Home-to-home communications for smart community with Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) has been prevailing to offer advanced connectivity of devices, systems, and services. As connected IoT devices have enhanced smart home, connected smart homes are expected to grow into smart community. However, several previous studies about smart community require a remote central server and do not consider local collaboration based on local direct communication networks. This paper proposes home-to-home (H2H) communication based on wireless communication between homes in a local community. Several types of local collaborations are described. Two plausible H2H communication architectures are presented such as centralized and distributed. Two architectures are evaluated using two metrics: traffic volume and communication reliability. Clustering is also adopted to reduce traffic volume. The evaluation results show that the centralized architecture is superior in traffic volume and it is more adequate for all-to-all type of local collaboration such as information sharing; that the distributed architecture is superior in communication reliability and it is more adequate for one-to-all type of local collaboration such as safety and security. Clustering greatly reduces traffic volumes. Therefore, the proposed H2H communications will provide more efficient communication and more reliable services under the circumstances of IoT-enabled smart homes.