Performance Testbed in IoT Network Based on ZigBee and NB-IoT Technologies

The inter-protocol communication system acts as an interface and is the link where problems of communication may occur. This paper is dedicated to exploring wireless communication through the ZigBee system, which offers short-range communication and supports mesh networks. ZigBee plays a pivotal role in wireless sensor network (WSN) and their related applications. Nevertheless, the WSN can be linked to the Internet system through several approaches, but this study focuses on the connection through a gateway (GW) using Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology, which is particular to the IoT system. The GW testing has been performed to measure the data transfer rate and received signal strength indicator (RSSI) for detecting the limits of the system. Our WSN consisted of 8 nodes and this was more than twice the number of the XBee buffer that was capable of receiving packets simultaneously. In addition, GW devices have been installed in the different types of enclosures to determine the signal levels for future real installation guidelines.