Internet of things (IoT) applications are becoming one of the emerging smart grid enabling technologies. Smart home appliances are one the beneficiary of such applications. Machine-to-Machine and Man-to-Machine are the basic IoT communication platforms that enable home appliances to communicate with each other to be more efficiently operated. In a recent search for the IoT communication protocols that are utilized in smart home appliances, there was no inclusive reference that contains and describes the smart home area networks and guides the research and development (R&D) professionals to select the suitable protocol for an application. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the home area network (HAN) communication protocols that are used to enable bidirectional communication between the home owners, utilities and smart home appliances. The paper presents the most utilized HANs wired and wireless communication protocols and discusses their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Index Terms-ZigBee, Wi-Fi, RFID, power line carrier, SPI, I 2 C RS485 I. INTRODUCTION One of the most important and rapidly evolving the technologies in electrical power system is the smart grid. The smart grid is a system of systems that integrates information and communication networks technologies with the traditional electrical power grid. This integration empowers utilities and consumers with bidirectional power flow and communication to better monitor, control and manage electrical power generation, transmission, distribution and consumption. From the communication point of view, the smart grid conceptual model consists of three major communication networks namely; wide area networks, local area networks and consumer area networks. Each one of these networks serves one of the electrical power domains namely; bulk generation and transmission domain, distribution domain and customers' domain respectively. Fig. 1 shows the smart grid communication networks that are mapped with the aforementioned electrical power grid domains [l]-[3]. The wide area network consists of the following sub communication networks: