WIRELESS NETWORK TECHNOLOGY

There are various protocols and technologies used to maximize theirs use of the available radio frequency. They include ZigBee designed on top of the IEEE5 802.15.4 standard that is secure and uses mesh protocol. There are three devices on ZigBee system architecture the ZigBee Coordinator, ZigBee Router, and ZigBee End Device. Based on this system, it can scale up to thousands of nodes to maximize the frequency. ZigBee routers relay information and move data through the network while the Coordinator establishes the network and topology. ZigBee is unrestricted hence has a wider range of applications globally. It used the Advanced Encryption Standard encryption protocol (Zhu et al., 2020).

Another technology, the Thread, defines how data is sent within a network; it is not an application protocol used to connect and control products using radiofrequency such as home IoT. Thread is operated by Google and Nest, and it is open source based on OPv6 protocol. It is designed using IEEE802.15.4 link Layer. It adds large IP packets such as 802.15.4 using 6LoWOAN. This ensures that the packets can pass directly from the internet to the local network of the user. Thread can be thought of as a WiFi that uses but with improved functionality.

WiFi is another wireless technology that can move large amounts of data across wireless networks. It is built on IEEE 802.11 standards and communicates using radio waves. WiFi technology control devices using internet routers. It is basically a LAN technology designed to replace wired Ethernet for computer-to-computer communications (Wu et al., 2020).

WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) is a technology built on IEEE 802.16 standard enabling the delivery of wireless broadband that has a wider range. This technology was built to optimize non-line-of-sight (NLoS) coverage. It has a higher capacity since it utilizes OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) that enables the technology to deliver efficient ad high bandwidth. It increases data throughput with a data transfer rate of up 40MB per second.

Effective encryption and authentication for wireless networks must protect data; thus, wireless LAN options depend on the type and security strength. They include wired equivalent privacy (WEP), WPA, and WPA2. (Cui et al., 2019) notes that WEP is considered weak in security strength, and thus WPA and WPA2 can provide suitable security for wireless networks. However, WPA3 is best for WiFi security, but since some Apps might not support WPA3 protocols, thus WPA2 is considered the best option in such a case. These encryption and authentication protocols prevent intruders from connecting to a given network and encrypt data transmitted over radio waves. WPA2 uses AES for encryption, and thus the security of this protocol is sufficient.