A hybrid network smart home based on Zigbee and smart plugs

As the progress of wireless communication technology, WLAN and Zigbee are more frequently utilized in our apartments. Because of using the same frequency band, radio interferences will more or less impact on the Zigbee network for its characteristic of low-power consumption. In this paper with smart home as context, an interferences analysis between Zigbee and WLAN is suggested. A series of tests was to explore the relation between apartments and performance of Zigbee system. Then a hybrid network smart home base on Zigbee and smart plugs is proposed to avoid the shortcomings of radio interferences of pure Zigbee network. Compare with pure Zigbee smart home, smart home base on Zigbee and smart plugs uses power line communications (PLC) as backbone network to transmit data.