ASANSOL INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT – POLYTECHNIC

ASANSOL
Pre Test:
Q1.What is IoT?
MAIN BODY: In the IoT realm, networking standards are hands down the most important. Standard protocols
define rules and formats for setting up and managing IoT networks, along with how data are transmitted across these
networks. Networking protocols can be categorized into multiple layers accordingly to the communication stack (i.e.
OSI or TCP/IP model).

Even before IoT becomes a worldwide phenomenon, there have been a number of standardized wireless technologies
that are widely acknowledged and adopted on a global scale. The most successful examples include Wi-Fi (based on
IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n specifications for wireless local area networks), Zigbee (based on IEEE 802.15.4 specification
for low-rate wireless personal networks) and GSM/UMTS/LTE (based on 2G/3G/4G mobile broadband standards
developed by 3GPP).

However, these previously existing standards are not optimized for a majority of large-scale IoT deployments that
require interconnection of huge amounts of battery operated sensors (end nodes). Limited range and coverage, low
penetration capability, power-hungry transmissions and high costs are factors that hamper their applicability in many
use cases. By exactly filling these gaps, the arising group of low power wide area (LPWA) technologies are now
taking over the IoT stage.

The problem is, most existing LPWA networks – typically the ones operating in the license-free spectrum – are
proprietary solutions that do not implement a recognized industry-standard protocol. By making their technical
specifications publicly available on a royalty-basis, many LPWAN providers are attempting to claim their
technologies as “open standards.” Nevertheless, this is not really the case.

Benefits of IoT Standards

From an IoT user’s perspective, standardized communication solutions offer significant benefits in terms of:
 Guaranteed Quality and Credibility – IoT standards ensure that products and solutions are fit for their intended
purposes. In other words, communication technologies that adhere to rigorous standards deliver high Quality-of-
Service, robustness against interferences and industry-grade security to ensure reliable and secure transmission of
massive IoT sensor data at the edge.
 Interoperability and Innovation Flexibility – Standardized communication protocols can be programmed on
various commodity, off-the-shelf hardware (i.e. chipsets, gateways) to support multi-vendor solutions and the
interconnection of heterogeneous devices. Beside promoting interoperability in the long run, this helps end users
avoid commercial risks of vendor lock-in, whereby a single supplier retains total control over functionality design
and future product/technology innovation.
 Global Scalability – Industrial users with worldwide operations want to adopt IoT connectivity that can be
implemented across their global facilities. Standardized solutions function universally and help minimize
installation complexity, thereby safeguarding long-term investment.
IoT Protocols
Before we dive into common IoT protocols, let's define the term "protocol" at a high level.
Protocols are a set of rules for transmitting data between electronic devices according to a preset agreement
regarding information structure and how each side will send and receive data. Correspondingly, IoT protocols are
standards that enable the exchange and transmission of data between the Internet and devices at the edge.
IoT protocols can be divided into two categories: IoT network protocols and IoT data protocols. Data protocols
mainly focus on information exchange, while network protocols provide methods of connecting IoT edge devices with
other edge devices or the Internet. Each category contains a number of protocols that each have their own unique features.

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List of Common IoT Protocols
IoT Network Protocols
 Wi-Fi
 LTE CAT 1
 LTE CAT M1
 NB-IoT
 Bluetooth
 ZigBee
 LoRaWAN
IoT Data Protocols
 AMQP
 MQTT
 HTTP
 CoAP
 DDS
 LwM2M
Layers of the IoT Protocol Stack
"IoT protocol stack" refers to a hierarchy of software and hardware layers.
The IoT network stack can be represented using the seven-layer OSI Network Model, starting from the physical layer at
the bottom and ending with the application layer at the top. Specific protocols may represent only one layer or span
many—regardless, they must be interoperable to ensure that the network functions as intended.

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Physical and Data Link Layers
The first two layers from the bottom—the physical and data link layers—define the physical connection of end devices to
the network. More specifically:
 The physical layer receives unstructured raw data between devices and physical transmission media, then transmits
the digital information into electrical, radio, or optical signals.
 The data link layer catches the data and detects/corrects any errors that may have occurred. This layer also defines
the protocol for flow control, as well as establishing and terminating connections between two physically
connected devices.

Network, Transport, and Session Layers
The network, transport, and session layers facilitate data transfer over the connection, with a focus on logical
addressing, traffic directing, error correction, flow control, congestion avoidance, session management, and
reliability.

Presentation and Application Layers

The two layers at the top—presentation and application—deal with data formatting and the boundary between the data
coming from devices in the field and a business application or database.

 The presentation layer-transforms data into the form that is accepted by the application.
 The application layer—the layer closest to the user-typically identifies communication partners, determines
resource availability, and synchronizes communication.

At this point in the process, all procedures are accomplished over an encrypted channel. Security applies to every layer in
different ways and is often a function of the protocol being used. Once the data reaches the cloud, the systems will unpack
it, analyze it, and make decisions accordingly before pushing each decision to the user's cloud platform.

IoT Network Protocols:

Wi-Fi: Wi-Fi is a ubiquitous protocol that can be found almost anywhere—industrial plants, homes, commercial
buildings, and even your neighborhood restaurants. This widely favored technology is able to transmit large
volumes of data over reasonable distances. However, many low-power or battery-powered IoT devices are
unlikely to use Wi-Fi due to its high power consumption rate.

LTE CAT 1: LTE CAT 1 is a communication standard specifically designed for servicing IoT applications.
Compared with other standards, it scales down bandwidth and communication demand to save power and cost
for large-scale and long-range IoT systems. Though LTE CAT 1 performs inferiorly to 3G networks.

LTE CAT M1: which can also be referred to as Cat-M—is a low-cost, low-power, wide-area network that
specializes in transferring low to medium amounts of data. It was developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership
Project as part of the 13th edition of LTE standard and is a core cellular IoT technology.
Cat-M stands out as a protocol option because it is compatible with the prevailing LTE network, meaning major
carriers pivoting to it will not have to invest in new antennas.

NB-IoT: While the protocols detailed previously have been in application for a long time, Narrow Band-IoT is a
new, fast-growing, low-power, wide-area technology intended to specifically target the needs of battery-powered
IoT devices. When compared to other cellular protocols, NB-IoT's advantages include improvements in power
consumption, system capacity, and spectrum efficiency. For example, NB-IoT can connect huge fleets with up to
50,000 devices per network cell.
However, NB-IoT doesn’t come without challenges. The protocol has very limited bandwidth, which can slow or
limit data transmission capabilities and make essential features like over-the-air updates difficult or impossible to
achieve. Also, the protocol has seen limited rollout and support in worldwide geographies. While support is
growing, fragmented availability is a risk to any IoT deployment.

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Bluetooth: Bluetooth focuses on point-to-point, short-range communication of a relatively small amount of data.
In the IoT space, Bluetooth is commonly used to connect small, battery-powered sensors to IoT gateways or to
facilitate communication with a smartphone, eBike, or other smart device.

ZigBee: Ratified in the early 2000s, ZigBee stands out as a low-cost, low-power, and reliable wireless network
technology. The standard is adaptable and supports multiple network topologies, including mesh networks,
point-to-multipoint, and point-to-point. ZigBee is most commonly used in home or building automation settings.

LoRaWAN: Long-range wide area network—also referred to as LoRa—is a long-range, radio-wide networking
protocol with low power consumption. Normally, LoRaWAN wirelessly connects multiple battery-operated
devices to the Internet within regional, national, or global networks.
In the IoT field, LoRaWAN plays an important role in bidirectional communication, end-to-end security,
localization, and mobility services.

IoT Data Protocols:

AMQP: Known for its reliability and interoperability, Advanced Message Queuing Protocol is an open
messaging standard. This protocol utilizes queues of data, enabling connected systems to communicate
asynchronously and better handle issues like traffic spikes and poor network conditions.
Additional AMQP features include durable and persistent queues, federation and high-availability queues,
clustering, and flexible routing. However, AMQP is known to be a verbose protocol in some circumstances.

MQTT: Message Queue Telemetry Transport is a lightweight pub/sub messaging protocol suitable for
connecting small, low-power devices.This data protocol was designed specifically for IoT communication and
requires minimal memory and processing power. On the wire, MQTT's bidirectional pub/sub architecture makes
the protocol flexible and scalable for a wide variety of use cases and IoT system architectures.
Additionally, the MQTT protocol is designed with reliability and scalability in mind—security is provided via
Transport Layer Security, and persistent sessions allow the protocol to adapt to poor network conditions and
reduce connection time overhead.

HTTP: You might recognize this acronym as appearing at the beginning of every website address you type, as
Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.
However, within the context of IoT applications, HTTP has many drawbacks. For instance, this protocol
establishes a synchronous connection between two devices in order to transfer data—which presents a number of
challenges for IoT deployments because devices and endpoints may not be online at the same time and
connections may be unreliable due to network conditions.
Additionally, HTTP relies on transferring data in ASCII, which is an inefficient way to transmit the small bits of
data often exchanged by IoT systems and requires more processing power to encode and decode messages at
both ends. Ultimately, while HTTP is a great choice for transferring website data, it is generally not a good
choice for an IoT application.

CoAP: Constrained Application Protocol is used with constrained nodes and networks. This protocol is suited
for IoT applications as it reduces the size of network packages, thereby decreasing network bandwidth overload.
Other benefits of CoAP include improving the IoT life cycle, saving battery power and storage space, and
reducing the amount of data required to operate.

DDS: Released in 2004, Data Distribution Service is a middleware architecture for real-time systems that focus
on data communication between the nodes of a publication- or subscription-based messaging architecture.
DDS is mainly used under circumstances that require real-time data exchange—for example, autonomous
vehicles, power generation, and robotics.

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LwM2M: Lightweight Machine-to-Machine protocol is designed for remote management of M2M devices and
related services. LwM2M reduces costs associated with low-power module deployment and equipping devices
with faster IoT solutions.

SUM UP

Benefits of IoT Standards

From an IoT user’s perspective, standardized communication solutions offer significant benefits in terms of:
 Guaranteed Quality and Credibility
 Interoperability and Innovation Flexibility
 Global Scalability.
IoT Protocols: IoT protocols can be divided into two categories: IoT network protocols and IoT data protocols.
IoT Network Protocols
 Wi-Fi
 LTE CAT 1
 LTE CAT M1
 NB-IoT
 Bluetooth
 ZigBee
 LoRaWAN
IoT Data Protocols
 AMQP
 MQTT
 HTTP
 CoAP
 DDS
 LwM2M