Discussion on the Internet of Things | Wireless Technology Classification and Application Scenarios

The key technologies of the Internet of Things include three aspects: object identification, object connection, and data operation. As the number of networked objects increases, wireless technology plays an increasingly important role in the Internet of Things.

IoT Wireless Technology Classification

WiFi and Wireless USB are short-distance, high-speed technologies

Common IoT wireless technologies can be divided into two categories according to their coverage:

• One is the wireless wide area network (WWAN) technology with long-distance coverage (several hundred meters to several kilometers). Representative technologies include: NBIOT, eMTC, GPRS, 802.11ah, LoRa, SigFox, Weightless, etc.
• The other is short-range (less than 100 meters) wireless local area network (WLAN) or wireless personal area network (WPAN) technology. Representative technologies include: WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, RFID, NFC, Z-Wave, etc.

Application scenarios of short-range wireless technology

Due to the popularity of smart phones, the wireless technologies that we come into contact with more often in our daily lives are WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC, which are wireless connection capabilities commonly provided by smart phones.

Similar to NFC, the main function of RFID is not for connection and communication, but for object identification. NFC is currently mainly used for mobile payments, such as UnionPay IC card flash payment, Apple Pay, etc.

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NFC is widely used in payment scenarios

Short-range wireless technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and Z-Wave are often used in smart home applications. Currently, WiFi, Bluetooth and Zigbee technologies are widely used in the domestic smart home market. Z-Wave is similar to Zigbee and is a technical standard led by the Danish company Zensys. It is rarely used in China.

For non-IP IoT devices, they generally need to access the network through a gateway

For IoT devices connected to WiFi, they generally support TCP/IP protocol and have IP addresses, so they can be directly connected to the Internet server through IP protocol. Users can also use mobile phone APP to remotely view or control IoT devices through IoT servers.

For IoT devices connected by Bluetooth or Zigbee, there is no IP address and generally a gateway device is needed to access the network. Smart home gateways are equipped with network connections and connected to the router via WiFi or wired. In addition, the gateway generally integrates multiple communication protocols and also plays the role of protocol conversion.

A smart home gateway solution

Wide coverage: LPWA technology

For outdoor scenarios that require wide coverage, the above wireless technologies are not suitable for application. Because IoT nodes are widely distributed and very dispersed, if each node is to be connected to a nearby router, a large number of routing nodes need to be deployed, which is costly and complex to deploy. Therefore, for this application scenario, long-distance wireless technology is very suitable.

Different from the 3G and 4G that we usually use for mobile Internet access, the long-distance wireless technology required by the Internet of Things does not require high transmission rates, and requires extremely low power consumption, which belongs to low-rate and low-power wireless communication technology. This type of technology is generally referred to as LPWA (Low Power Wide Area), and NB-IoT and LoRa are both representatives.

For detailed technical explanations of NB-IoT and LoRa, please continue to follow our headline channels: "Micro-Internet" and "Full Discussion on IoT Wireless Technology".