Best Connectivity Solutions Within the IoT Technology

"Selecting the most suitable connectivity technology is one of the critical decisions that enterprises need to make in their IoT launch strategy as reliable connectivity is a key component in an IoT solution"

Internet of Things connectivity - the way you connect devices and sensors to your data processing module - is one of the biggest IoT challenges. As each business case has its own goals, each Internet of Things system has its own requirements, including the requirements to connectivity in terms of range, latency, data throughput, etc.

At this point, there is no universal connectivity technology that would address the needs of all the IoT use cases. Instead, there is a variety of options each with its own features, benefits, and drawbacks. In this article, we will learn about the main IoT connectivity technologies and standards of today.

Before choosing Internet of Things connectivity options

Internet of Things connectivity options differs in power consumption, range, reliability, bandwidth, cost, and scalability capabilities. Some technologies require a specific environment, for example, closed space with little electromagnetic interference, while the same options may be completely useless in other environments like underground or outdoors. There are a couple of things that are needed to be taken into consideration to choose the right option for an IoT project:

1. The area of coverage

In other words, how far a device or sensor can be installed or moved and still be able to continuously send data to the processing module. This range can be as small as a few inches in the case of an access card or as far as a few miles in the case of an agricultural drone.

2. Battery consumption

Some IoT devices must be constantly plugged or have access to their charging stations. Others are scattered around a wide area, for example, soil sensors in the field, and need to have a reliable nearly life-long battery solution to continuously work with data flows without battery replacement.

3. Bandwidth

Bandwidth in the IoT field implies the volume of data that can be sent between two or more modules, for example, a sensor and cloud storage. There are IoT connectivity solutions that provide extremely high bandwidth(Wi-Fi), and those that allow sending a smaller fraction of data frequently (for example, every few hours.

4. Mobility

In many IoT applications, a device will be installed at a fixed location and paired to a single access point for the entire lifetime, while other applications may require the device to be operational as it moves through the coverage of different access points. While most of the technologies support device relocation to different access points, the relocation process can be as seamless as in the cellular network or occur only at scheduled times.

5. Cost

The cost of a connectivity option is based on several factors. Mainly, they are the volume of data, service provider and the number of devices or area served. But, often, the same option offered by two separate providers may have completely different prices.

6. Conditions

Some connectivity options work perfectly regardless of the interference, noise, walls or any other condition. Others do not. Therefore, it’s important to take into consideration the environment in the IoT system will operate.

7. Existing infrastructure

When designing an IoT system, take into consideration the existing infrastructure it will sit in and, where it’s possible, align the choice of IoT connectivity solution accordingly.

8. One last point

When analyzing all these factors, it is also important to consider the difference between a prototype and a fully-fledged product. An IoT connectivity option chosen for a prototype may cover a limited area, and it will be alright at this stage. However, when the system starts to scale up, the limited range can become an obstacle and may require changing a connectivity technology.

There are numerous possible real-life applications of IoT technologies, yet there is no shortage of connectivity solutions behind them. Depending on the specifications of every given IoT use case, each communication option may offer different service enablement scenarios while having tradeoffs between power consumption, range, and bandwidth.

For example, imagine you are building a smart home. You may want to have your indoor temperature sensors and a heating controller connected to your smartphone so that you can remotely monitor the temperatures in each room and adjust them in real-time according to the current needs. In such a case, the would-be the recommended solution would be the IP-based IPv6 networking protocol called Thread, specially designed for home automation environment.

Connectivity solutions within the IoT technology

With all this multiplicity and diversity of communication standards and protocols, one may raise a question about the actual need for developing new solutions while there are some well-proven Internet protocols that have been in use already for decades. The reason for this is that existing Internet protocols, such as Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), are often not effective enough or too power-consuming to be able to work efficiently within newly emerging IoT technology applications.

Here we present a short overview of the major alternative Internet protocols specially dedicated for use by IoT systems. We will consider the most popular IoT radio technologies broken down by radio-frequency range achieved by each of the solutions: short-range IoT radio solutions, medium-range solutions, and long-range Wide Area Networks solutions.

Short-range IoT network solutions:

Bluetooth and wired Ethernet connectivity are the most common examples of connectivity options in this category. Wi-Fi, for example, can deliver a huge amount of data with great speed, comparable to that of satellite or cellular connectivity, but with the range which is much more limited.

RFID

Radio-frequency identification (RFID), being among the first IoT applications ever implemented, still offers positioning solutions for IoT applications, especially in supply chain management and logistics, which require the ability to determine the object position inside buildings. The future of RFID technology clearly goes far beyond the simple localization services, with its possible applications ranging from tracking hospital patients to providing real-time merchandise location data in order to minimize out-of-stock situations in retail stores.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is one of the best options for data-intensive speedy IoT systems operating within a small area. It has a bandwidth of up to 1Gb/second and operates on a high frequency. It has high compatibility with different boards and can work with almost any Wi-Fi router. Wi-Fi connectivity option is popular among smart home IoT devices since it is power intensive and works best for plugged appliances and devices that can be easily recharged. The reasons why other connectivity options are still in use is the fact that Wi-Fi has a couple of cons such as limited range (usually, up to 100 ft), high power requirements (however, less than cellular), and if Wi-Fi source is off, IoT application cannot send data.

But modern Wi-Fi versions have expanded the range and decreased power consumption. Now there are even Wi-Fi standards developed for IoT purposes — Wi-Fi HaLow and HEW.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a connectivity option that allows IoT devices and sensors to send a lot of data at high speed. Like Wi-Fi, it works great both in a smart home environment and industrial IoT applications where machines continuously send status data. BLE or Bluetooth Low Energy is the Bluetooth technology developed specifically for IoT purposes, which offers high bandwidth and speed, good compatibility, and low cost. The biggest difference from Wi-Fi is lower power requirements and higher resilience to noise.

Medium range solutions:

ZIGBEE

Zigbee is a wireless technology developed as an open global standard to address the needs of low-cost, low-power wireless IoT networks. The Zigbee standard operates on the IEEE 802.15.4 physical radio specification and operates in unlicensed bands including 2.4 GHz, 900 MHz, and 868 MHz. Zigbee also supports low data exchange rates, low power operation, security, and reliability.

THREAD

Thread employs IPv6 connectivity to enable connected devices to communicate with one another, access services in the cloud, or interact with the user via Thread mobile applications. It was designed specifically for smart home products. Unlike other proprietary networks, 6LoWPAN, like any network with edge routers, does not maintain any application-layer state as such networks forward datagrams at the network layer. This means that 6LoWPAN remains unaware of application protocols and changes. This lowers the processing power burden on edge routers. It also means that Thread does not need to maintain an application layer. Still, Thread states that multiple application layers can be supported if they are low-bandwidth and are able to operate over IPv6.

Long Range Wide Area Networks (WAN) solutions:

NB-IoT

Being a product of existing 3GPP technologies, Narrowband IoT is a new radio technology standard that ensures extremely low power consumption (as low as 10 years of battery power operation) and provides connectivity with signal strength approx. 23 dB lower than, for example, in the case of 2G. Furthermore, it uses existing network infrastructure that ensures not only global coverage in LTE networks but also guaranteed signal quality. This fact allows for implementing NB-IoT instead of LoRa or Sigfox solutions that require the construction of local networks.

LTE CAT M1

Officially known as CAT M1, it is a low-power wide-area cellular technology that specializes in transferring low to medium amounts of data (200 – 400 kbps) across a wide geographical range. With low power requirements, LTE CAT M1 greatly improves the time that devices spend in the field and limits the amount of time that needs to be spent replacing batteries or updating firmware, increasing cost efficiency. Also, LTE CAT M1 features a power-saving mode that automatically activates when devices are not sending or receiving data.

Since it is powered by LTE (Long-Term Evolution), this connectivity option can also be a cost-effective solution for IoT projects as it eliminates the need to build antennas and other network infrastructure to support the IoT connectivity, while the LTE CAT M1 modems require less power to operate, making them cheaper to maintain in the long term.

LoRaWAN

LoRa (short for long range) is a spread spectrum modulation technique derived from chirp spread spectrum (CSS) technology. LoRa devices and the LoRaWAN protocol have amassed several hundred known uses cases for smart cities, smart homes and buildings, smart agriculture, smart metering, smart supply chain and logistics, and more. LoRaWAN is a cloud-based medium access control (MAC) layer protocol but acts mainly as a network layer protocol for managing communication between LPWAN gateways and end-node devices as a routing protocol, maintained by the LoRa Alliance.

LoRaWAN is also responsible for managing the communication frequencies, data rate, and power for all devices. Devices in the network are asynchronous and transmit when they have data available to send. Data transmitted by an end-node device is received by multiple gateways, which then forward the data packets to a centralized network server. The technology shows high reliability for the moderate load; however, it has some performance issues related to sending acknowledgments.

Sigfox

The aim behind Sigfox technology is to provide an effective connectivity solution for low-power M2M applications that require low levels of data transfer where the Wi-Fi range is too short, and cellular range is too expensive and too power-hungry. Sigfox employs UNB, a technology that enables it to handle low data-transfer speeds of 10 to 1,000 bits per second. Consuming up to 100 times less energy compared to cellular communication solutions, it delivers a typical stand-by time of 20 years for a 2.5Ah battery. Offering a robust, energy-efficient, and scalable network that supports communication between thousands of thousands of battery-operated devices across areas of several square kilometers, Sigfox proves to be suitable for smart street lighting, intelligent meters, patient monitors, security devices, environmental sensors, and many other M2M applications.

Conclusions

The choice of IoT connectivity technologies is abundant. In practice, one IoT system often requires combining several connectivity solutions to optimize cost, efficiency, and quality of data transfer in different environments.

Therefore, seen from such a practical perspective, the question of success in the case of given IoT applications seems to boil down to the choice of appropriate IoT technology from the vast array of existing solutions.

Are you interested in IoT connectivity management? Or looking for an IoT development services company that could help you choose the right connectivity option for your IoT system? Either way, Utah Tech Labs team is ready to talk about your ideas and the implementation of your IoT project.