Wireless Communication Technologies in Internet of Things: A Critical Evaluation
Wireless Communication Technologies in Internet of Things: A Critical Evaluation
Wireless Communication Technologies in Internet of Things: A Critical Evaluation
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Abstract—Internet of Things has gained the attention of almost strengths and weaknesses. Finally Section V concludes the
everybody due to its capability of monitoring and controlling the paper by summarizing the findings along with suggestions for
environment. IoT helps making decisions supported by real data future work.
collected using large number of ordinary day-to-day devices that
have been augmented with intelligence through the installation II. I NTERNET OF T HINGS
of sensing, processing and communication capabilities. One of
the main and important aspects of any IoT device is its com- The initial idea for Internet of Things was put forward way
munication capability for transferring and sharing data between back in 1999 by researchers attached to the Auto-ID Center at
other devices. IoT devices mainly use wireless communication for the the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [5]. The initial
communicating with other devices. The industry and the research
community have proposed many communication technologies for idea envisaged to put intelligence into everyday objects that
IoT systems. In this paper, the authors present the results of an they can be connected to the Internet for achieving pervasive
in depth study carried out on the benefits and limitations of these communication between any real world object to any other
communication technologies. object can be realized. The concept of IoT was officially
Index Terms—Internet of Things, communication technologies, accepted and formalized by the International Telecommuni-
benefits, limitations, smart devices, layered architecture.
cation Union (ITU) at its 2005 World Summit on Information
Society in Tunisia by releasing two reports. These reports
I. I NTRODUCTION
presented information on key enabling technologies, market
Internet of Things (IoT) is a recent computing paradigm opportunities, emerging challenges and implications for the
that envisages to convert everyday ordinary objects into smart developing world and described IoT as this emerging paradigm
objects [1]. IoT has been identified as one of disruptive will multiply connections creating an entirely new dynamic
technologies of the present time that will change the way network of networks [6].
perceive and understand the world around us and react to Since the establishment of the ARPANET, the precursor to
its changes. Advances made in ubiquitous and pervasive the present day Internet, in the 1960s, the number of devices
computing, embedded devices, communication technologies, connected to it has increased initially slowly then rapidly after
sensor networks, Internet protocols and web based applica- the liberalization of the Internet in the late 1980s [7]. Many
tions are the common underlying technologies that help make factors including the possibility of ubiquitous connectivity
ordinary devices smart ones and hence made IoT possible and the availability of undecillions of IP addresses with IPv6
[2]–[4]. Hence, these technologies are commonly known as have aided the evolution of the Internet of Things [8]. It was
the enabling technologies of IoT. In this paper, the authors forecasted that the number of devices connected to the Internet
take a critical look at the different wireless communication would reach 25 billion in 2020 from 10 billion in 2014 and
technologies that are commonly employed in IoT devices with surpass 100 billion by 2050 [9]. Figure 1 shows the growth of
special emphasis on their features, capabilities, strengths and connected devices on the Internet starting from 1950s to 2050
weaknesses. by forecaseted IBM in 2015.
This paper consists of five main sections. They are namely, Research into IoT has been carried out by many researchers
Introduction, IoT and communication Technologies, Related looking at issues from different angles. This has resulted in
Work, Critical Evaluation of Communication Technologies different architectures proposed by different researchers to suit
and Conclusions. Section I sets the context of paper by their requirements. Thus, there is no single architecture that
providing an overview to the subject matter discussed in the has been accepted by every researcher/user or suitable for
paper. Section II discusses the IoT in detail along with its every situation [10]. At the early stages of the development
application areas and Section III reviews similar work carried of IoT, a three layer architecture consisting of Application,
out by other researchers and reported in literature. Section IV Network and Perception Layers from top to bottom was
carries out a critical evaluation of different communication proposed by Wu et al in [11]. This was a very basic model
technologies used with IoT with special emphasis on their and many different functions that are today considered under
Fig. 1. Growth of Connected Devices from 1950 to 2050 [8]
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