Internet of Things connectivity is the way you connect devices and sensors to your data processing module. It’s important as without proper connection you won’t get any output which makes your project of no use. But it’s not easy to find the best connectivity method, so let’s have a look at various considerable factors.
Each Internet of Things system has its own requirements, including the requirements to connectivity in terms of area of coverage, power consumption, data throughput, bandwidth, cost, latency etc.
Short range, Low Power Consumption
In projects like home automation, camera enabled doorbell for intruders etc. the area of coverage is small, but it depends on you whether the rate of transmission is high or low. The possible methods of connection include Bluetooth, Zigbee and NFC.
Bluetooth uses lower energy and has higher resilience to noise than WiFi. It takes much less to establish a connection between two devices . BLE or Bluetooth Low Energy is the Bluetooth technology developed for IoT purposes. While using Zigbee, the Coordinator-Receiver pairs are made for transmission. NFC or Near-Field Communication protocol is one of the most power-efficient ways to connect things. It’s also very short-range as the data is transferred when the NFC-enabled devices are tapped with each other.
Long Range, Low Power Consumption
Connectivity options in this group are called Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN) or LoRaWAN. LPWAN is an IoT connectivity technology that allows to connect multiple devices and sensors miles away. It’s inexpensive, can penetrate barriers and doesn’t require a strong battery.
In fact, LPWAN connectivity implies sending small portions of data periodically and enables IoT devices or sensors to last for years without recharging. On the downside, this option has greater latency (the wait time for data to be sent/received) and operates only with a gateway.
Long Range, High Power Consumption
There are two prominent options in this category: Cellular and satellite. The important aspect of a smart city or IIoT can be accomplished with them. The later one is the best solution in range thus covering the globe. Cellular is a long-range connectivity solution that provides great bandwidth, reliability of data transfer and low latency but requires a lot of power to handle all this data.
Cellular is used when the sensor/device is within coverage of cell towers. For sensors/devices that are, say, in the middle of the ocean, satellite becomes necessary.
Short Range, High Power Consumption
The best option in this category is WiFi. Although it is also used in place of Bluetooth, but requires greater power than it. Due to this, the speed or the rate of transmission of data is comparatively higher in WiFi controlled projects with transmission capabilities at frequencies of 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz.
Other Alternatives
The other two alternatives which I believe in are RFID (Radio Frequency and Identification) and Thread. They are also potential options totally depending on your needs.
The disruptive and raw power of the IoT makes connectivity technology develop at ever higher rates to provide for the soaring demands of new application scenarios. However, no perfect universal solution has emerged that would support all the IoT-related technological and analytical challenges. Therefore, the focus in choosing the best IoT connectivity option must be placed on the specificity and requirements of given use cases.
