Communication Technologies and protocols

The notion of internet of things entails machine to machine communication (M2M) or device to
device communication (D2D) in which sensors, processors and actuators work in synergy to
achieve a task. The data of the devices are sent to the servers for further processing or for storage
purposes or further analysis to another server (S2S). The data from the servers are finally sent to
another device or possibly to people [1].
The communication channel between M2M is generally wireless as IoT devices are typically not
co-located and customarily geographically distributed over multiple locations. The wireless
communication is susceptible to distortion and is generally unreliable. Towards such end,
reliably sending data without any loss or latency is an important problem and thus
communication and network technologies are essential to the study of IoT devices.
As IoT devices are increasing at an exponential rate leading to large number of heterogeneous
IoT devices hooked to internet. These devices rely on standardized protocols so that
communication among them can take place securely and reliably. The standardized protocols are
the rules and policies defined for network devices to establish the communication and manage
the data transmission across the network. The communication networks are built up from layers
of technologies often called as Internet Protocol (IP) stack. The bottom layers of IP stack are
dealing with physical connection with devices such as Bluetooth connections, while the layers
further up are delegated to manage the logical addressing of devices based on IP addresses (such
as IPv6) and routing of network data. The technologies running at the top of IP stack are used by
applications such as message queuing [46].
People and embedded systems use internet very differently. People use the internet through the
web, email, texting, and social media tools. In the internet of things, embedded devices exchange
information with each other over the internet but these devices don’t have the machine
equivalent of web browsers and social media. So the protocols for internet of people are not
same as for internet of things. For internet of people we commonly use HTTP, TCP, UDP, and
web sockets. In contrast to these we have specific protocols such as CoAP, MQTT, particularly
designed for IoT communications [47].
The design of an IoT device must take into account how the local area network will be connected
to the internet. This can be done through a gateway or alternative this capability can be built
directly into an IoT device.

3.1 Networking Standards and Technologies

The Open Standard Interconnection (OSI) is a conceptual model which is intended to define and
standardize the key communication functions of any telecommunication or computing system
regardless of their underlying architecture and technology. It consisting of seven layers, defining
the IP stack. The layers in this model include application, presentation, session, transport,
network, data link and physical layer as shown in the Figure 1 [46-48].

Figure 1: OSI Reference model and TCP/IP model [46]

The TCP/IP suite is central to internet communication and provides simplified implementation of
TCP/IP model based on OSI reference model. It maps the seven layered OSI model to four
layered TCP/IP model by merging some of the OSI layers as shown in Figure 1. These four
layers include Application, Transport, Internet, and Network access & Physical layer. These are
briefly described as below:
3.1.1 Network Access and Physical Layer:
This layers consists of bottom two layers of OSI model including the physical and data link
layers. The OSI physical layer is concerned with the physical connections of the devices using
transmission wires, cables, or radio technology such as Bluetooth, WiFi (IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n)
etc. The data link layer of OSI model deals with the physical addressing of the devices using
MAC addresses and most of the network switches operate at this layer.

3.1.2 Internet Layer:

The internet layer of TCP/IP model corresponds to the network layer of OSI model and the
protocols at this layer specify the logical connections of network devices using IP addresses and
the routing of devices data across the network. For IoT devices, IPv6 is typically implemented
for device addressing.

3.1.3 Transport Layer:

The transport layer maps to the 4th layer of OSI model and is dedicated for managing end to end
communication and ensures that the sequencing and ordering of data packets remain same from
host to destination. Additionally, it offers services such as security, reliability through data
acknowledgements and retransmission of lost packets, and flow control.
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) are the protocols
of the transport layer. TCP is mainly used for internet of people where most of the
communication takes place via e-mail, texting and web-browsing. For this reason, it is
considered to be the only protocol used at this layer. However, for an IoT system, where real
time data transmission and low power consumption are the main concerns, TCP can be
unsuitable due to large data overheads related to acknowledgment and retransmissions.
For real-time applications such as voice and video transmission, UDP is preferred as it is better
suited for such use cases. For instance, if a data packet comprising of a voice signal is lost
during transmission or does not arrive at its destination in time, then even retransmitting that
packet would not fix the problem as it would arrive out of sequence and distort the message. So
UDP is often implemented for IoT data transmission for performance reasons [46-47].

3.1.4 Application Layer

The application layer of the TCP/IP model corresponds to the top three layers of OSI model i.e
application, presentation, and session layers. This layer is dedicated for application-level
messaging and defines the user interaction with the network using Hyper Text Transfer Protocol-
Secure (HTTP/HTTP-S), Domain Name Service (DNS), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet,
Secure Shell (SSH), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and so on [48].

3.2 Internet of Things (IoT) Networking Protocols

Technologies used for internet connectivity, like Ethernet, for example, can often be applied
within the IoT; however, new technologies are being developed specifically to meet the
challenges of IoT. As you look further down the stack toward physical transmission
technologies, you face more challenges that are specific to IoT devices and IoT contexts.

The structure of a network is known as its topology. The most common network topologies that
are adopted within IoT are star and mesh topologies. In a star topology, each IoT device is
directly connected to a central hub (gateway) that communicates the data from the connected
devices upstream. In mesh topologies, devices connect to other devices within range, and nodes
within the network can act as simple sensor nodes, as sensor nodes that also route traffic, or as
gateway nodes. Mesh networks are more complex than networks with star topologies, but have
the advantage of being more resilient to failure because they don't rely on a single central
gateway.
 zigbee, sigfox, lora, Ant

Transport- sms

Internet, lowpan, IPv4

Application: allSeen, Open IoT, 1XM, Hypercat,

How does latency of MQTT compared with COAP

Figure 2: IoT Network Protocols Mapped to TCP/IP Model

3.2.1 Network Access & Physical Layer IoT Network Technologies

The IoT communication technologies at bottom layer of IP stack include Ethernet, Wi-Fi,
Cellular, and other low power technologies such as LPWAN, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE),
ZigBee, NFC, and RFID [46].

3.2.1.1 Ethernet
This networking technology is typically used for wired connections of devices within local area
networks, Ethernet implements the IEEE 802.3 standard. The IoT devices are generally wireless
but it is not necessary that all IoT devices should be connected in this fashion. The wired and
wireless communications depend on the domain requirements. Wireless connections are
preferred for mobile IoT devices whereas for stationary or fixed sensor nodes, wired
communication is well suited. For example, sensor units that are installed within a building for
its automation can use wired networking technologies like Ethernet or alternatively can use
Power line communication (PLC), which are based on existing electrical wiring instead of
dedicated network cables [46].

3.2.1.2 Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi protocols are based on IEEE 802.11 standard and is most suitable for wireless home and
other commercial networks. Wi-Fi networks generally operate in star topology with a single
access point which acts as a gateway as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Wi-Fi Network [34]

The Wi-Fi technology is mainly based on radio waves. The other essential elements of Wi-Fi
technology are router and antenna. The routers and antennas transmit radio waves and the Wi-Fi
enables devices gets connected to the router as soon as they comes in its close proximity such as
100-150 feet. The range of the Wi-Fi is sensitive to the obstacles in the surroundings. The
closer the device are to the router the stronger the connection, thus increasing the data
transmission rate. There are four different types of Wi-Fi technologies which includes Wi-Fi-
802.11a, Wi-Fi-802.11b, Wi-Fi-802.11g, Wi-Fi-802.11n [43-44]. These different versions
represent incremental increase in the data rates as shown in Table 1.
 Figure 4: Wi-Fi standards and their operational frequency [44]

802.11 was the first standard that run at 2.4 GHz frequency and provided the maximum data rate
of 1.2Mbps. Subsequently, 802.11a was launched which provided high speed data transmission
at a frequency greater than 5GHz. The development of 802.11b brought the low cost feature
along with improved data rates. Further, the launch of 802.11n introduced the optional use of
5GHz frequency and the use of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas for higher data
transmission speed (450 Mbps theoretically) and overall improved efficiency. This standard has
backward compatibility with 802.11b/g when run at 2.4GHz. It is also backward compatible with
802.11a when run at 5GHz frequency. 802.11ac standard brought the concept of Gigabit Wi-Fi,
which the fastest Wi-Fi standard hitherto. This standard operates at 5GHz frequency where data
rate approaches to 1Gbps. To achieve long distance communication 802.11ah also known as
HaLow was introduced which operates at 900MHz and supports data rates ranging from 15kbps
to 18 Mbps. This standard is highly suitable for battery powered devices which need to send only
small data (more discussed in the following section). One of the recent development in Wi-Fi
series is 802.11af standard, which is also called as White-Wi-Fi or super Wi-Fi as it runs in
 television unused spectrum band i.e 54MHz and 790 MHz, making it the longest range Wi-Fi
technology until now that provide extended long range coverage [43-45].
Table 1: Features of various Wi-Fi standards [44]

802.11 802.11a 802.11b 802.11g 802.11n 802.11a 802.11a 802.11af

(legacy) c h

Max 1.2 Mbps 54 Mbps 11 Mbps 54 Mbps 150 Mbps 800 18Mbps 426.7Mbps
Speed Mbps

MIMO No No No No up to 4 up to 8

Frequency 2.4 GHz 5.8 GHz 2.4 GHz 2.4 GHz 2.4 - 5 5 GHz 900MHz 54 -
GHz 790MHz

Range 20 m 35 m 35 m 70 m 70 m 35 m 1000 m >1000 m

Year 1997 1999 1999 2003 2009 2013 2017 2014

Wi-Fi is capable of transmitting large volumes of data comprising of several Megabytes at very
high speed. This technology is widely deployed in all areas such as home, restaurants, airports,
trains, educational institutes, hospitals which makes it a convenient option to be used for IoT
networks [3, 7]. However, the high data rates of Wi-Fi networks consume more power whereas
IoT devices operate at low power especially in case of wireless home. They transmit small data
frames at low rates and are powered by small batteries which are designed to function for longer
periods or may be several years.
On the other hand, Wi-Fi devices are supposed to be charged regularly to support high data
transmission rates and to maintain a continuous connection as its signals are susceptible to
obstructions through walls. Thus, other communication technologies, such as Zigbee and
Bluetooth complement Wi‐Fi in the smart home and other IoT applications [3].
3.2.1.3 Low Power Wi-Fi:
In order to resolve the high power ingestions issues related to traditional Wi-Fi technology, the
Wi-Fi alliance has published WiFi HaLow protocol in 2017 which is based on IEEE 802.11ah
standard for energy constrained devices requiring long range communication. It consumes lower
power than a traditional WiFi device and has a relatively longer coverage approximately double
to that of conventional Wi-Fi thus making it suitable for IoT applications [2].
IEEE 802.11ah functions in lower frequency band such as sub-GHz band thus offering long
distance coverage as higher frequency waves undergo more attenuation. IEEE 802.11ah is
capable of supporting large networks based on star topology, where several nodes are linked to
only single access point [2].
It is not only designed to provide long distance communication but also offer a reliable
connection in challenging environments in which easy penetration through walls, door and other
obstructions is a key concern [8].
3.2.1.4 Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
Bluetooth is an open standard for the development of a network of devices in a close proximity.
It is designed for point to point network (as shown in Figure 3) such as between two mobiles,
between wireless printer and a mobile, or between head phones and a mobile.
This technology has features such as low cost, consume less power than Wi-Fi but has a shorter
range typically 10m. A Bluetooth enabled device can exchange data with other Bluetooth devices
over a radio without any gateway. Bluetooth consume relatively more power than ZigBee so to
avoid this drawback ZigBee standards has designed a special protocol known as Bluetooth Low
Energy (BLE) which is also called as Bluetooth smart.

Figure 5: Bluetooth network [35]

All BLE compatible smart mobile phones are configured for reduced output power and basic
data rates. BLE uses star topology and operates at 2.4 GHz and provide data transfer in a range
of 50 to 150m [7, 12, 24].

3.2.1.5 ZigBee
ZigBee protocol was designed by ZigBee Alliance which provides energy efficient solutions.
Similar to 6LoWPAN, this protocol is based on IEEE 802.14.5 standard and operates at low
frequency i.e. 2.4GHz thus offering low data rates of 250 kbps, short coverage and is most
suitable for IoT applications. As of now, this protocol is the most widespread, cost effective, and
low power wireless network which is based on mesh topology. It is commonly used for small
networks such as home or personal area networks [2]. Such networks are designed for battery
powered applications, work over small distances such as 10-100 meters and transfer small data
which consume very low power [2, 7].
In contrast to 6LoWPAN, ZigBee protocol is not capable of communicating with other protocols.
However, the advantage of ZigBee network is that it operates in various modes which can
conserve power. Its nodes remain in sleep or inactive mode when there is no data exchange, thus
offering prolonged battery life. It provides communication network which is simpler and less
expensive than other proprietary protocols such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth [2,10]. ZigBee networks
can be scaled up to wide area networks by integrating routers and interconnecting several nodes
[10], as shown Figure 6.
ZigBee protocol finds its application in home & building automation, industrial automation,
smart metering, smart grid monitoring etc [7, 9-10]. There is another kind of ZigBee-like mesh
technology called Z-Wave discussed in the next section.

Figure 6: ZigBee Architecture [28]

3.2.1.6 Z-Wave
Z-Wave is a product of Z alliance, originally developed by ZenSys in 2004 and then purchased
by Six Sigma in 2009. It is a wireless protocol based on low energy RF communication
technology and is mainly developed for home automation. It is particularly designed to carry
small data packets with low latency and increased reliability. It operates in sub 1GHz band with
data rates reaching to 100kbit/s in a communication range of 30m. It is not susceptible to
interference from protocols such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee or Bluetooth as they operate in the frequency
band of 2.4GHz which is quite far from the operating speed of Z Wave [7, 11-13].

Figure 7: Z-Wave Network [29]

Z Wave networks are designed using mesh topology as shown Figure 7. The devices in a Z-
Wave network behaves either as a controller or as slaves. The controllers are responsible for
initiating communication, transmitting messages to slaves and implement maintenance jobs in
the network. The devices acting as slaves are responsible to execute the controller requests. Such
type of network model can be extended by adding more nodes by the controller [7, 12]. A Z-
Wave network can contain up to 232 devices or nodes where each node can also be used as a
repeater [12, 14]. Z-Wave is dominantly used for applications where the devices are placed
relatively closer to each other such as smart devices deployed in home automation application [7,
11-14].

3.2.1.7 Near Field Communication (NFC)

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short range technology that allow devices in close
proximity to communicate with each other typically at a distance up to 4 cm. As of today, all
smart phones available in market are NFC empowered. NFC is based on radio waves technology
(as shown Figure 8) and lets all types of data to be transmitted in its supported communication
range. NFC runs over a frequency band of 13.56MHz which is equivalent to high frequency
RFID [2, 13].
 Figure 8: NFC Network [30]

NFC does not require any initial setup or configuration and essentially utilizes magnetic field to
transfer data between two nodes. It operates in two modes either active or passive. In active
mode both communicating devices actively generates magnetic field whereas in case of passive
mode only one of the two devices emit magnetic field and the other one transfer data using load
modulation. The passive mode consumes low energy and is most suitable for battery operated
devices [2]. NFC finds its application in secure payment transactions, accessing electronic
content and link digital devices. [7, 12-13].

3.2.1.8 RFID
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. RFID tags store identifiers and data and are
attached to devices for reading by an RFID reader. The typical range of RFID is less than a
meter. RFID tags can be active, passive, or assisted passive. Passive tags are ideal for devices
without batteries, as the ID is passively read by the reader. Active tags periodically broadcast
their ID, while assisted passive tags become active when RFID reader is present. Dash7 is a
communication protocol that uses active RFID that is designed to be used within Industrial IoT
applications for secure long-range communication. Similar to NFC, a typical use case for RFID
is tracking inventory items within retail and industrial IoT applications.
3.2.1.9 Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN):
LPWAN network technologies are specially designed for long range wireless communication
and low power devices and are best suited for IoT applications. These technologies include LoRa
(Long Range physical layer protocol), SigFox, LTE-M, and Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT).

a) LoRa and LoRaWAN

LoRa stands for Long Range and is one of the leading communication technologies in the IoT
world. It is a wireless technology developed by Semtech in 2012. It is designed to be operational
under 1 GHz frequency, offers long range coverage of up to 15km, and low data rates ranging
from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps.

Before LoRa was developed, the IoT devices were operating using cellular technology. It was
observed that on average these devices were consuming only megabyte of data monthly and most
of the time very less data transmission took place. These devices were not using this technology
for their bandwidth needs but only for small telemetry needs. The cellular technology is mainly
designed for long range communication with high data rates and thus it consumes more power
and decreases battery life. So the key question is, could IoT devices needs be met with another
technology that can offer long range communication with low power consumption? And the
answer is the LoRa technology [38].
The LoRa technology is proprietary but LoRa alliance has developed wide area network
capability known as LoRaWAN which is an open protocol allowing interoperability between
smart devices without any gateway or interface. It uses spread spectrum technology that reduces
signal interference which makes LoRa resistant to noise and support reliable communication [7,
12-13].
The spread spectrum technology operates below the noise floor which means that if there is a
very noisy environment then your system can be deployed without having your signal stepped
down or jammed. In the past, if you had just frequency shift keying, you would be operating in a
narrow band right above the noise floor and you could be easily stepped down by other
frequencies in there. Since we are operating below noise floor so we cannot experience the
interference or jamming that usually happens with other 900 MHz spectrum radios. The spread
spectrum technology has better sensitivity than just frequency shift keying. It is more tolerant to
interference. But the key feature about it is the simultaneous occupation of same channel at the
same time. This is achieved through adaptive data rate that allows you to have things operating at
same frequency at the same time without having any interference. This implies that there can be
two LoRa networks simultaneously working at the same, one could be public and other could be
private and the two would operate seamlessly [38].

Figure 9: LoRa Architecture [26]

LoRaWAN network is established using star of stars topology to support long distance
communications. A star topology usually employ gateways which are directly connected to end
nodes / devices and to a central network server. End nodes are linked to gateway(s) using single
hop wireless communications whereas gateways are connected to the central network server
using standard IP connections. Objects such as buildings, mountains, trees, and weather, may
disrupt the connection between end nodes and gateway. This makes it difficult for the device to
remain intact to the network, and consequently degrades the network reliability and affect its
associated services. To address these obstructions particularly in urban regions multiple
gateways are deployed to ensure a reliable connection for all end nodes, because several IoT
devices are immobile and fixed, hence they cannot be transported to another place for improved
coverage [39-40].
The LoRa architecture is shown in Figure 9, where we have a complete system including end
nodes, gateways, LoRa network server, an application server and a remote display. On the left of
Figure 9, we have IoT sensors, these could be sensors for parking, meters for gas, electric, water
and trackers that could be tied to your pets to find out where they have gone out in the city. So
the LoRa sensor will transmit the signal which will be picked up by a series of gateways that will
transport it typically over a cellular network towards LoRa network server, The LoRa network
server is the termination point for the end nodes communication. It can also be considered as a
manager for all end nodes and in case of any software upgrade, it is responsible for coordinating
with the end nodes. The LoRa network server doesn’t understand the application and doesn’t
know what temperature or pressure or location really mean. Whereas the application server
which contains the entire business logic or functionality of the system understands and interprets
the sensors data and in response invoke the actuators or send the results on remote displays for
monitoring purposes.
The deployment of LoRa or LPWA networks are particularly useful for remote areas where you
need battery power and tiny data. For example facility management in a building where you
don’t really own the building but manage aspects within the building. Smart parking, agriculture,
waste management, healthcare are natural fit for this technology. The applications where there is
a need to transmit high frequency sound or high resolution video, LPWA are not suitable for
them. For such applications we could probably use LTE products [38].

b) Sigfox
Sigfox is another long range communication option which was introduced in 2009 and operates
in unlicensed spectrum under 1 GHz in ISM bands. Typically cellular network is considered for
long range communication but this technology drives more power which is not suitable for
battery powered machines in an IoT space.
Sigfox uses ultra-narrow band (UNB) technology that support the communication up to 40 Km
in rural and up to 10Km in urban regions, low data rates ranging from 10 to 1,000 bps and
support wide distance data transmission for millions of battery powered devices. It is also
compatible with other communication technologies such as Bluetooth, GPS 2G/3G/4G and Wi-
Fi.
 Figure 10: Sigfox Architecture [27]

Sigfox is a proprietary technology (as shown Figure 10), which requires customer subscription
prior to its usage. It offers one way communication which mean no acknowledgement, so
multiple messages are retransmitted to ensure the reception of data at the receiving end, hence
making it a less convenient option for resource constrained devices.
Sigfox can be used for applications such as location monitoring, smart metering, street lighting
and environmental monitoring. All these examples are of one way communication applications
that might make sense for Sigfox technology [7, 12-13].

c) Cellular
The growing trend of developing IoT solutions has consequently made low-power, wide-area
network (LPWAN) options such as SigFox, LoRa, and Weightless to become increasingly
popular. Typically, IoT applications are characterized by low cost and low energy consumptions
constraints The existing cellular technologies such as GSM,3G, 4G and LTE systems ingest high
power and not suitable for applications where only small data packets are transmitted
intermittently (e.g. meters for reading water levels, gas consumption, or electricity use). They are
built for sending voice data with low latency requirements, which consume high power and incur
more cost [2, 7, 12, 18]. A typical cellular network is shown in Figure 13.
 Figure 11: Cellular Communication [31]

To address the low energy and long communication needs of IoT applications, 3rd Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP), which is an alliance between groups of telecommunications
associations, known as the Organizational Partners, developed cellular technologies such as long
term evolution for machines (LTE-M) and Narrowband IoT (NB-LTE) [7,19].
The conventional LTE technology was built for high speed wireless communication and is not
suitable for IoT applications. LTE-M is a low power wide area (LPWA) standard which is
developed to support smart devices in an IoT network while allowing the reuse of existing LTE
base stations. They are also considered as 2 nd generation of LTE chips designed for IoT
applications. The major benefits of this technology are that unlike other communication
technologies, it allows devices to connect directly to a 4G network, without a gateway. Secondly,
devices can operate on power saving mode which can enhance the battery life [20-21].

5G Networks:
Every new generation of wireless networks delivers faster speeds and more functionality to our
smart phones. In the beginning, 1G introduced the very first cell phone, 2G enabled us to text for
the first time, subsequently, 3G connected us online and 4G delivered the high speed data rates.
However, with the ever growing number of users and devices, a time will come when 4G
networks would have limited capacity to accommodate more users, which require even more
data than before for their smart phones and devices. This has led us towards 5G network also
known as fifth generation networks that will going to transform the wireless communication in
an unprecedented way and unleash huge cost benefits. Figure 14 shows the evolution of cellular
technologies ranging from 1G to 5G.

Figure 12: Evolution of Cellular Technologies [32]

The specifications of 5G networks are not defined yet by 3GPP but these next generation
networks are expected to provide exceptional faster data rates (such as 10 Gb/s or over 1000x 4G
or 10 x 4G LTE) to support more users. The provision of ultra-high speed communication is
quite challenging as it involves exploring the waveforms that can leverage the existing allocated
fixed spectrum (which is below 3 GHz) to increase the data rate [18, 22].
The concept of 5G revolves around the idea that the internet of things i.e. connected devices that
enable for instance, self-driving cars, automated homes and many more will become very
important in the near future. For this, mobile data networks will need to be very robust to handle
it all. With wearables, appliances, vehicles, mobile AR and VR devices and so on is expected to
put so much traffic through mobile data networks with some devices needing as many as
multiple Gb/s. For this we’ll not only need overall faster speed but lower latency too.
For example, imagine that you have a self-driving car that generates and process large amounts
of data from on-board sensors. In addition to this, it also download massive amount of data from
the internet such as high resolution maps and near real-time navigation data to move and
determine any obstacle coming on its way or any traffic congestion. The existing wireless
communication networks are not capable of providing the massive network capacity required to
support huge numbers of autonomous cars when they come on roads. Now suppose if your self-
driving car took half a second long to make a critical turn then it may end up in a huge dent in
the fender or a jerk in your body. That’s where 5G technology comes in. It’s expected to deliver
more capacity, ultra-low latency, faster speeds and M2M connectivity for the era of autonomous
vehicles. 5G is aiming to reduce latency to as low as one millisecond to allow real time operation
of the critical devices [41]. As of today, there are 5 new emerging technologies which are
considered as a foundation of 5G networks. These include millimeter waves, small cell, massive
MIMO, beamforming, full duplex.

Figure 13: Emerging Technologies for 5G networks

Millimeter waves: Your smart phone and other electronic devices in your home use very
specific frequencies on the radio frequency spectrum typically those under 6 GHz but these
frequencies are starting to get more crowded. As more devices come online, the network service
will become slower and will lead to more dropped connections. So researchers are experimenting
with broadcasting on shorter millimeter waves that fall between 30 and 300GHz. This region of
spectrum must never been used before for mobile devices and opening it up means more
bandwidth for everyone. Millimeter waves can travel well through buildings and other obstacles
and they tend to be absorbed by plants and rain. To get around this problem we’ll need
technology small cell networks [42].
Small Cells: As of now, the wireless networks rely on large high powered cell towers to
broadcast their signals over long distances. But remember higher frequency millimeter waves
have a harder time traveling through obstacles which means that if the user move behind an
obstacle then the signal will be lost. Small cell networks would solve that problem using
thousands of low-power mini base stations. These base stations would be deployed in close
proximity as compared to traditional towers which forms a sort of relay team to transmit signals
around obstacles. This would be especially useful in cities where if a user is behind an obstacle
then his smart phone would automatically switch to a new base station in a better range of his
device allowing him to keep his connection alive [42].

Massive MIMO: MIMO stands for multiple input multiple output. The existing 4G base stations
have about a dozen ports for antennas that handle all cellular traffic but massive MIMO base
stations can support about a hundred ports. This could increase the capacity of today's networks
by factor of 22 or more. But massive MIMO has its own complications related to signal
interference. The current cellular antennas broadcast information in every direction at once and
all those crossing signals could cause serious interference. This problem can be resolved through
beamforming [42].

Beamforming: It is like a traffic signaling system for cellular signals. Instead of broadcasting in
every direction it would allow a station to send a focus stream of data to specific user. Its
precision prevents interference in its way more efficient. This means stations can handle more
incoming and outgoing data streams at once. Consider a user surrounded by buildings and is
trying to make a phone call. The signal is ricocheting off of surrounding buildings and criss-
crossing with other signals from users in the area. A massive MIMO base station receives all of
these signals and keeps track of the timing and the direction of their arrival. It then uses signal
processing algorithms to triangulate exactly where each signal is coming from and plots the best
transmission route back through the air to each phone. In addition to enhancing data rates and
spectrum efficiency with massive MIMO, wireless engineers are also trying to achieve the high
throughput and low latency required for 5G through a technology called full duplex, which
modifies the way antennas deliver and receive data [42].

Full Duplex: If you have ever used the walkie talkie, you know that in order to communicate
you have to take turns talking and listening. Today's cellular base stations have that exactly the
same hold up. A basic antenna can only do one job at a time, either transmit or receive. This is
because of the principal of reciprocity which is the tendency for radio waves to travel both
forward and backward along the same frequency. To understand this consider the wave like a
train loaded up with data. The frequency it's traveling on is like a train track and if there's a
second train trying to go in the opposite direction on the same track then you're going to get
some interference. Up until now the solution has been to have the trains take turns or to put all
the trains on different tracks or frequencies. But we can make things a lot more efficient by
working around reciprocity. To achieve full duplex in personal devices, researchers must design
a circuit that can route incoming and outgoing signals so they don’t collide while an antenna is
transmitting and receiving data at the same time [42].

In order to simulate 5G networks, the Technical University Dresden, Germany has modeled 5G
waveforms, named as generalized frequency-division multiplexing (GFDMA) and defined a
model of a complete link. The results showed an improvement of 30 % in data rates relative to
4G [22]. The other alternative to provide high speed communication is to increase the number of
access points including cells ranging from macro to pico. Other option is to increase multiple
input and multiple output (MIMO) base stations that contain large number of antenna
components to provide quality data rates to each user. Lund University of Sweden performed an
experiment with large number of MIMO and proved that the use of MIMO can increase the data
rate by 100 times or even more [2].
The 5G networks are also expected to address the issues of device heterogeneity. Some device
demand low band width while other operate in high band width, which pose several design
challenges. Another key challenge that 5G networks should address is the network response time
or network latency. The adoption of already existing low power and low cost solutions such as
LPWAN and cellular IoT options such as 4G LTE are soaring high but 5G is expected to bring
the scalability, low latency, high reliability, security and ubiquity that would be essential for
several mission critical systems in the IoT space and beyond. In mission critical systems, the
control of operations without deterministic latency reduces the efficacy and adoption of these
communication technologies. The average latency on current networks is estimated to be in the
range of 10ms with high variations. If 5G can provide reduction in latency and improvement in
determinism, then mission critical applications can be controlled and operated remotely or
 autonomously in the cloud [22-23]. All of 5G is still a work in progress. It will likely include
other new technologies too and making all of these systems work together will be a whole other
challenge but if experts can figure that out then ultra-fast 5G service could arrive in the next five
years.

d) Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT):

3 NB-IoT is a LPWA technology which is gaining popularity and is designed for low rate, battery
operated devices and essentially runs anywhere. It connects devices with low bandwidth and low
power requirements while providing deeper and wider area coverage. For device connections, it
utilizes already established mobile networks. As it operates in a licensed spectrum so it provides
secure and reliable data communication [49].

Figure 14: Key Features of NB-IoT [49]

In an IoT network, the devices may be installed in remote or hard to access places such as
underground levels within buildings, covered areas, and in regions which are at farther distance
from cellular base stations. When there is cellular coverage, it is usually weak and demands
the device transmitter to function at high power which eventually deplete the battery.
Furthermore, the existing cellular communication systems are not designed for IoT networks and
are unsuitable for applications which exchange small size of infrequent data, use power saving
modes and require battery to run for years. Therefore, using existing cellular interfaces for NB-
IoT applications would be very costly as these application do not entail all the features of cellular
technology. NB- IoT applications mainly build around the concept of low data rates, ubiquitous
data transmission, and reliable and secure communication as it operates in licensed spectrum
[49].
NB-IoT is relatively less complex and low cost owing to the access scheme which is Single
Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA). Like LTE-M, NB-IoT can also
communicate with the main server and transmit data directly to it without any gateway.
NB-IoT is the future of IoT, making its way in many new applications such as smart metering,
smart agriculture, smart environment, smart building, and smart cities. However, the
implementation cost of NB-IoT is high as it is not compatible with traditional LTE networks and
doesn’t function in LTE band. Due to this, NB-IoT is not compatible with existing 4G
infrastructure so most of the carriers will stick to LTE-M [18].

3.2.2 Internet Layer IoT Network Technologies

3.2.2.1 IPv6:
IoT devices are constrained by their power and memory limitations hence their communications
entails several complexities such as (i) unique identifier for every IoT device which essentially
requires a colossal address space, (ii) data exchange between IoT devices using wireless channels
ingest substantial amount of power thus demanding low power communication solution, (iii)
light weight protocols with thin memory requirements [2].
Generally, smart devices are connected to each other using IP stack. The IP stack uses large
memory and consume power from the device being connected. There exist energy efficient
communication technologies such as Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), ZigBee, Near
frequency communication (NFC) and RFID. These non-IP networks facilitate the smart devices
to connect locally forming a personal area network (PAN) which integrates a smart gateway to
connect to internet. The applications of these low power communications technologies are
restricted to small ad hoc networks due to their limited connectivity range of few meters. These
ad hoc networks are very popular and common in IoT applications such as wearable connected to
smart phone.
In order to expand such IoT networks it was required to redefine the legacy IP stack in terms of
low power and memory consumption. The communication protocol 6LoWPAN, was an answer
to such energy ingestion challenges, which exploit IPv6 for low power wireless networks. With
6LoWPAN protocol, PAN communication range is equivalent to local area networks with less
power ingestion.
At the Internet Layer, devices are identified by IP addresses. IPv6 is typically
used for IoT applications over legacy IPv4 addressing. IPv4 is limited to 32-bit
addresses, which only provide around 4.3 billion addresses in total, which is less
than the current number of IoT devices that are connected, while IPv6 uses 128
bits, and so provides 2128 addresses (around 3.4 × 1038 or 340 billion billion billion
billion) addresses. In practice, not all IoT devices need public addresses. Of the
tens of billions of devices that are expected to connect to the IoT over the next
few years, many will be deployed in private networks that will use private address
ranges and only communicate out to other devices or services on external
networks by using gateways.
3.2.2.2 6LoWPAN IPv6:
IPv6 protocol enable the IoT devices to have unique identifiers. IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long
which consume memory and power of the connecting device thus making it unsuitable for low
power wireless devices. For this purpose, Internet Engineering Task Force (IEFT) redefined IPv6
for smart devices and developed a protocol called 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low power Wireless
Personal Area Networks), which essentially lets IPv6 traffic to be transmitted over low power
wireless networks with memory constrained embedded devices [3]. It is also being used and
adapted over a variety of other network media including sub 1 GHz, Bluetooth Smart, Low
power RF, power line control and low power Wi-Fi. A 6 LoWPAN system is normally
composed of many low power nodes in self-healing mesh form as shown Figure 12. This means
that data can be exchanged freely by using an edge router, which acts as a simple gateway to the
rest of the internet. This protocol efficiently compresses IPv6 long headers to minimize the
transmission overhead and reduce the frame size to meet the frame length in IEEE 802.15.4
which is 128 byte maximum [4].
 Figure 15:6LowPAN IPV6 Network [33]

6LoWPAN is designed for nodes and applications requiring wireless Internet connectivity at
relatively low data rates, such as smart light bulbs and smart meters [3, 5]. It is also being
employed for remote monitoring of power transmission lines by logging variables such as
temperature and humidity [6].
3.2.3 Application layer IoT network technologies

3.2.3.1 Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT)

Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is an open protocol developed in 1999 by IBM
built on client/server paradigm. MQTT uses binary messages for exchange of data between client
and server with a low overhead which makes it a light weight protocol and efficient from
bandwidth standpoint which helps to save battery life. It has small code footprint which can be
put on very tiny devices and can be run on IoT boards such as Raspberry pi and Arduino It
allows rapid communication with low network usage in real time. As it is an open protocol so it
can run on any platform such as Mac, Windows, Linux and is easy to install. All these features
makes MQTT suitable for IoT systems [25]. It is widely used in cloud IoT solutions such as
Microsoft Azure, Amazon web services, IBM Bluemix.
In 2011, when Facebook messenger was launched, a long latency was experienced while
exchanging messages between clients. This happened because Facebook messenger was using a
method that was reliable but it was slow and there were constraints up to which it could be
improved. To resolve the long latency issue, Facebook messenger was rebuilt upon MQTT
which provided extremely low message transmission delay. It has enabled Facebook messenger
to send message instantly which are shown up at the receiving end within milliseconds rather
than several seconds [37].
In contrast to HTTP which is based on request/response model, the communication in MQTT is
based on publish-subscribe method. The client plays the role of publisher or subscriber and the
server operates as a broker. The publisher/subscriber are connected to the broker using
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) [2, 15-16], as shown in Figure 11. In a publish-subscribe
model, the client can publish or subscribe to a topic through a broker and other clients having an
interest in that topic can subscribe to it and receive topic updates regularly.

Figure 16: MQTT Architecture [25]

The topic is like a virtual channel that connects the publisher and the subscribers through a
broker. In the context of MQTT, the topic is UTF-8 string, which is used by the broker to filter
messages for each subscribed clients. Once the message is sent to the subscriber, it is removed
from the broker. So typically the broker doesn’t store any messages. But there are instances such
as QoS levels (QoS 0, QoS 1 and QoS 2), when the messages are stored temporality on the
broker.
MQTT model is analogous to post office model where the broker act as post office and homes
can be the various clients which either send or receive letters or messages. So every client can
send or receive message based on a certain topic. So the major role of broker is to facilitate the
client for subscriptions which means that client and subscriber do not know each other and
transmit and receive messages through a broker. From security point of view, the broker
authenticates the clients and prevents any unauthorized access. [2, 16].
In a typical IoT network, the clients are the devices and they publish their data/status or
subscribe to topics. All devices connected to same broker or server can share data. Only the data
the devices are interested in are sent to them so there is no extra communication.

Figure 17: Devices connected through broker

For example, consider a case of home automation where a toaster has subscribed to the car status
(See Figure 12). The car has not subscribed to anything and is not aware of any device interested
in it. Suppose your phone is subscribed to toaster status. So the car status gets updated from the
car and says, “I am almost home”. The toaster will instantly receive this message within
milliseconds and turns on. The toaster can also notify you because your phone is subscribed to its
status. So in a typical home automation scenario lot of other things can be connected to each
other using a broker. MQTT is also considered as a middleware or software that is between
everything else or that brings everything together.
There are several MQTT brokers available which can be used for prototyping and commercial
purposes. These include Mosquitto, which is an open source broker and runs on Linux and
Windows platforms. The other popular broker is HiveMQ which is a proprietary broker and is
available for commercial use. Besides these, there are cloud based brokers e.g. Eclipse has free
MQTT broker which can be used for the development and testing of various IoT applications.
Unlike HTTP, MQTT is asynchronous protocol and does not block the client while it waits for
the message [25]. As it runs on TCP so it is an ideal platform for those IoT applications where
reliable communication is a primary concern. It is not a good option for IoT applications which
are designed to run in a low power environment. TCP is a connection oriented protocol with a
large IP header so it leads to transmission overheads in resource constrained applications [2]. For
this purpose, MQTT for sensor network (MQTT-SN) was developed which is an extension of
basic MQTT protocol and is based on UDP. It is mainly designed for applications where reduced
cost and low power consumption are the main priorities. MQTT uses topic name to publish a
message whereas in MQTT-SN the topic name is substituted by a small, two-byte long topic id
to manage the small message length and the limited communication bandwidth in wireless
networks [2].

3.2.3.2 Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)

Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a web transfer protocol specifically developed for
constrained networks in an IoT application. It is built on REST model which operates on
request/report method and allows data transmission between consumers and producers. In
contrast to MQTT and HTTP, the data communication in CoAP is achieved through UDP stack,
which makes it an ideal option for power efficient IoT systems. The UDP stack is small in size
which makes CoAP a lightweight protocol that is most suitable for M2M communications and
more optimized in terms of cost and power consumption. However, the UDP based
communications are less reliable as compared to TCP data transmissions and offer compromised
quality of service [2, 12, 16-17].
 Figure 18: CoAP Architecture [36]

CoAP is also considered as an alternative to HTTP and clients can make request to application in
the similar way as it is done using HTTP request such as acquiring values from sensors. CoAP
finds its application in smart energy and building automation solutions based on low power
wireless sensor networks [16].
 3.3 Comparison of IoT protocols:
Range Distance Operational Frequency Topology Power usage Data rate
Wi-Fi Medium ~50m-100m 2.4 GHz , 5.8GHz Star/ High High
(indoor) mesh/ 20dbm
multi-hop
Low Power Wi-Fi Medium ~ 2 x Wi-Fi <1 GHz Star Low low
Bluetooth Small 10m 2.4 GHz Point to High High
point
>ZigBee 1-3Mbps
Bluetooth Low Medium 50-150m 2.4 GHz Star Low High
Energy 1 Mbps
LoRa Long ~ 15Km (Sub <1 GHz Star of Low Low
urban) stars 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps
2-5Km (urban)
Sigfox Long ~ 40Km (rural) <1 GHz Star Low Low
3-10Km (urban) 10 to 1,000 bps
ZigBee Medium 10-100 m 2.4 GHz, 915 MHz, 868 Mesh Low Low
MHz 20- 250 kbps
Z Wave Medium ~30m <1 GHz Mesh Low Low 100kbps
NFC Small 4 -10cm 13.56 MHz Point to - 100–420kbps
point
Cellular Long 35km max for 900/1800/1900/2100MHz Point to High Very high
GSM; 200km max point, 46dbm 35-170kps (GPRS), 120-
for HSPA mesh, star, 384kbps (EDGE),
2-hop 384Kbps-2Mbps
(UMTS), 600kbps-
10Mbps (HSPA),
3-10Mbps (LTE)
5G Long Macro cells 6-300GHz Star/ Variable Ultra-high (max
(>200m) adhoc/ 20-56dbm
1Gbps)
Micro cells point to
On avg 100Mbps
(<200m) point
Pico cells (50-
100m)
Femto cells (10-
50m)
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