Lecture7 Wireless
Lecture7 Wireless
Lecture 7
Wireless
Communication
Wireless Embedded Systems
Aaron Schulman
Wireless radios in our project
Wireless radios in our project
• Wireless radios are used for informing a
nearby smartphone that the item is lost
• We are using Bluetooth Low Energy
the most popular wireless protocol.
Outline
• What are radios
o How do they work?
• Fundamental characteristics
o Design tradeoffs
• Common radio standards/protocols for indoor
applications
o Where characteristics fall under (above)
• Emerging radio standards/protocols for outdoor
Internet-of-Things applications
o Why the design requirement of IoT radios is different
What are Radios?
• Envelope Detection
o Detect carrier freq.
• Filters
• Demodulation
How Radios Work – Receiving (AM
Radio Example)
• Antenna picks up
modulated radio waves
• Tuner filters out specific
frequency ranges
• Amplitude variations
detected with
demodulation
• Amplifier strengthens
the clipped signal and
sends it through the
speaker
Radio Characteristics
• Straightforward configuration
• Mesh Networking
Image Source:17
<http://kf5czo.blogspot.com/2012/03/ham-radio-and-mesh-networks.html>
Mesh Networking
• Advantages of Mesh Networking:
• Allows devices to communicate to multiple other devices in
the network.
• Multiple paths to destination – greater flexibility against
interference.
• Allows overall network to grow to larger physical sizes than
possible with point-to-point networks.
• Mesh Characteristics:
• Self-forming – ZigBee devices can establish
communication pathways when new devices appear.
• Self-healing – If a node is removed from the network
(either intentionally or not) the remaining network will
look to establish alternate routes of communication.
18
Zigbee/802.15.4 Applications
• Wireless environmental sensors
o Temperature, pressure, sound, luminous intensity
• Medical devices
o Glucose meters, heart monitors
• Household automation
o Security/temperature controllers
o Smoke/motion detectors
WiFi
• Dual Bands: 2.4GHz and 5GHz
• 802.11a/b/g/n
o Cost vs Speed vs Interference tradeoff
• Roaming
• Global standard
• High speed
o Up to 300 Mbps
• High power consumption
o Concern for mobile devices
• Range
o Up to 100m
WiFi – example (802.11g)
Protocol Comparisons
Protocol Comparisons
Zigbee/
Bluetooth 802.15.4 WiFi
Moderate -
Range High High High
Power Low -
Consumption Moderate Low High
Design requirement of outdoor radios
for IoT applications
• Can we use WiFi/Bluetooth/ZigBee/Ant radios to support IoT
applications deployed outdoor?
– Can we achieve kilo meter communication distance?
– Can we support 3~5 years lifetime with a coin battery?
– Can we support the communication with thousands of IoT
devices with the coverage of a base station?
– We only need to transmit 100 bits per second data
compared to the mega bits per second case in WiFi
We are wiling to trade data rate for range, lifetime, and the
number of devices supported.
Common Radio Protocols