The communication layer is designed according to several fundamental engineering principles.
First, communication should remain transparent to higher software layers.
Applications, analytical services and Artificial Intelligence should not depend upon the specific technology used to transport measurements.
Second, the communication infrastructure should be modular.
Replacing one communication technology with another should require minimal changes to the remainder of the platform.
Third, communication reliability should take precedence over raw transmission speed.
Environmental monitoring rarely requires high-bandwidth connections, but it does require dependable and predictable delivery of engineering data.