecting its built-in transformer layers, depending on your mobility-specific use case. The best part is the entire process is automated and works on an LNLC (Low Code No Code) interface.