Packet-Level and Physical-Level Cross-Technology Communications: A Brief Introduction

Abstract

In the Internet of things, cross-technology communication (CTC) enables direct communication between heterogeneous devices without a gateway. CTC is receiving growing attention, because it can significantly reduce the hardware cost and the complexity of network deployment for communication between heterogeneous devices, as well as improve the network performance. At present, there are two types of CTC techniques, namely packet-level CTC and physical-level CTC. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the two types of techniques. Then, we detail the packet-level CTC via two typical protocols: Freebee and ZigFi, and the physical-level CTC via a typical protocol: WeBee. Finally, we compare the two CTC techniques in terms of hardware cost, communication direction, throughput, spectrum efficiency, and parallelism.