Realizing an IoT-Based Home Area Network Model Using ZigBee in the Global Environment

Abstract

As devices become increasingly connected, the Internet of Things (IoT) concept becomes ever so prominent. For Device-to-Device (D2D) communications in the home and industry like for power, oil and gas, utility transmission and transport, the most profound challenge of the IoT has been organizing this large number of devices into a network of things. The Majority of these devices constituting the IoT setup are lightweight, low power wireless sensor nodes. The objective of the Home Area Network (HAN) is to continuously monitor connected devices, collect data, process data, and give feedback where and when needed. Within this chain of communication are numerous nontrivial and computational issues. In this paper, we demonstrate the proof of concept using the ZigBee protocol as a smart data collection element in IoT based HAN in global environment. A simulation study with different topologies and configuration using the ZigBee network platform in the global environment is presented. Based on traffic-demand, it is imperative to implement a network configuration that enables ideal network performance. To transfer the large volume of collected data from the HAN, we designate the Fifth Generation (5G) wireless device enabled with Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) connected to the cloud to process data.