A Comprehensive Review on Wired and Wireless Communication Technologies and Challenges in Smart Residential Buildings

Background: The smart grid communication network is constructed with three tiers namely, Home Area Networks (HANs), Neighborhood Area Networks (NANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs). These networks function with various communication protocols like table protocol, on-demand protocol, Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-MAX, GSM, LTE, Cognitive Radio Networks. The network interconnection is heterogonous and all appliances have to communicate through the IP gateways. A large amount of data is collected from various sensors placed in different locations. The analytics on large data- “big data” is essential because these data were used to organize and plan an efficient control and management of the smart home including secured data exchange in different sectors. Objective: This paper investigates broadly on data rate, channel bandwidth, power consumption, and a coverage range of both wired and wireless communication technologies used in residential buildings. Besides, a literature survey on optimization algorithms with various constraints to manage home appliances through scheduling is included. The paper also discusses the communication standards along with security and privacy requirements for smart metering networks. Conclusion: Discussion on IEEE standards for both wired and wireless communication protocols. Gives direction to identify the suitable communication technique through mathematical model for computing the communication channel bandwidth. Comparison of various optimization algorithms with multiple constraints in HEMS to achieve the minimum electricity cost and user comfort (with and without Renewable Energy Sources). From the investigation on both wired and wireless networks, the wireless communication networks (Zig-Bee & Wi-Fi) are mostly preferred to use in HAN because of more reliability and low cost. Zigbee is the most appropriate technology used for data transmission between the individual appliances and smart meters. Wi-Fi is a suitable technology for controlling and monitoring appliances because of its high data rate.