Title: A flexible and robust wireless home network structure

Authors: Shushan Hu; Feng Liu; Cunchen Tang; Xiaojun Wang

Addresses: International School of Software, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China; School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland ' International School of Software, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China ' International School of Software, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China ' School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland

Abstract: On the basis of advances in the internet of things (IoT), lots of efforts have been devoted to smart home systems, that aim at providing intelligent and comfort living environment for residents. To construct flexible and robust home networks (HNs) for smart home systems, this paper proposes a novel wireless home networks structure using IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. The proposed approach solves the network address confusion problems which may occur in adjacent HNs in a residential building. In the proposed wireless home network structure, newly arrived network nodes can be correctly configured with unique network addresses. The proposed approach also improves the network robustness by handling unexpected events, caused by migration or departure of nodes within HNs. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach can effectively restore home networks after destructions of sub-networks; and it achieves nearly 80% network address utilisation ratio.

Keywords: internet of things; IoT; smart homes; home networks; IEEE 802.15.4; LR-WPAN; wireless networks; residential buildings; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2016.078187

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2016 Vol.21 No.2, pp.116 - 126

Received: 08 Mar 2016
Accepted: 12 Mar 2016

Published online: 07 Aug 2016 *

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