COIT20261 Network Routing And Switching For Interconnected Devices

With the Advances in the communication and internet technology, it has introduced another computing paradigm where interconnected devices, in different forms, are continuously getting popular, penetrating our surroundings and planning to improve all perspectives of daily human life (Palattella et al. 2016). The IP-based network of devices, services and frameworks, which provides better user experience compared to the conventional machine-to-machine and human-to-machine interactions.

The digital devices around us are getting to be more intelligent, smarter and consistently connected with each other. Furthermore, this device is collaborating with each other. It has just begun empowering new business opportunities by associating sensors, cloud services and information to develop a network of everything (Beyene et al. 2017). Basically, IoT suggests the idea of connecting   any deevice with an 'on and off' change to each other or with the web. The devices can be cell wearables, phones, refrigerators, microwave and everything that can be connected to the internet.

The interconnected devices are mostly residing in short range with the network connectivity of low power wireless networks (Tian, Famaey and Latré 2016).  These devices have their own predefined operations. For these reasons, the existing protocols that are currently used for internet cannot be directly used to create the network of these devices.

 The following paper contributes to the discussion about the different communication protocols used for IoT, advantages of using IoT, different type pf wireless connections used  in IoT network. In addition to that the Comparison and contrast between Sigfox and other networks for IoT is also discussed in the different sections of this report.

6LoWPAN: IPv6 Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network or the 6LoWPAN protocol enables IoT devices to use the IPv6 over the 802.15.4 wireless networks. Most often the 6LoWPAN is used for wireless sensor networks in which the devices operate.

ZigBee: ZigBee which operates in the same 2.4GHz wireless spectrum in which the Bluetooth works (Beyene et al. 2017). Compared to Bluetooth the ZigBee provides longer range (which is up to 100 meters).  It also provides lower data rate compared to the Bluetooth network (maximum 250 kbps when compared to 270 kbps provide by Bluetooth).

It is a mesh network protocol. Not all the IoT devices can sleep between the

data transmission bursts. Based on their position in the network they act as routers or controllers within the network.  This network is developed and designed for mainly home automation applications using the IoT devices.

Extended Coverage-GSM-IoT: This protocol enables new abilities of presently available cellular networks for Low Power Wide Area IoT devices and applications.  This protocol can be stimulated over the new software installed over a huge GSM footprint. This enable the existing networks to cover as well as serve more IoT devices inside a network.

Small routing table faster performance:  With the increased address space IPv6 also reduces the length of routing tables which makes routing more efficient as well the performance of the IoT devices too.

Connectivity: Presently there are numerous issues faced in case of use of the IoT devices inside a NAT protocol (Tian, Famaey and Latré 2016). NAT was developed in order to enable the organizations who required multiple devices as well as people to share the same IPv4 address (Beyene et al. 2017).  Thus in IPv4, makes the job of addressing a IoT devices uniquely difficult where as IPv6 can easily accommodate this requirement for IoT.

Better security: As IPv6 is provides the end to end encryption and integrity check of the data a standard feature of this protocol thus helps in better security for the transmitted data between the IoT devices.  

WiMax:  WiMax is the abbreviation of Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. This technology enables the devices to exchange data at a rate of 30-40 megabits/second (Palattella et al. 2016). The term directly refers particularly to interoperable executions of the IEEE 802.16 family.

Thread: IT is an open standard connection. Mainly developed depending on the 6LoWPAN as well as IPv6 protocols. Users can actually use same chips for Thread as they use for ZigBee connections as both of them are based and operates on the 802.15.4.

Bluetooth: It is a global 2.4 GHz connections mainly used for for short-range wireless communication (in few meters) (Tian, Famaey and Latré 2016).  Mainly the wireless connections between devices, device-to-device file transfers, and for wireless headsets are often enabled using the Bluetooth connection.

For this segment we have selected the NB-IOT, LoRa and Sigfox.

NB-IOT:   This network is used to deploy IoT devices which significantly enhances power consumption of the IoT devices, spectrum efficiency, as well as system capacity in case of deep coverage of the IoT devices (Beyene et al. 2017). Use of this network can support Battery life more than 10 years for a wide range of use cases.

 This network is used by the numerous users as it helps in very low power consumption by the devices, extended range to reach the devices in underground and buildings with easy deployment process. It can be integrated with existing cellular network architecture in order to leverage the benefits of existing infrastructure. In addition to that it also provides network security & reliability of the transmitted data with the lesser component cost. NB-IOT are mainly for simple devices which needs to be connected to an operator’s network through a licensed spectrum.

LoRaWAN uses unlicensed spectrum available in the network.  This network can be used by non-mobile operator customers in order to implement IoT based solutions. It must be kept in mind that LoRaWAN based IoT networks interfere between the other networks in case there are multiple devices are operated in an area.

As this network is capable has much higher data rates with MAC sophistication, and higher power base stations thus it offers advanced features for routing of the transmitted data, firmware broadcast, multicast etc (Palattella et al. 2016).  It also provides bidirectional communication by utilizing a special CSS (chirp spread spectrum) technique. It spreads a narrow band signal through a wider channel bandwidth. In addition to that, numerous transmissions by utilizing several spreading factors can be acknowledged at the same time by a LORa base station inside a IoT network (Tian, Famaey and Latré 2016).

For SigFox, it is an ultra-narrowband technology. Using standard radio transmission method known as the BPSK (binary phase-shift keying), and it picks narrow chunks of spectrum from the transmitted data by the IOD devices, after that it changes phases of the carrier radio wave in order to encode the data into that radio wave (Beyene et al. 2017).

Compared to other networks Sigfox provides the minimum cost radio modules which is less than $5, when compared with LoRa (~$10) and NB-IOT ($12).

Sigfox is uplink only. Though limited downlink is possible, it has a different link budget, and is very restricted.

With the requirement of wide area coverage, inexpensive wireless connectivity, low power consumption by the IoT devices asks for the networks and technologies in order to develop and enable strong business cases using the IoT devices for low throughput applications. This application that does not require ultra-low latency and bounded jitter in the network.

In  the use cases where it is important to achieve extended range a proprietary technique is utilized by SigFox (most optimal network) which uses gentle modulation rate to transmit data between the base stations and nodes in the network. It turns out to be the best option for the application where it is required to sending small data bursts in infrequent intervals.  The SigFox is used in the water meters, smart dustbins, parking sensors inside the parking areas. With all this advantages one of the drawbacks of this technology is its downlink that is the way it replies back to IoT devices/sensors. This feature is severely limited and due to this it may cause in arise of the issue of signal interference.

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