Internet of Things (IoT) communication protocols: Review

TLDR

The Internet of Things comprises smart devices that communicate and exchange data, spanning applications from industry to healthcare, and can connect via wired or wireless links using protocols such as IPv6, 6LoWPAN, ZigBee, BLE, Z‑Wave, NFC, SigFox, and cellular LPWAN. This paper reviews and compares IoT communication protocols, emphasizing key metrics like power consumption, security, and data rate to guide protocol selection. The authors conduct a comparative analysis of commonly used protocols, evaluating their features and performance characteristics across the highlighted metrics. The study provides guidelines enabling researchers to choose the most suitable protocol for specific application contexts.

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) consists of smart devices that communicate with each other. It enables these devices to collect and exchange data. Besides, IoT has now a wide range of life applications such as industry, transportation, logistics, healthcare, smart environment, as well as personal, social gaming robot, and city information. Smart devices can have wired or wireless connection. As far as the wireless IoT is the main concern, many different wireless communication technologies and protocols can be used to connect the smart device such as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), ZigBee, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Z-Wave and Near Field Communication (NFC). They are short range standard network protocols, while SigFox and Cellular are Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN).standard protocols. This paper will be an attempt to review different communication protocols in IoT. In addition, it will compare between commonly IoT communication protocols, with an emphasis on the main features and behaviors of various metrics of power consumption security spreading data rate, and other features. This comparison aims at presenting guidelines for the researchers to be able to select the right protocol for different applications.