Module 2

IOT COMMUNICATION
MODEL AND PROTOCOLS
 Outline
Connectivity Protocols
•6LoWPAN
•IEEE 802.15.4
•Zigbee
•Wireless HART
•Z‐Wave
•ISA 100
•NFC
Outline

Data Protocols:
•Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT)
•Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP)
•Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP)
•XMPP – Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol.
 6LoWPAN
Introduction

•Low‐power Wireless Personal Area Networks over IPv6.

•Allows for the smallest devices with limited processing ability to
transmit information wirelessly using an Internet protocol.
•Allows low‐power devices to connect to the Internet.
•Created by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) ‐ RFC 5933
and RFC 4919.
 Features of 6LoWPANs
• Allows IEEE 802.15.4 radios to carry 128‐bit addresses of
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
• Header compression and address translation techniques allow the
IEEE 802.15.4 radios to access the Internet.
• IPv6 packets compressed and reformatted to fit the IEEE 802.15.4
packet format.
• Uses include IoT, Smart grid, and M2M applications.
Addressing in 6LoWPAN

64‐bit addresses: globally unique

16 bit addresses: PAN specific; assigned by PAN
coordinator
IPv6 multicast not supported by 802.15.4
IPv6 packets carried as link layer broadcast
frames
6LoWPAN
6LoWPAN
6LoWPAN
6LoWPAN
6LoWPAN
 6LoWPAN
• LOADng Routing
• Derived from AODV(Ad hoc On demand Distance Vector) and extended for use in
IoT.
• Basic operations of LOADng include:
• Generation of Route Requests (RREQs) by a LOADng Router (originator) for
discovering a route to a destination,
• Forwarding of such RREQs until they reach the destination LOADng Router,
• Generation of Route Replies (RREPs) upon receipt of an RREQ by the indicated
destination, and unicast hop‐by‐hop forwarding of these RREPs towards the
originator.
 6LoWPAN
• LOADng Routing
• Derived from AODV and extended for use in IoT.
• Basic operations of LOADng include:
• Generation of Route Requests (RREQs) by a LOADng Router (originator) for
discovering a route to a destination,
• Forwarding of such RREQs until they reach the destination LOADng Router,
• Generation of Route Replies (RREPs) upon receipt of an RREQ by the indicated
destination, and unicast hop‐by‐hop forwarding of these RREPs towards the
originator.
 6LoWPAN
• If a route is detected to be broken, a Route Error (RERR) message is returned to
the originator of that data packet to inform the originator about the route breakage.
• Optimized flooding is supported, reducing the overhead incurred by RREQ
generation and flooding.
• Only the destination is permitted to respond to an RREQ.
• Intermediate LOADng Routers are explicitly prohibited from responding to RREQs,
even if they may have active routes to the sought destination.
• RREQ/RREP messages generated by a given LOADng Router share a single unique,
monotonically increasing sequence number.
 6LoWPAN
• RPL(Routing Protocol for LOW Power and Lossy Networks)
Routing
• Distance Vector IPv6 routing protocol for lossy and low
power networks.
• Maintains routing topology using low rate beaconing.
• Beaconing rate increases on detecting inconsistencies (e.g.
node/link in a route is down).
• Routing information included in the datagram itself.
• Proactive: Maintaining routing topology.
• Reactive: Resolving routing inconsistencies.
 6LoWPAN
• RPL separates packet processing and forwarding from
the routing optimization objective, which helps in Low
power Lossy Networks (LLN)
• RPL supports message confidentiality and integrity.
• Supports Data‐Path Validation and Loop Detection
• Routing optimization objectives include
• minimizing energy
• minimizing latency
• satisfying constraints (w.r.t node power, bandwidth, etc.)
 6LoWPAN
• RPL operations require bidirectional links.
• In some LLN scenarios, those links may exhibit
asymmetric properties.
• It is required that the reachability of a router be verified
before the router can be used as a parent.
 Functionality-based IoT Protocol
Organization
• Connectivity (6LowPAN, RPL)
• Identification (EPC, uCode, IPv6, URIs)
• Communication / Transport (WiFi, Bluetooth, LPWAN)
• Discovery (Physical Web, mDNS, DNS‐SD)
• Data Protocols (MQTT, CoAP, AMQP, Websocket, Node)
• Device Management (TR‐069, OMA‐DM)
• Semantic (JSON‐LD, Web Thing Model)
• Multi‐layer Frameworks (Alljoyn, IoTivity, Weave, Homekit)
 MQTT
• Introduction
• Message Queuing Telemetry Transport.
• ISO standard (ISO/IEC PRF 20922).
• It is a publish‐subscribe‐based lightweight messaging protocol for
use in conjunction with the TCP/IP protocol.
• MQTT was introduced by IBM in 1999 and standardized by OASIS
in 2013.
• Designed to provide connectivity (mostly embedded) between
applications and middle‐wares on one side and networks and
communications on the other side.
 MQTT
• A message broker controls the publish‐subscribe messaging pattern.
• A topic to which a client is subscribed is updated in the form of messages
and distributed by the message broker.
• /home/room/temperature
• Designed for:
• Remote connections
• Limited bandwidth
• Small‐code footprint
MQTT Components
MQTT Methods
MQTT
 MQTT Communication
• The protocol uses a publish/subscribe architecture (HTTP
uses a request/response paradigm).
• Publish/subscribe is event‐driven and enables messages to be
pushed to clients.
• The central communication point is the MQTT broker, which
is in charge of dispatching all messages between the senders
and the rightful receivers.
• Each client that publishes a message to the broker, includes a
topic into the message. The topic is the routing information
for the broker.
 MQTT Communication
• Each client that wants to receive messages subscribes to
a certain topic and the broker delivers all messages with
the matching topic to the client.
• Therefore the clients don’t have to know each other. They
only communicate over the topic.
• This architecture enables highly scalable solutions
without dependencies between the data producers and
the data consumers.
 MQTT Topics
• A topic is a simple string that can have more hierarchy levels,
which are separated by a slash.
• A sample topic for sending temperature data of the living room
could be house/living‐room/temperature.
• On one hand the client (e.g. mobile device) can subscribe to the
exact topic or on the other hand, it can use a wildcard.
 MQTT Topics
• The subscription to house/+/temperature would result in all
messages sent to the previously mentioned topic house/living‐
room/temperature, as well as any topic with an arbitrary value in
the place of living room, such as house/kitchen/temperature.
• The plus sign is a single level wild card and only allows arbitrary
values for one hierarchy.
• If more than one level needs to be subscribed, such as, the entire
sub‐tree, there is also a multilevel wildcard (#).
• It allows to subscribe to all underlying hierarchy levels.
• For example house/# is subscribing to all topics beginning with
house.
 Message format of MQTT protocol
• All the messages of MQTT have a small code
footprint, hence it is popular as a lightweight
messaging protocol. Each MQTT message consists of
the following:
• Fixed header (2 bytes)
• Optional variable header
• Message payload (<= 256MB)
• Quality of Service (QoS) level

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• MQTT supports one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-
to-many communication.
• By lowering the amount of data transmitted, MQTT
makes itself a perfect protocol for constrained IoT
devices.
• Message payloads are encoded in binary. In an open
network where the recipient is from a different
manufacturer will face issues decoding it as there is
no information of how message payload is encoded.

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Quality of Service level for MQTT protocol
• The quality of service levels determines how the content is
managed. MQTT uses three different QoS levels. It is important
to choose the right QoS level for every message because it
determines how the client and server communicate to deliver
the message. The QoS levels of MQTT are as follows:
• QoS 0 : Messages delivered per the best efforts of the operating
environment, but message loss can occur
• QoS 1 : Messages delivery assured but duplicates can be created
• QoS 2 : Message to deliver exactly once
• MQTT provides us with an option to set the appropriate QoS
level, but remember, higher the QoS, lower the performance.

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 Security of MQTT protocol
• MQTT allows you to pass username and password as an MQTT
packet. Encryption of a message across the network can be
handled independently of MQTT with Secure Sockets
Layer (SSL).
• It has a minimal authentication feature built in. Username and
password are sent as clear text. To make it secure, Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL)/ Transport Layer Security (TLS) must be
employed, but SSL/TLS is not a lightweight protocol.
• Many industry experts believe MQTT will play a major role in
IoT by contributing to fields such as inventory tracking, and
medical IoT..

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 MQTT Applications
• Facebook Messenger uses MQTT for online chat.
• Amazon Web Services use Amazon IoT with MQTT.
• Microsoft Azure IoT Hub uses MQTT as its main protocol for
telemetry messages.
• The EVRYTHNG IoT platform uses MQTT as an M2M protocol
for millions of connected products.
• Adafruit launched a free MQTT cloud service for IoT
experimenters called Adafruit IO.
 CoAP
Constrained Application Protocol
• Introduction

• CoAP – Constrained Application Protocol.

• Web transfer protocol for use with constrained nodes and
networks.
• Designed for Machine to Machine (M2M) applications such
as smart energy and building automation.
• Based on Request‐Response model between end‐points
• Client‐Server interaction is asynchronous over a datagram
oriented transport protocol such as UDP
 CoAP
Constrained Application Protocol
• The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a session layer
protocol designed by IETF Constrained RESTful Environment
(CoRE) working group to provide lightweight RESTful (HTTP)
interface.
• Representational State Transfer (REST) is the standard
interface between HTTP client and servers.
• Lightweight applications such as those in IoT, could result in
significant overhead and power consumption by REST.
• CoAP is designed to enable low‐power sensors to use RESTful
services while meeting their power constraintshtweight
RESTful (HTTP) interface.
 CoAP
Constrained Application Protocol
• Built over UDP, instead of TCP (which is commonly used with HTTP) and has a
light mechanism to provide reliability
• CoAP architecture is divided into two main sub‐layers:
• Messaging
• Request/response
• The messaging sub‐layer is responsible for reliability and duplication of
messages, while the request/response sub‐layer is responsible for
communication.
• CoAP has four messaging modes:
• Confirmable
• Non‐confirmable
• Piggyback
• Separate
CoAP Position
CoAP Message Type
CoAP Request-Response Model
 CoAP Request-Response Model
• Confirmable and non‐confirmable modes represent the reliable and unreliable
transmissions, respectively, while the other modes are used for request/response.
• Piggyback is used for client/server direct communication where the server sends its
response directly after receiving the message, i.e., within the acknowledgment
message.
• On the other hand, the separate mode is used when the server response comes in a
message separate from the acknowledgment, and may take some time to be sent by
the server.
• Similar to HTTP, CoAP utilizes GET, PUT, PUSH, DELETE messages requests to retrieve,
create, update, and delete, respectively
CoAP Request-Response Model
 CoAP Request-Response Model
Features
• Reduced overheads and parsing complexity.
• URL and content‐type support.
• Support for the discovery of resources provided by known
CoAP services.
• Simple subscription for a resource, and resulting push
notifications.
• Simple caching based on maximum message age
 AMQP
Introduction
• Advanced Message Queuing Protocol.
• Open standard for passing business messages between
applications or organizations.
• Connects between systems and business processes.
• It is a binary application layer protocol.
• Basic unit of data is a frame.
• ISO standard: ISO/IEC 19464
AMQP
AMQP Features
AMQP Features
 Message Delivery Guarantees

• At‐most‐once
• each message is delivered once or never
• At‐least‐once
• each message is certain to be delivered, but may do so multiple times
• Exactly‐once
• message will always certainly arrive and do so only once
 AMQP Frame Types
• Nine AMQP frame types are defined that are used to initiate,
control and tear down the transfer of messages between two
peers:
• Open (connection open)
• Begin (session open)
• Attach (initiate new link)
• Transfer (for sending actual messages)
• Flow (controls message flow rate)
• Disposition (Informs the changes in state of transfer)
• Detach (terminate the link)
• End (session close)
• Close (connection close)
AMQP Components