Seamless Wireless Communication Platform for Internet of Things Applications

Abstract

The rapid growth in the number of Internet of Things (loT) devices has resulted in the proliferation of wireless technologies to cater to their increasing data rate requirements and to support multiple applications. However, such ever-increasing wireless technologies present numerous challenges such as incompatible wireless standards, increased energy consumption, and insecure communication. The traditional gateways proposed in the literature suffer from limitations such as computational complexity, resource requirements, increased cost, and device size. We envision an era of seamless wireless communication to alleviate the aforementioned challenges in loT applications through three inter-dependent functionalities: detection and identification of wireless technologies, energy-efficient transmit power control, and secure end-to-end communication. To test the concept, a new gateway is proposed that will achieve these three functionalities using only physical layer measurements so that the different communication protocols in the higher layers can be avoided. Novel schemes are conceptualized for resource-limited seamless loT applications. Moreover, the conceptual seamless loT platform is validated through software-based computer simulation and software-defined radio-based testbed implementation. The preliminary analysis demonstrates that the proposed platform has great potential in advancing seamless loT applications.