A hybrid energy-aware communication protocol for data size and channel throughput adaptation in rural IoT networks

Energy management is another key challenge to be addressed by IoT devices in rural and remote areas. In these areas, energy is scarce, yet data communication remains essential. Most of the communication protocols adopted by IoT devices are based on a static communication approach, which results in high energy consumption. In this research, a new hybrid communication protocol is proposed based on two factors: data size and channel power. For large data and high-power channels, high-speed communication technologies like WiFi are adopted. For small data and low-power channels, technologies like LoRa and BLE are used. In this way, real-time communication is achieved with reduced energy consumption. The results show that the proposed protocol reduces energy consumption by approximately 50% compared with a conventional WiFi-based communication protocol. Even when this protocol is compared to other hybrid and adaptive communication protocols, it has been observed that this strategy results in 10–20% reduced energy consumption. Moreover, there is no compromise in terms of reliability. Therefore, this strategy is highly competitive compared to other adaptive and static communication protocols. This strategy will help to improve the stability of IoT devices in rural and remote areas.