A Study of the Z-Wave Protocol: Implementing Your Own Smart Home Gateway

Abstract

Z-Wave is one of the most popular wireless protocols for home area networks. However, there have been few studies about this protocol in recent years. Unlike Wi-Fi, Z-Wave is not an IP-compatible protocol, thus a Z-Wave device cannot directly connect to the Internet or common user devices (e.g., smartphone, laptop). The Z-Wave network uses a controller to manage and control all devices. The controller also acts as a gateway and allows a user to interact with Z-Wave devices from smartphone or laptop via the Internet or a local network. In this paper, we designed and implemented a Z-Wave gateway controller for a smart home system. We proved the feasibility of the proposed gateway using a prototype and evaluated its performance by command execution time. We also discussed the limitations of the Z-Wave protocol based on our experience.