Implementation of Wireless Mesh Network for IoT based Smart Homes

In this paper, a wireless mesh network of the smart switchboards has been proposed and implemented using the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT). A user defined mobile application acts as a client in the IoT network and is responsible for remotely controlling the operation of the switchboards. IBM Watson IoT platform delivers the payload to the destination node within the mesh network through the gateway using the MQTT protocol. The Raspberry Pi micro-controller acts as gateway in the IoT network and is responsible for publishing the device events and subscribing to application commands. The XBee Series S-l modules are used for developing the mesh network of the switchboards which makes a power efficient and a reliable system. Each switchboard has an XBee module connected to it and acts as a single node within the mesh network. The bidirectional communication between the client and the the nodes ensures a reliable and cost effective system. In addition to application control, each switchboard has manual operation mode in the case of the absence of the internet.