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 “big data” is essential because these data are 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 data rate, channel bandwidth, power consumption, and a coverage range of wired and wireless communication technologies used in residential buildings. 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: Investigation of IEEE standards for both wired and wireless communication protocols provide a reference in identifying an appropriate communication technique through a mathematical model for computing the communication channel bandwidth. A comparison of various optimization algorithms with multiple HEMS constraints has been made to achieve the minimum electricity cost and user comfort (with and without Renewable Energy Sources). As a result, the wireless communication protocols (Zig-Bee & Wi-Fi) are preferred mostly because of their reliability and low cost of use in HAN on both wired and wireless networks. Zigbee is the most appropriate technology used for data transmission between individual appliances and smart meters. Wi-Fi is a suitable technology for controlling and monitoring appliances because of its high data rate. © 2022 Bentham Science Publishers.