IoT platforms provide multiple benefits to you in the industrial environment, from boosting automation and productivity to generating new management models. Moreover, without IoT networking protocols, these platforms could not function.
In the field of connectivity and telecommunications, IoT networking protocols are a set of standards and rules that allow two entities to understand each other and exchange information, facilitating Machine to Machine (M2M) communication.
In other words, IoT protocol is the language that machines use to communicate with each other. So, just as two humans need to speak the same language to understand each other, devices must use the same IoT protocols to exchange information. But, on the other hand, a recent study on Industrial Edge Computing observes that one of the needs that companies have and want to cover is precise knowledge of IoT protocols.
For their operation, the emerging data protocols used in IoT networks have several layers:
- Application: The interface between the user and the device
- Network: Enhances the communication between the router and each of the devices connected to the network
- Transport: Facilitates data communication between the different levels and guarantees its security
- Physical: The physical communication network between devices
- Data link: Is responsible for transporting the data in the system and detecting and correcting problems
Table of Contents
Advantages of IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system made up of unique and interconnected computer devices capable of exchanging data through the network autonomously, using a communication protocol.
The goal of an IoT system is to acquire contextual information, which, thanks to data analysis, is transformed into useful information to support and automate decision-making processes. It generates real value for the business. While largely falling within the context of emerging technologies, the IoT is already able to generate important numbers on the market.
Why are IoT protocols necessary?
IoT networking protocols are necessary for communication to occur between the different devices in the IoT system. Thus, the IoT networking protocols will have to fulfill various functions. They allow communication between a large number and a variety of devices simultaneously.
The protocols must transport messages between devices with different requirements (sensors and actuators, but also data processing and storage devices), all in an efficient way. They prevent coupling between devices so that, ideally, there is no dependency between them. Furthermore, they facilitate scalability by allowing devices to be added or removed from the IoT environment without affecting the overall deployment. Another factor to be considered is to ensure communications security in vulnerable environments such as industrial IoT. Therefore, cybersecurity must also be addressed at the device level.
The network protocols provide easy access to devices, whether or not there are obstacles such as latency or firewall issues. The IoT involves applications from personal electronics to industrial machines and sensors that connect to the Internet wirelessly. Spanning so many use cases across diverse environments and industries, no single solution stands out.
This scenario is often complex since there are several standards aimed at different markets and using different communication protocols, so it can be quite complex to choose the right technology for an IoT application. On many occasions, IoT devices are usually connected to the Internet through an IP network. However, this is not possible in solutions where devices are connected in remote locations, powered by a battery, and with few resources.
The following table shows IoT network protocols mapped to the TCP/IP model:
| TCP/IP Model | IoT Protocols |
|---|---|
| Application | HTTPS, XMPP, CoAP, MQTT, AMQP |
| Transport | UDP, TCP |
| Internet | IPv6, 6LoWPAN, RPL |
| Network Access and Physical | IEEE 802.15.4Wifi (802.11 a/b/g/n)Ethernet (802.3)GSM, CDMA, LTE |
Classification of IoT protocols
IoT networking protocols and gateways are basically the language and bridges that allow the passage of information from the IoT device to the cloud or another device. There are various ways in which we can connect devices to the cloud, depending on the infrastructure available in the company. The IoT networking protocols are chosen on the basis of the architecture of the reference system. Here is a look at the classification of IoT protocols.
IoT Data Link Protocol
The Data Link Layer protocols are Ethernet, token ring, FDDI and PPP. These protocols are used to connect low-power IoT devices.
LR-WPAN- IEEE 802.15
IEEE 802.15.4 is a low-cost, low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN)
WiFi- IEEE 802.11 ah
In a residential environment, most homes with an Internet connection also have a Wi-Fi router. The most frequent Wi-Fi standard (i.e IEEE 802.11n) is adequate for file transmission but requires a lot of power and therefore is not an ideal solution for many IoT applications (such as battery-powered devices).
WirelessHART
The WirelessHART is a wireless sensor networking technology mostly used in process automation applications. Individual instruments connect with a common “gateway” device that interfaces the wireless network and a wired network or host control system.
Z-Wave
This protocol was designed for household applications’ control, monitoring and status reading. This technology is based on wireless radio frequency (RF).
Bluetooth Low Energy
Bluetooth technology is a short-range communication protocol that is well-suited for connecting IoT sensors. Initially, Bluetooth was developed for applications with continuous data exchange over time, but this required considerable battery use.
To overcome this limitation, the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol, also known as Bluetooth Smart, was introduced in 2011, significantly reducing device consumption.
By activating the connection only when needed and keeping the sleep mode in the remaining time, a small battery can also work for 4 or 5 years. However, the BLE was designed to transmit small volumes of data; therefore, its application is especially suitable for connecting IoT wearable devices via smartphone (such as the Smartwatch).
Similar to BLE, many other IoT networking protocols offer low-power solutions. These are low-energy and low-cost solutions that are able to support the creation of very large networks of intelligent devices. Specific use cases in available IoT products today include devices transmitting up to 30 meters inside buildings and up to 300 meters outdoors.
Zigbee Smart Energy
ZigBee is an IEEE 802.15.4-based standard communication protocol for low-rate wireless personal area networks. Zigbee is an open protocol that is widely used in the field of building automation and control (such as smart thermostats).
IoT applications take advantage of the features of these IoT protocols, such as low consumption (therefore, good battery life), high security, and excellent scalability. However, the data transmission speed is rather low, as is the range of action. Similar to the Zigbee protocol, there is the Z-Wave. Short-range and low-power, it is often used in the field of home automation and smart applications.
DASH7
This protocol operates in the 433 MHz, 868 MHz and 915 MHz unlicensed ISM band/SRD band. It is an open-source wireless sensor and actuator network protocol.
HomePlug
This IoT networking protocol, made by the HomePlug Alliance, is used by transceivers in powerlines communication.
G.9959
This protocol has a bandwidth of 1GHz. It is developed by the international telecommunication union (ITU).
LTE-A
The LTE, which is from the 3GPP releases 13 and 14, specifies an IP-only network supporting data rates up to 150 Mbps.
LoRaWAN
LoRaWAN is a wireless audio frequency technology that functions on LoRa. It is a Low Power Wide Area Networking (LPWAN) communication protocol. For low-power but long-range solutions, a recent solution is the LoRa protocol.
Apart from the reduced energy consumption, the strength of this technology is the data transmission distance, which can reach 30 km in rural environments and 2 km in urban contexts. Given these characteristics, the LoRa protocol is widely used for applications requiring large distances coverage, such as smart manufacturing and smart cities.
Weightless
This is LPWAN connectivity technology for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is mostly used to exchange data between a base station and thousands of machines around it.
DECT/ULE
This is an SW protocol extension of the standard DECT, and is used to design wireless sensor and actuator networks for smart home applications.
Ethernet IEEE 802.3
Diving deeper into the classification of IoT protocols, there are different communication protocols for connecting the elements of a wired network via cabling. The best-known and most used is Ethernet. This technology is solid and extensively tested, dating back to the mid-1970s.
Each Ethernet network card has a unique code that identifies it (the MAC address), consisting of 48 binary numbers. Its use is very efficient in buildings because the transmission of information occurs smoothly, regardless of floors and the presence of obstacles. It is very popular because it is well established (dating back to 1975), cheap and present in many components (including new ones). One of the best-known and most-used protocols is Wi-Fi.
Network Layer Routing Protocols for IoT
For the routing decisions to be made, the routing information is exchanged between routers in these protocols. This is also known as Layer 3 and deals with network-to-network communications.
RPL
RPL is one of the routing IoT networking protocols. It is made for wireless networks with low power consumption and lossy networks.
CORPL
This protocol is an extension of the RPL protocol. It is used by cognitive networks and DODAG topology.
CARP
This protocol was introduced by OpenBSD in October 2003. The main purpose of the Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP) is to allow multiple hosts on the same network segment to share an IP address.
Network Layer Encapsulation Protocols for IoT
These protocols for IoT connect the link layer protocol with the network layer protocol. The main feature of this protocol is encapsulation.
6LoWPAN
A protocol suitable for low-power devices is found in 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks) technology. 6LoWPAN is proposed as a compressed version of IPv6, as it shortens the size of the IP address for devices while still allowing routers to translate them into normal IPv6 addresses.
This is one of the IoT networking protocols that sets up a low-power network in which each IoT device has its own IPv6 address and can connect to the Internet using open standards. The 6LoWPAN is very suitable for devices with very low consumption and limited computing performance, such as home automation devices.
This communication protocol is still relatively little widespread, but its characteristics suggest that it may be a valid alternative in the context of low-consumption and low-data-volume applications.
6TiSCH
6TiSCH is IPv6 routing over time slotted channel hopping MAC. It enables a fairly big network of things to be connected via multi-hop to the internet. It is meant for Low power Lossy Networks (LLN).
6Lo
6lo is one of the protocols for IoT that focuses on the work that facilitates IPv6 connectivity over constrained node networks.
IPv6 over G.9959
This protocol provides a Segmentation and Reassembly (SAR) layer for transmission. The standards described above are generally suitable for local IoT networks. At the same time, for the remote control of large quantities of devices and the transmission of data via the Internet, the IPv6 protocol is a suitable choice.
IPv6 can support many IoT devices (to be precise, 2128 different addresses) and has excellent scalability and good security levels. However, since IPv6 requires considerable computing power, it is not the ideal solution for IoT devices that have limited computing power, reduced computational capabilities, and are designed to transmit only small amounts of data.
IPv6 over Bluetooth Low Energy
As a part of the IPv6 IoT networking protocols, this protocol exchanges IPv6 packets using Bluetooth low-energy connections. Thanks to encryption and several other security mechanisms, Bluetooth is generally considered to be relatively secure. However, it has already been proven time and again that even the most recent versions of the radio standard are vulnerable, for example, due to incorrect implementations by manufacturers.
The most common target is almost always the sign-in procedure during pairing, during which cybercriminals attempt to obtain the PIN used for authorization. Since this only needs to be assigned once for each connection configuration, the time window for such attacks is usually extremely short.
Application of Bluetooth in Devices
Nowadays, every new model of widely used (mainstream) smartphone and tablet is “Bluetooth Smart Ready”, meaning that it is compatible with both Bluetooth Smart devices. This basically means that the terminal nodes are operating in LE (Low Energy) mode – both with devices operating in Bluetooth BR (Basic Rate) or EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) mode. An example is wireless speakers, which receive streaming audio signals and are characterized by much higher power consumption than Bluetooth LE devices.
Thanks to Bluetooth 4.0, “smart” objects have had the means to connect with portable devices and from these to the Internet. But the goal of the Internet of Things is not to allow a plurality of objects to connect to another “intelligent” device but to allow direct connection with an Internet gateway.
This is precisely the purpose that the 4.2 release of the Bluetooth IoT networking protocols aims to achieve. At this point, it is useful to ask yourself a few questions relating to the effectiveness with which Bluetooth 4.2 is able to provide connections to the Internet, the type of applications it addresses, and the ability of components compliant with this protocol to support the type of functionality IoT that OEMs want to implement.
Application of Bluetooth 4.0
In the case of Bluetooth 4.0, the scheme used to connect a Bluetooth Smart device to the Internet provides access (piggybacking) to the connection of some other device. In the field of personal health monitoring, for example, a bracelet intended to monitor a patient’s heart rate will usually connect via Bluetooth Smart to a smartphone. An app will transfer heart rate data through the smartphone connection (cell phone or Wi-Fi) to the hospital web servers, which will be examined by qualified personnel.
In the case of Bluetooth 4.2, Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) has provided two ways to allow a Bluetooth Smart device to connect directly to the Internet in a very simple way. The first method involves using a gateway: in the home, a device of this type is usually the wireless broadband router. A Bluetooth 4.2 compatible router that implements the new API (Application Programming Interface) RESTful for GAP (Generic Access Profile – generic access) and GATT (Generic Attribute Profile – generic attribute). These profiles ensure that the Bluetooth Smart devices connected to it are visible to any authorized device connected to the Internet.
Viewing the status of any Bluetooth Smart device
At this point, from any Internet browser or Internet app for mobile devices, users can view the status of any Bluetooth Smart device connected to a Bluetooth 4.2 gateway (the same Bluetooth Smart devices can run Bluetooth 4.0, 4.1, 4.2). If the gateway supports the protocol’s new Http Proxy Service (HPS), Bluetooth Smart devices can be configured to actively transmit data to web servers. In the home automation sector, for example, a “smart” house monitor can transmit the temperature of each room to a Web server for home monitoring that each inhabitant of the house can remotely view using any Web browser.
Session Layer Protocols for IoT
This is also known as the 5th layer. This protocol allows users on different machines to establish active communication sessions between them.
The primary responsibility of this protocol is to set up and manage communicative sessions.
MQTT
MQTT stands for “Message Queuing Telemetry Transport” and was originally created to connect devices and send information from a sensor to remote servers related to the oil industry sector.
“Being an open standard with a wide level of adoption across IoT devices, MQTT is vastly important for people and companies that value interoperability, cost and energy-efficient operation, and reliability. When combined these lower-level factors lead to higher system-level merits such as scalability and extensive monitoring and control. Be it a large industrial company or a tech enthusiast – MQTT is available and beneficial to many.” – Serhii Orlivskyi from Cedalo, the company Pro Mosquitto MQTT Broker.
SMQTT
This protocol is an extension of the MQTT protocol, which uses encryption based on lightweight attribute encryption. The broadcast encryption feature is what distinguishes this protocol.
AMQP
AMQP stands for Advanced Message Queuing Protocol. It is an open standard application layer protocol for message-oriented middleware.
CoAP
Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a customary client-server IoT protocol that enables “nodes” to communicate with the wider Internet using similar protocols.
XMPP
XMPP is an extensible messaging and presence protocol. It uses open XML technology for real-time communication.
DDS
DDS enables data exchange via publish-subscribe methodology. It is developed for M2M (Machine to Machine) communication by OMG (Object Management Group).
IoT Management Protocol
Interconnection of Heterogeneous Datalink
In this protocol, the network’s interconnection is based on the existing 3GPP core network functionalities.
Smart Transducer Interface
Smart Transducer Interface contains a low-level command structure. This structure is necessary to execute the communication protocol required by the TEDS nodes.
Key Takeaways on IoT Network Protocols
The Internet of Things is a significant technical development that will only get more powerful and pervasive over time. IoT protocols serve as a common language or a means of communication for various smart devices to connect to one another and communicate with one another. They are crucial to comprehensive device management.
IoT network protocols consider the various integrated devices’ requirements, communication, and security. Different IoT protocols are created to reduce the risk of intrusion depending on the IoT architecture, current situation, and usage context.
IoT network protocols protect and ensure optimum security for the data being exchanged between connected devices The ultimate purpose of the protocols for IoT communication is to make the data accessible on the internet and to the final application.
Do you have any questions about IoT Network Protocols? Get in touch with our team of connectivity experts for assistance with building a modern connectivity solution designed for IoT.
