Design, Implementation and Practical Evaluation of an IoT Home Automation System for Fog Computing Applications Based on MQTT and ZigBee-WiFi Sensor Nodes

Abstract

In recent years, the improvement of wireless protocols, the development of cloud services and the lower cost of hardware have started a new era for smart homes. One such enabling technologies is fog computing, which extends cloud computing to the edge of a network allowing for developing novel Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services. Under the IoT fog computing paradigm, IoT gateways are usually utilized to exchange messages with IoT nodes and a cloud. WiFi and ZigBee stand out as preferred communication technologies for smart homes. WiFi has become very popular, but it has a limited application due to its high energy consumption and the lack of standard mesh networking capabilities for low-power devices. For such reasons, ZigBee was selected by many manufacturers for developing wireless home automation devices. As a consequence, these technologies may coexist in the 2.4 GHz band, which leads to collisions, lower speed rates and increased communications latencies. This article presents ZiWi, a distributed fog computing Home Automation System (HAS) that allows for carrying out seamless communications among ZigBee and WiFi devices. This approach diverges from traditional home automation systems, which often rely on expensive central controllers. In addition, to ease the platform’s building process, whenever possible, the system makes use of open-source software (all the code of the nodes is available on GitHub) and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware. The initial results, which were obtained in a number of representative home scenarios, show that the developed fog services respond several times faster than the evaluated cloud services, and that cross-interference has to be taken seriously to prevent collisions. In addition, the current consumption of ZiWi’s nodes was measured, showing the impact of encryption mechanisms.

Towards Next Generation Teaching, Learning, and Context-Aware Applications for Higher Education: A Review on Blockchain, IoT, Fog and Edge Computing Enabled Smart Campuses and Universities

“…Smart campuses and universities require an IT infrastructure similar to the one needed by smart cities, smart buildings, or smart homes, which make use of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions [1][2][3][4] to interact with the sensor and actuation systems of a university. Similarly to smart cities, but in contrast to most smart homes and buildings, smart campuses must provide long-distance communications, as many university campuses cover an area that can reach thousands of square meters.…”

A Review on the Application of Blockchain to the Next Generation of Cybersecure Industry 4.0 Smart Factories

“…For instance, in the case of resource-constraint IIoT nodes, P2P communications usually cannot be implemented efficiently due to their power consumption and the amount of demanded resources. Due to this reason, such a kind of IIoT nodes commonly route their data through gateways by using non-P2P protocols like MQTT [30] or by making use of a fog [31] or edge computing infrastructure [32].…”

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“…Moreover, the implementation of on‐site real‐time actionable insights covering local AI deployment and remote load controls on monitored electrical home appliances to guarantee real‐time responsiveness is not addressed. Edge computing, fog computing, is conducted in Froiz‐Míguez et al, and the authors claim that traditional home automation systems often rely on expensive central controllers. The research in Froiz‐Míguez et al concentrates on a fog‐computing–based home automation system that allows for seamless communication among IoT ZigBee‐based sensors and Wi‐Fi–based actuators for heterogeneous communication technologies.…”