Technologies used in IoT
Technologies used in IoT
- Bluetooth
- Bluetooth low Energy (BLE)
- Wi-Fi (wireless Fidelity)
- Low Power Wi-Fi (WiFi-Halow)
- LiFi (Light Fiselity)
- Cellular Networks
- Z-Wave
- RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)
- X-10
- Sigfox
- Zigbee
- Low range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN)
- 6LoWpan
- 5G
- Low Pawer Wide Area Networks (LPWAN)
- Thread
- Near Field Communication (NFC)
- (Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM)
- General Packet Radio Service (GPRS )
- Long-term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A )
- Wireless Sensor Network (WSN )
Bluetooth
- Bluetooth is a wireless personal Area Network (WPAN) protocol designed by the Bluetooth Special interest Group (SIG).
- It is an open standard for short-range transmission of digital voice and data.
- It operates in the frequency band of 2.45 GHz.
- Data transfer rate of Bluetooth is 2.1 Mbps.
Bluetooth low Energy (BLE)
- The Bluetooth low Energy is commonly known as BLE or Bluetooth 4.0 and marketed as Bluetooth Smart.
- It is a wireless standard and is intended to exchange data over short distance and build Personal Area Networks(PANs).
- Due to improved energy consumption, it is suited for sensor and other devices that require low power.
- The devices usually transmit a small amount of data as bursts at 1Mbps speed.
- It is used in application such as smart building, smart transportation, Smart phones, fitness trackers and wearable.
Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity)
- Wi-Fi is wireless technology that allows an electronic devices to exchange data wirelessly (using radio waves) over a computer network, including high-speed internet connections.
- Wi-Fi technology enables IoT wireless connectivity over a LAN using IEEE 802.11 standards.
- Wi-Fi standard 802.11 offers transfer rate of 100 Mbps, making it ideal for data transfer but too power consuming for some IoT applications.
- Wi-Fi is primarily a local area networking (LAN) technology.
- The frequency of Wi-Fi is between 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz.
Low Power Wi-Fi (WiFi-HaLow)
- The original Wi-Fi standard are not suitable for IoT application sue to their frame overhead and high power consumption.
- Hence, IEEE 802.11 working group initiated 802.11ah task group to develop a standard that supports low overhead, power friendly communication suitable for sensor and remotes.
- The WiFi alliance has recently developed ‘WiFi HaLow’ which is based on the IEEE 802.11ah standard.
- The range of WiFi HaLow is nearly twice that of traditional WiFi.
- Designed specifically for low data rate, long range sensors and controllers.
LiFi (Light Fidelity)
- It is new wireless technology that offers high speed data transmission based on Visible Light communication (VLC) principal.
- It uses two main component LiFi controller or coordinator and LiFi dongles.
- The technology uses LED lamps on source side and photo detector based LiFi dongles on destination side.
- Li-Fi can also utilize energy efficient Light-Emitting Diode (LED) light to reduce energy cost.
- Lifi uses light as medium for data communication.
- The speed of data provided by by these LEDs is 100 times faster than the WiFi speed.
Cellular Network
- A cellular network is a radio network distributed over land through cells where each includes a fixed location transceiver known as base station.
- Cellular technology is the basis of mobile phone networks.
- These network exists in various generations such as 3G,4G and 5G of cellular network.
Z-Wave
- Z-Wave is a wireless network standard that consumes very low power and it is widely used for connecting smart devices in the IoT like home automation, lighting controls, security systems, Energy saving etc.
- Uses low-energy radio waves to communicate.
- Applicable for less data speed and small data size applications.
- Cannot be deployed over a wide area as the range is less.
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)
- RFID is small electronic devices that consist of small chip and antenna.
- RFID tags store identifiers and data.
- RDIF is used in indoor moving navigation, smart parking, supply chain management, and battery-less remote control devices applications.
X-10
- X-10 is a protocol for communication among IoT devices, mainly in the home automation sector.
- It is called as the father of modern home automation.
- X-10 provide a remote interface so that lights and other appliances can be turned on and off.
Sigfox
- Sigfox is a cellular style system that enables remote devices to connect using ultra-narrow band, to provide low power low data rate, and low cost communications for remote connected devices.
- Sigfox uses a technology called Ultra Narrow Band (UNB) .
- Sigfox designed to handle low data-transfer speeds of 10 to 1,000 bits per second.
- Sigfox is idle for IoT applications that need to send infrequent and small bursts of data, such as alarm systems, smart meters, smart street lighting, patient monitors etc.
Zigbee
- Zigbee is a low powered, low cost standard on a wireless mesh network designed for battery powered devices and cheaper alternative to bluetooth.
- It is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 communication protocol standard and used for personal area networks(PAN).
- The range of Zigbee device communication is very small (10-100 meters).
Low Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN)
- LoRaWAN is newly developed long range wide area network wireless technology designed for IoT application with power saving, low cost, mobility, security, and bi-directional communication requirements.
- LoRaWAN defines the communication protocol and system architecture for the network in the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer protocol.
- It is ideal for smart cities and industrial applications.
- It is not ideal to be used for real time applications.
6LoWpan
- 6LoWpan is acronym of IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network.
- It is a protocol that is primarily intended for log-range wireless battery-operated IoT devices in regional, national, or global networks.
- The 6LoWpan standard enables any low power radio to communicate to the internet, including 804.15.4, Bluetooth Low energy and z-wave for home automation applications.
- This is 5th generation of wireless, popularly known as 5G. The “G” stands for generation of mobile technology.
- 5G is a medium range communication that offers many improvement over 4G(called LTE-advanced), such as increased speed and better coverage.
- It provides high data transfer rate and more effective and efficient.
Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN)
- It is a type of wireless network used for low power IoT and M2M applications.
- It defines low power area networks (LPWAN) standard to enable IoT and can transmit data over long distance while having low power consumption .
- The LPWAN network offers longer range from 5 Km to 30 Km.
- A very new IP-based IPv6 networking protocol aimed at the home automation environment is Thread.
- Thread used IPv6 for the Internet protocol addressing and each of the devices is IP-addressable.
- Thread enables device-to-device and device-to-cloud communications and reliably connects thousands of products and include mandatory security features.
- Thread is based on the broadly supported IEEE 802.15.4 radio standard, which is designed from the ground up for extremely low power consumption and latency.
Near Field Communication (NFC)
- NFC is a set of the communication-based protocol used for communication between two devices in the range of approximately 10 cm.
- All type of data can be transferred between two NFC enabled devices in second by bringing them close to each other.
- The most used applications are smart phones, contactless payment system, parking meters, e-ticket booking etc.
- NFC is an expensive technology.
- GSM is digital cellular phone technology .
- Developed in the 1980s, GSM was first deployed in seven European countries in 1992.
- GSM provides a short messaging service(SMS) that enables text message up to 160 characters in length to be send using GSM phone.
- GSM phone use a Subscriber Identity Module(SIM) smart card that contain user account information.
- GSM is an open, digital cellular technology used for transmitting mobile voice and data service.
- It is first high-speed digital data service provided by cellular carriers that used the GSM technology.
- GPRS works on GPRS cell phones as well as laptops and portable devices that have GPRS modems.
- User have typically experienced downstream data rates up to 80 Kbps.
- It allows simultaneous use of both voice and data services. Hence, user can have both voice call and data call together.
- LTA-A or LTE advanced, delivers an important upgrade to LTE technology by increasing not only its coverage, but also reducing its latency and raising its throughput.
- LTE-A is a collection of cellular networking standards that is designed to meet M2M and IoT requirements in such networks.
- It is one of the most scalable and cost effective standard compared to other cellular protocol.
WSN (Wireless Sensor Network)
- A WSN is the network that are wireless in nature which comprises of distributed devices with sensors which are used to sense or monitor the environmental and physical conditions like temperature, gyroscope, pressure, etc. and make the embedded processing using these devices.
- These devices are connected through different devices such as GPS, WiFi, RFID, etc. over the networks.
- The most used application of WSN are weather monitoring system, Soil moisture monitoring system, Surveillance system, health care monitoring, Indore air quality monitoring system etc.