Comprehensive Report on the Internet of Things and Smart Home Systems

This report explores the intersection of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart home technologies. It defines IoT as an umbrella term for technologies enabling device connectivity and communication, emphasizing data collection for control, monitoring, and information transfer. The report details the architecture of smart homes, including sensors, digital appliances, and actuators, and explains how these devices are connected and controlled via the internet, often using smartphones and microcontrollers. It highlights the increasing popularity of smart homes due to enhanced comfort and quality of life. The report also discusses various protocols, such as Zigbee, used for implementing smart home architectures and enabling communication between devices. The report references several sources to support the concepts discussed, providing a comprehensive overview of the current state and future of IoT in smart homes.

Running head: IOT AND SMART HOMES
IoT and smart homes
Name of the Student
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1IOT AND SMART HOMES
Iot and Smart home
Internet of Things is considered as an umbrella term that covers different technologies
which enables connection of different device with Internet and the communication between
them. These devices or the systems are completely dependent on the collected data about its
surroundings (Alaa et al., 2017). The collected data is used for controlling, monitoring as well as
transferring information to the connected devices through the use of the internet. Through the
analysis it is possible to carry out specific actions automatically whenever some specific
situations or conditions arise.
IoT enabled Smart Homes also includes the different sensors connected to the home
appliances, lighting devices, security cameras and other tools. All the devices are connected
with each other through the Internet (Stojkoska and Trivodaliev, 2017). Furthermore, the devices
are controlled by the user in order to monitor as well as control their behavior regardless of
user’s location and time constraints.
Due to the efficiency the smart homes gained great popularity in the last few years
with the increased access to the internet due to the increased comfort as well as quality of life.
Most of the smart home systems are usually controlled by the users using smartphones,
microcontrollers and complex algorithms. Through the smartphones, users can monitor as well as
control the different devices in the home by utilizing the wireless communication techniques and
protocols.
Architecture
Any smart home usually consists of multiple devices that are connected to the internet
and communicate with other devices. These devices include sensors, different digital appliances,

2IOT AND SMART HOMES
or actuators which are not necessarily smart by their own (Stojkoska and Trivodaliev, 2017).
The sensor generates related data about the environment they are placed into and send to a
central processing unit without add any value to the collected data about the home environment.
For example, if the example of a thermostat is considered the it can be stated that thermostat by
their own are not “smart” enough to regulate the temperature according to the environment of
the house (Alaa et al., 2017). Now if the temperature sensors can collect all data about home
environment, temperature of the house, humidity and analyzed that lead to extraction of
temperature patterns. In the next stages the revealed patterns will help in decision making for a
suitable temperature according to the temperature and humidity without user’s intervention.
There are numerous protocols that are used for the required architecture implementation of a
smart home with the different devices that will able to communicate with each other. Some of
the used protocols are Zigbee, Thread and others (Samuel, 2016). The Zigbee is one of the
widely used and open-sourced standards that are developed for smart homes developed by
Zigbee Alliance. ZigBee creates a mesh network in order to communicate. This implies that, data
signals are bounced from device to another device throughout home that may not be covered by
the WiFi networks. The devices are considered as nodes inside a network. The devices work
similar to the small transmitters in the same way like the wireless routers.

3IOT AND SMART HOMES
References
Alaa, M., Zaidan, A. A., Zaidan, B. B., Talal, M., & Kiah, M. L. M. (2017). A review of smart
home applications based on Internet of Things. Journal of Network and Computer
Applications, 97, 48-65.
Jose, A. C., & Malekian, R. (2017). Improving smart home security: Integrating logical sensing
into smart home. IEEE Sensors Journal, 17(13), 4269-4286.
Samuel, S. S. I. (2016, March). A review of connectivity challenges in IoT-smart home. In 2016
3rd MEC International conference on big data and smart city (ICBDSC) (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Stojkoska, B. L. R., & Trivodaliev, K. V. (2017). A review of Internet of Things for smart home:
Challenges and solutions. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140, 1454-1464.