Ques : What is Connectivity Technologies ?

IoT devices need to be connected in order to work. Various technologies used to establish connections between devices are discussed in this section

IEEE 802.15.4

It is an IEEE standard protocol used to establish wireless personal area networks (WPAN). It is used for providing low cost, low speed, ubiquitous networks between devices. It is also known as Low-Rate wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN) standard. It makes use of the first two layers (Physical and MAC layers) of the network stack and operates in ISM band. These standards are also used with communication protocols of higher levels like- ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, etc.

6LoWpan

IPV6 over low power wireless personal area network, is a standard for wireless communication. It was the first standard created for IoT. It allows small, limited processing capabilities and low power IoT devices to have direct connectivity with IP based servers on the internet. It also allows IPV6 packets to be transmitted over IEEE 802.15.4 wireless network.

ZigBee

It is a wireless technology based on IEEE 802.15.4 used to address needs of low-power and low-cost IoT devices. It is used to create low cost, low power, low data rate wireless ad-hoc networks. It is resistant to unauthorized reading and communication errors but provides low throughput. It is easy to install, implement and supports a large number of nodes to be connected. It can be used for short range communications only.

NFC

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a protocol used for short distance communication between devices. It is based on RFID technology but has a lower transmission range (of about 10 cm). It is used for identification of documents or objects. It allows contact less transmission of data. It has shorter setup time than Bluetooth and provides better security.

Bluetooth

It is one of the widely used types of wireless PAN used for short range transmission of data. It makes use of short range radio frequency. It provides data rate of appx 2.1 Mbps and operates at 2.45GHz. It is capable of low cost and low power transmission for short distances. Its initial version 1.0 supported upto 732kpbs speed. Its latest version is 5.2 which can work upto 400m range with 2 Mbps data rate.

Z-Wave

It is one of the standards available for wireless networks. It is interoperable and uses low powered radio frequency communication. It is used for connecting to smart devices by consuming low power. These Z-waves devices allow IoT devices to be controlled over the internet. It is generally used for applications like home automation . It supports data rate of upto 100kbps. It also supports encryption and multi-channel.

RFID

Radio frequency identification (RFID) are electronics devices consisting of an antenna and a small chip. This chip is generally capable of carrying data upto 2000 bytes. It is used to give unique identification to an object. Its system is composed of reading device and RFID tags. RFID tags are used to store data and identification information, which is then attached to the object to be tracked. The reader is used to track presence of RFID tag when the object passes
through it.