Evaluation of Wi-SUN FAN Network Performance for Indoor Smart Environments

Sammanfattning

With the increase of Internet of Things devices, systems that support such devices require a communication framework that supports both internet-based control and internal data communication, posing the problem of finding a suitable wireless mesh network solution. The objective of the thesis is to evaluate Wi-SUN as a viable solution for indoor environments, such as an apartment complex, in the terms of scalability, resilience and latency. To evaluate these aspects, physical testing was performed in relevant environments that measured latency, packet loss, connection time and self-healing capability of the protocol. The results of the thesis showed that Wi-SUN in the terms of scalability is able to reliably support connections up to 30 devices, resilience of self healing capabilities occurring within 15-35 minutes of failure and latency staying at a stable level below 500 ms within 40 meters of obstruction. It further showed that it could implement new nodes into the network within 5 minutes. This evaluation showed that Wi-SUN FAN is capable of providing reliable communication indoors and enabled this thesis to offer recommendations for network setup.