Abstract:
The internet and cloud storage are becoming increasingly important to researchers, hobbyists and commercial developers. This includes the transmission of reliable data as the availability and functionality of remote sensors and IoT devices are becoming more common. The availability of high-speed internet connections, like fibre-optic cable, LTE and digital radios, changed the playing field and enabled the user to transmit data to cloud storage as speedily as possible.
With these various technologies available, the question now arises: Which technology is more reliable and efficient for IoT sensors and for users to transmit data to a cloud server? This project aims to investigate the reliability and transmission delay of transmitted data from Wi-Fi, GPRS Class 10, and digital radio networks to cloud storage. A sampling unit was designed to evaluate analogue inputs periodically and send the recorded data to the three technologies under test. It also records the data to an on-board micro SD card along with an indexing system. The systems then transmit the sampled data and index number to a cloud storage server via the communication technologies under test. The cloud-stored data is then compared with the recorded data of the sampler unit to determine data integrity.
The transmission delays can be calculated by using the cloud storage server’s time stamp information and the original time stamp of each data message. From the results acquired in the research, it showed that digital radio is a very reliable and stable means of data communication but it lacks direct connection to the internet. Although, both Wi-Fi and GPRS Class 10 are permanently connected to the internet, it was also observed that Wi-Fi internet connectivity may be susceptible to interference from external factors like the continuity of supply from the national power grid and from load shedding. It also showed that the XBee digital radio system lost 0.21% packets compared to the 0.31% for Wi-Fi and 1.46% for GPRS Class 10. On the other hand, although GPRS Class 10 may be a bit less reliable than digital radio and Wi-Fi, it is relatively cheap to use and has the ability to connect to multiple communication towers for communications redundancy. The outcome of this research may help researchers, hobbyists and commercial developers to make a better-informed decision about the technology they wish to use for their particular project.
