2017 IEEE 42nd Conference on Local Computer Networks Workshops

Wireless Communication Aspects in the

Internet of Things: An Overview

Umit Deniz Ulusar Gurkan Celik Fadi Al-Turjman

Computer Engineering Department Institute of Science and Technology Computer Engineering Department
Akdeniz University Electrical-Electronic Eng. Dept. METU, Northern Cyprus Campus
Antalya, Turkey Akdeniz University Mersin, Guzelyurt, Turkey
umitulusar@akdeniz.edu.tr Antalya, Turkey fadi@metu.edu.tr
gurkancelik07@gmail.com

Abstract — Recent advances in technology propelled the increase data rates for mobile users. To be able to build more
development of resource constrained tiny devices and the concept sophisticated networks, it is essential to understand the physical
of Internet of Things (IoT). Potential applications spanning phenomena behind the propagation of wireless signals over
various fields of science from environmental to medical have been long distances in various environments and conditions. Also,
emerged. Different architectures, routing protocols, performance
different architectures, routing and design goals can be
issues and goals have been suggested. In this work, we review
fundamental concepts, recent developments and critical design considered for wireless networks. Since the performance of a
factors under IoT-specific constraints and objectives such as routing protocols are closely related to the architectural models,
energy efficiency and environment protection. we strive to capture architectural issues and highlight their
implications [3]. In the following sections, we also discuss
Index Terms — Internet of Things, path loss, heterogeneous design factors under the IoT specific objectives and constraints.
networks, wireless sensor network, radio frequency identify,
future networks. II. WIRELESS DATA DELIVERY IN IOT
I. INTRODUCTION This section introduces the fundamentals of radio signal
propagation.
The term “Internet of Things” was coined at the end of the
last century to describe devices with computing capability and A. Wireless Signal
internet connectivity. While the idea of connecting devices to Wireless signal is typically transmitted in the form of
internet has been around for some time, recent developments in electromagnetic waves travelling through the propagation
electronics field and market trends created new research areas space. For wireless communication, there is a transmitter and
spanning from environmental monitoring to industrial control receiver antennas that is attached with some geometry. Figure 1
[1]. depicts a simple wireless communication model. The
Number of connected devices and users are rapidly transmitter propagates a signal that is modulated onto the
increasing, which results in an exponential growth in global carrier signal. Receiver performs demodulation to separate the
data traffic. With the advent of ubiquitous wireless carrier signal and receive the information. There are different
communication, in addition to mobile phones and laptops a strategies for modulating the carrier wave such as frequency
wide range of daily used items such as refrigerators, modulation (FM) and amplitude modulation (AM).
televisions, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablets, air-
conditions and smart sensors are directly connected to the
internet. According to Cisco’s Global Visual Networking
Index, mobile data traffic will experience sevenfold growth
between 2015 and 2020. It has also predicted that mobile
network speed will increase threefold and the number of
mobile connected devices will reach to 11.6 billion by 2021,
which will be more than the world population [2].
Complex and large scale wired networks all around the
world have been realized with high throughput. Hybrid use of
wired and wireless networking components and exponential
increase in the number of connected devices bring new
challenges and design issues. Service providers have been Fig. 1. Wireless communication model.
trying to find solutions to improve connection quality and

© 2017, Umit Deniz Ulusar. Under license to IEEE. 165

DOI 10.1109/LCN.Workshops.2017.82
Widely used communication technologies include 4th
Generation Long-Term Evolution (4G/LTE), Wireless Fidelity
(Wi-Fi) and satellite communication. Typically, different
technologies use different frequency ranges and
communication protocols. Environmental factors and obstacles
may hinder signal propagation between transmitter and receiver
antennas and can cause the signal to be reflected, refracted or
diffracted. Modelling such physical phenomena and
considering design parameters such as path loss, delay and
mean queue length (MQL) are essential for providing rapid
design solutions to numerous network deployment problems
[4].
B. Path Loss (PL)
Path loss is the attenuation of the signal power. Main path
loss reasons are: gains of the transmitter/receiver antennas,
heights of the transmitter/receiver antennas, distance between
transmitter and receiver, communication frequency range, non-
line-of-sight (NLOS), obstacles, user mobility and
environmental conditions.
Various researchers have studied path loss and offered
different propagation models. Hata Okumura’s stochastic
fading propagation model is one of the most known models for
PL and typically gives the closest values to the real
measurements. The model is considered valid for frequency
range between 150 MHz and 1500 MHz and distance greater
than 1 km. Egli model’s frequency range is from 30 MHz to 3
GHz. Green-Obaidat model is mainly for 2.4 GHz frequency.
Walfisch-Ikegami model is appropriate for frequency between
800MHz and 2 GHz and distance from 200 m to 5 km. TM90
model is valid for distance less than 10 miles [4].
C. Environment/Terrain
Environment around propagation space affects signal
characteristics. Main factors are location, population and flora.
Population wise the environment is typically divided into two
subgroups; urban and rural. In the urban areas, user mobility
within the network and network utilization are significantly
higher. In terms of flora, the vegetation of the environment and
humidity increases the attenuation of radio waves [4].
Some of the widely used terrain models are ITU, ITU-R
452, Longley-Rice Irregular. The ITU terrain model merges
free-space path loss with a single diffraction. Digital Elevation
Model (DEM) is used to compute the loss due to the most
significant path obstruction. ITU-R 452 model estimates
median path loss by aggregating free-space path loss and
several other factors such as; absorption due to atmospheric
gases, knife-edge diffraction, obstruction from the curvature of
the earth and tropospheric scatter. It also includes some
calculation for local clutter losses based on land cover
classification data. Longley-Rice Irregular Terrain Model has
similar properties with ITU-R 452 but does not consider clutter
losses [4]. Figure 2 shows an example where the line-of-sight is
lost due to obstacles, attenuation of signal and fresnel zone an
ellipsoidal region between transmitting and receiving antenna.
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Fig. 2. Obstacles between transmitter and receiver antennas.
D. Routing
Routing is defined as using the optimum path to reach from
transmitter to receiver. Typically, the optimum path depends on
the design goal of the routing model. Widely used models are
minimum delay, minimum cost or maximum lifetime. Data
routing in sensor networks are classified into three main
categories; data-centric, hierarchical and location-based [5].
Some design considerations are delay, energy consumption,
error rate and reliability.
Some of the widely known routing protocols are:
Sequential Assignment Routing (SAR), The Stateless Protocol
for Real-time Communications in Sensor Networks (SPEED),
Real-Time with Load Disturbed Routing (RTLD), Multiple
Constraint Multi-Path (MCMP). In order to satisfy energy
consumption, QoS parameters and fault tolerance, SAR utilizes
a table-driven multipath approach. SPEED uses a combination
of non-deterministic QoS-aware forwarding and feedback
control. RTLD uses packet velocity, residual power of sensor’s
battery, and link packet reception rate (PRR) metrics for
forwarding decisions. MCMP’s main focus is on providing
reliability in multipath routing using an analytical formulation
[6] [7].
III. IOT AND FUTURE ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
The advent of sensing and communication technologies,
represents the next step in the evolution of wireless sensor
networks (WSNs). Next generation WSN systems demand that
connected devices could be able to work autonomously and not
only upload and download data but also process them for self-
decision making. Smart cities and e-health are examples of
such applications that support large number of user access on a
multi-application platform. Users may include: individuals
trying to access information for their personal use, private and
public institutes, and government agencies responsible for
issuing public alerts [8][9]. WSNs and its foreseen future
present a fully connected billions of smart objects (such as cars,
homes, offices, factories) and people, interacting on world-
scale systems where devices can understand and react to
events. However, this vision has significant challenges such as
energy consumption, cost and scalability [10].
 A. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)
Advances in low power integrated digital electronics have
led to the development of micro-sensors with data processing
and communication capabilities. These sophisticated
electronics measure ambient conditions related to the
environment, transforms observations into an electric signal
and can process to reveal events happening near the sensor.
The sensors communicate usually via radio transmitter, send
collected data through a gateway or directly to a data collecting
center (sink) [5].
Integration in modern networking poses a new set of
constraints on quality of services (QoS) and require suitable
routing strategies which are key for meeting different demands
for network capacity provisioning. Currently, the WSNs have
played a significant role in proliferation of the IoT paradigm.
Wireless multi-media sensor networks (WMSNs) are a type of
WSN and expected to be one of the pillars in realizing the IoT
paradigm by fostering applications such as smart cities, smart
agriculture, smart security and emergency systems [6].
Fig. 3. Applications of WMSNs in different environments.
network protocols, and data management. Development of real
time task scheduling algorithms that can guarantee the
deadlines of time-critical applications, understand, preserve and
provide resource requirements, are needed. Network and
routing protocols could be optimized to minimize
communication latency, ease transmission conflicts, prolong
inactive periods of transceivers and provide efficient
broadcasting mechanisms. In terms of data management, by
eliminating data redundancy due to sampling frequency and
multiple sensor sampling, aggregating data from multiple
sources before communicating, network overhead can be
decreased.
B. Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets)
HetNet is a form of wireless network which consists of
devices using different underlying radio access technology
(RAT). Combining multiple RAT’s creates interoperability
problems such as mobility, handover and QoS. But, as the
number of mobile users and increase in data traffic, wireless
cellular networks have come to a point where single RAT
achieves non-optimal performance. Additional gain is obtained
from advanced network topology that can bring the network
closer to the mobile user.
Heterogeneous networks usually combine macrocell base
stations (MBS) and femtocell base stations (FBS). Current
HetNets experience exponential growth in energy consumption
and usage. One promising solution for cellular operators in this
regard is deployment of femtocells. Deployment of femtocells
will also reduce the need for adding expensive macro base
station towers. Recently, FBSs have been used by many mobile
operators in outdoor deployments in rural and heavily
populated areas. In the near future, mobile FBSs will become
more prominent and will offer better mobile coverage and
capacity [3]. As shown in Figure 4, on top of that, FBS can also
be used to aggregate mobile traffic and relay to macrocells or
to other access networks.

Figure 3 shows some of the application areas and many of

them have different network requirements such as for smart
security, network reliability and requiring minimum
maintenance are desired. Certain applications of WMSNs may
operate for several years. The deployment strategies of
multimedia devices also depend on the application and the
environment. Each sensor node shall be modified distinctively
according to each application scenarios. It provides typical
WSNs with additional capabilities such as being able to
understand the network and user behaviors and store large
volume of generated data in the cognitive information centric
sensor networks (ICSNs) infrastructure. ICSNs are a paradigm
of WSNs that focus on delivering information from the
network based on user requirements rather than serving as a
point-to-point data communication network. This paradigm,
dynamically identifies optimum data delivery paths by
observing past actions and outcomes, making intelligent Fig. 4. A typical HetNet included macrocell and femtocells.
adaptations to improve the network lifetime [11].
For WMSN real-time performance is an active research
area that focuses on several aspects, such as task scheduling,

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 C. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
With IoT there are hundreds of devices connecting
simultaneously, which complicates the identification of devices
and users. One of the possible solutions is using RFID which is
a scalable solution for wireless identification, detection and
tracking. An RFID system consists of a tag and a reader with
an antenna and transceiver [12]. There are two types of tags:
active and passive. Active tags have the necessity of a powered
system, and have a limited life expectancy [13]. Passive tags
are typically powered by electromagnetic signals generated by
readers. Each tag has an identification number and a memory
that stores additional data such as manufacturer and product
type. The reader is the active component of the system and
attached to an energy source [14].
IV. IOT IN WIRELESS APPLICATIONS
With ubiquitous and seamless connection requirements of
IoT, devices can be physical or virtual, have different
functionalities and can be identified and tracked by their
corresponding neighbors[15]. Connectivity between various
parts of IoT network requires a seamless integration between
its heterogeneous components. Additional design issues are
required to be considered if someone wants to devise a routing
protocol for networks with dynamic topologies and
heterogeneous data generating or sharing systems [1]. In such,
a comprehensive paradigm and an incentive data sharing policy
is required to motivate sensor owners to participate in sensing
process and to ensure that provided data is fairly priced. IoT
networks aim to provide a service that can satisfy certain
quality requirements anytime and anywhere. To be able to
provide the required service quality, network design must
consider all the conditions such as populousness of area,
mobility of devices and location [14]. Figure 5 shows some of
the research areas that are related with IoT.
Fig. 5. IoT with other fields of research.
This ambitious aim of IoT brings many difficulties and
design issues. Building more base stations costs more. In
addition, so many femtocell base stations in macrocell base
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stations consume more energy than fewer base stations. On the
other hand, for mobile users, this may also result in a decrease
in battery life of devices. Mean queue length (MQL), routing
complexity, delay, response time, blocking probability, mean
error byte, data traffic are other constraints for modelling IoT.
Most of the limitations are related to reduced area coverage and
accurate localization [16].
V. DESIGN FACTORS
Initially WSNs were designed for specific applications such
as temperature monitoring and tracking goods during
transportation. Recently, sensor nodes have become
heterogeneous and can incorporate multiple sensors. Thus,
WSN applications evolved from supporting application-
specific deployments to providing an application platform that
users can access and gather variety of data. Main design factors
are coverage and connectivity, scalability, energy-efficiency
and cost. In recent studies, energy-aware routing protocols that
monitor available energy in each node and select the optimal
path while satisfying the QoS requirements has been proposed.
Multipath routing strategy has emerged as the technology of
choice in WSNs [19]. Cost has three components: deployment,
maintenance and operation of a network. Main research areas
are on the development of cost aware routing protocols.
VI. SUMMARY AND OPEN RESEARCH ISSUES
This study covers some of the current and future concepts
of networking such as WSNs and IoT. Future research for
routing protocols includes the integration of sensor networks
with wired networks in IoT. Most of the applications in
security and environment monitoring require data obtained
from the sensor nodes to be transmitted to a server so that
further analysis can be done. Development of smarter,
autonomous, decision making sensor nodes are new research
areas. Also energy efficiency, coverage, quality, scalability are
major design issues.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by Tubitak project 115E198.
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