Communication is becoming more and more prevalent nowadays within electronic devices. This can be short range point-to-point between devices just a few metres from each other, or at the other extreme devices far apart in outdoor remote areas gathering data and sending it to the cloud for processing. It could also be something in between, such as a meshed network of low power sensors within a home or office building.

Something else becoming more popular in small systems is obtaining the location of an asset, be it a pet, a lorry load of goods or a handbag. Whilst GNSS (GPS) is best known for determining location, there are other technologies such as u-blox RTK (Real Time Kinematics) which works as an extension of GPS and can give ultra precise location information, and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) which can help on a much smaller scale, by narrowing down the location of an item within the same building.