Exploring Collision Avoidance during Communication Over Sound for Healthy Environment

Abstract

The rapid rise in Internet of Things (IoT) devices increases communication overhead. The communication is the most crucial part in IoT. However, most of the the traditional methods of communication emit harmful electromagnetic radiations which have severe impact on human health. To reduce the health hazards on the society due to such radiations, we have proposed a harmless mode of communication using the near-ultrasonic audible acoustic signal. We can use the sound signal as communication medium for sensitive systems like healthcare system, smart classroom system, and so on, where the occupants are vulnerable to harmful radiations. In this work, we have used Chirp Software Development Kit (SDK) as the tool for connecting the IoT devices through acoustic signal, which has the capability of multi path transmission where a device is allocated randomly a channel from a pool channels. However, with the rise in the number of devices in the system, the chances that a channel being allocated to many devices increase. It increases the chances of collision during communication, unless necessary precaution is taken in the channel allocation. By resolving the above issues when multiple node used same channel, we have achieved 80% more network throughput than the existing technique. In addition, we have proposed an approach to increase the communication range with acoustic communication, which is another critical issue in the present context.