Recently, the Internet of Things has become one of the most common trends in the development of data network transmission technologies. Modern companies such as Vodafone, Huawei, Ring and others are actively introducing the latest means of wireless communication in the Internet of Things technology. In this regard, the study of wireless communications is of interest for researchers. This is proved by the research of Yang Yu, Chen Wenzhou, Weijianhui [1; 2; 3]. The purpose of my report is to provide an overview of wireless communication types and reveal their advantages and disadvantages of each.
The Internet of Things uses both wired and wireless communications. The Wired ones are more reliable, while the wireless ones have more prospects in this area. Therefore, I paid more attention to wireless communication. There are two main types of wireless communication. Short-range wireless communications include Bluetooth Wi-Fi ZigBee and Z-Wave. Sigfox, LoRa and NB-IoT belong to the second type of long range wide area communication. Bluetooth is a large capacity communication technology. It was invented as an alternative to wired technology. Bluetooth enables data exchange over short distances among devices and personal area networks. It uses the radio waves in the ISM band from 2.4 to 2.485 GHz with a transmission rate up to 1 Mbps [1]. Bluetooth has a short transmission distance of 10 cm to 10 m, which limits its use. At the same time, there are Bluetooth devices, which have a transmission distance of up to 100 m with a high power level. Bluetooth is widely used in applications. Its usage can be found in mobile phones, headphones, home appliances and smart wearables. Low power consumption, high reliability and high speed are the advantages of Bluetooth. But it is not suitable for multi-point deployment. The next wireless technology, which is widely known in the world, is Wi-Fi. The peculiarity of Wi-Fi is that it allows electrical devices to connect to a wireless local area. It most commonly uses the 2.4 G UHF or 5G SHF ISM radio bands [1]. Wi-Fi can be either password protected or an open network. Most of the devices such as computer, mobile phone, printer and others in our house can be connected with WLAN via Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has the highest transmission speed among short-distance technologies. It has also wide coverage. Along with this, it has also disadvantages such as low transmission security, weak stability and high energy consumption [2]. ZigBee specializes in the internet of things. It is a low-power consumption LAN protocol based on IEEE802.15.4[1]. ZigBee is widely used in the industrial area and smart homes. It is easy to use, inexpensive and possesses high reliability. For instance, ZigBee base station costs less than 200 dollars while cellular base station costs hundreds of thousands dollars to build. It also transmits data from other network nodes. ZigBee has a wide range of applications to IoT such as smart home terminals and others. Thereby, ZigBee is a low-power consumption communication technology. It has a low complexity and low speed. Transmission distances can reach hundreds of meters. But this technology in smart parking is weakened by vehicles. Z-Wave is very similar to ZigBee. The main advantages of the Z-Wave are low price, low energy consumption and high reliability. Z-Wave can be used in light control, status checking and measurements. For instance, metering, home appliance control, access control, fire detection etc. Its transmission distance is from 30m to 100m. It features a simple network structure, low power consumption and high reliability. The main disadvantage of Z-Wave is low rates and closed standards [3].
There are only three main technologies for long-range wireless communication called Low Power Wide Area. LPWA technologies include Sigfox, LoRa and NB-IoT. The main aim of Sigfox is building a private wireless IoT network, which requires a low power consumption and low costs. Sigfox can maintain stable data connection without high power consumption. It also uses ultra-narrowband technology and has transmission speed up to 100 bps [4]. The Sigfox uses license-free Sub-Ghz radio waves. It works in the ISM band 868 MHz in Europe and 915 MHz in the USA. LoRa also uses Sub-GHz frequency bands in its turn to achieve a wider range by means of higher frequencies and low-power consumption. It is based on spread spectrum technology. It avoids the tradeoff between transmission range and low-power consumption and provides users with a simple system. Narrow Band IoT is built on cellular networks and uses a bandwidth of about 180 kHz. It can be deployed on GSM, UMTS and also on LTE networks. Thereby, it reduces its cost. NB-IoT technologies provide wide coverage, multiple connections, low costs, low power consumption, low speed and excellent architecture. It can be used in smart parking, remote metering, smart agriculture and more [4].
Thus, it can be concluded, that there is a large number of communication technologies. The article outlined the advantages and disadvantages of each of them. In the Internet of Things, you can combine the use of technologies, depending on what task was set.