Analysis and characterization of short-range and low-power radio technologies for Internet of Things: Protocol and Application

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized the concept of connectivity from only humans to almost everything capable of being connected. The goal of such a massive network of connected things is to improve the quality of lives and the world's economy via a wide range of applications including automotive, monitoring, healthcare, industrial automation, wearable, automated agriculture, smart grids, etc. In order to make the IoT fully functional, yet many building blocks of the IoT including identification, sensing, communications, computation, services and semantics need to be addressed. In this regard, communication technologies are required to connect surrounding heterogeneous objects to fulfill expected services. Among these technologies, short-range and low-power radio technologies are considered as major technologies for enabling Personal Area Networks (PANs) and Body Area Networks (BANs). Due to their importance, we have investigated the most important short-range and low-power radio technologies for the upcoming wave of Machine-to-machine (M2M) and IoT applications from throughput, power consumption, end-to-end delay, link budget and packet error rate perspectives. To serve this purpose, we have developed the related link-level and system-level tools for Wi-Fi Ha Low and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). In addition to simulations, we have conducted experimental studies for BLE and Backscatter Communication System (BCS). By the help of these studies, we have shed lights on some of the challenges related to short-range radio technologies. In addition, we have conducted a comprehensive survey of different time synchronization protocols for IoT deployment which provides a suitable tool for IoT practitioner in order to select appropriate components for their setup. The clock models and clock discipline algorithms are illustrated in atutorial format and their performance for different clock-relation models are evaluated by using simulated data for comparative fairness, computational and memory requirements. Finally, we have developed an end-to-end IoT application using a short-range, low-power radiotechnology. In particular, we have implemented a real-time coordination-based tracking application using low-cost BLE beacons. This application is developed based on the trilateration method to acquire the real-time location of workers and tools in the construction work sites. This application has been deployed and tested in real constriction sites in China and Finland. The results show that the implemented application can be used in the construction sites depending on the accuracy level.