The shift to the smart home has begun although it is at its earliest stages. As with previous technology revolutions, the smart home is driven by the falling cost of silicon. But this is only part of the picture: increasing energy efficiency, both in terms of compute power and communications, is key to enabling smart devices that can support lifestyles. Technological shifts of this kind take a decade to manifest themselves but once they take hold the ramifications are enormous.

The term ‘smart home’ obscures the characteristics that will make its implementation attractive to most consumers. A number of the core technologies required to make smart-home devices have been available for more than a decade. And keen DIY enthusiasts have been able to build digital lighting controls and other forms of automation into their homes using devices that support, for example, the Zigbee protocol.

尽管ZigBee在互联智能设备诸如智能灯泡和温度控制器之类的智能设备方面有效，但它专注于自动化岛，支持更智能的加热和照明，而不是整个智能家庭。ZigBee并不容易支持不同网络之间互连的概念，这些网络在内容互联网（物联网）的核心上。

真正的智能家居的未来将是一个ecosystem that constantly learns. It will be aware of your movements and preferences, with the ability to adapt to changes in them over time with the help of information from your wearables and scores of fixed and mobile sensors connected to the IoT (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Example of smart home connectivity through IoT

网络的不同部分将在不同的时间配合，以实现特定应用，例如将门的访客的视频传输到电视或由房主观看的平板电脑。雷竞技安卓下载可能有一个加热系统，对他们家周围的人做出反应。如果它没有占用，系统可能会响应他们可能到达回家的时间而激活，那么要考虑实时流量条件。

启用此未来的关键是互操作性至关重要的关键，并且此环境的系统供应商识别出智能家庭将构建阶段。消费者可以融合一个或两个带智能照明或安装智能恒温器的房间，以便在将它们集成到完整的智能家庭环境之前立即节省燃料。他们不希望替换这些系统只是让他们与未来的生态系统兼容。幸运的是，他们不太可能需要做出这个选择。

The current wireless communications environment for smart-home systems looks confusing – and this is likely to have been a factor in slowing adoption rates up to now. Security cameras will often use WiFi interfaces for high video transfer rates. A set of smart light bulbs is likely to use Zigbee’s lighting profile. A user may interact with a smart thermostat using Bluetooth.

A unifying force is version 6 of the Internet Protocol (IPv6). The exponential growth in the number of sensors and connected devices that will need to be deployed in smart homes around the world, IPv6 is an ideal protocol because of the large address space it provides (Fig. 2). Access to such a large address space without the use of address-translating gateways will be instrumental in enabling the ecosystem around the smart home.

Figure 2: Table to show difference between IPv4 and IPv6

有进一步的优势IPv6。它有工具to support stateless address autoconfiguration, a facility that is highly suited to setting up sensor network nodes that have very limited processing power. The original IPv6 protocol incurs significant overhead on low-power wireless links. The IPv6 version of the Low-power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) standard handles a subset of IPv6 functions with discovery optimised for smart-home and IoT networks.

IPv6 and 6LoWPAN will help drive the consolidation of IoT and smart home protocols around three key standards. Wifi already supports IPv6. The IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol that underlies Zigbee is able to run IPv6. A continuing programme of enhancements mean Bluetooth will also be made IPv6-compatible through the adoption of the 6LowPAN protocol stack.

集成了数百万智能手机，平板电脑和其他便携式设备，蓝牙已经是智能家庭IOT的网关。支持迁移到IPv6的进一步增强将使它成为更广泛的设备的智能选择。介绍多跳网状网络能力，另一个蓝牙SIG工作组的焦点将让蓝牙智能在更广泛的情况下使用。

无线网状网络是内置于多个固定和移动节点上的网络，这使得可以在到目的地的方式中从一个节点跳跃来通信。目的地可以是网络上的对等体或提供对更广泛的互联网的访问的网关。它是一种高度可靠的方法，可以在网络内提供连接到节点的连接，因为如果用于将数据中继到另一个数据的一个节点，则通常可以替换另一个节点（图3）。

Figure 3: Example of a wireless mesh network

该网格是低功率网络的一个重要特征，其与WiFi和蜂窝等技术相比具有短发射范围 - 这使得它们以更高的能量消耗的成本增益。Mesh网络提供的多跳策略克服了允许彼此超出范围的设备来将数据包发送到更近的节点，然后使用短跳至目标到目的地。

In smart-home networks, mesh networking provides another advantage when dealing with multiple devices. For example, to turn the lights on in a conventional IoT network, the master needs to send a message to each smart bulb. A mesh network can use a technique called ‘flooding’ in which the device sending the ‘lights on’ command to the bulbs closest to it. Those bulbs then relay commands to their neighbours until the room is lit.

Although meshes offer some distinct advantages for smart home and IoT scenarios they have not grown as quickly as Bluetooth or Wifi in the market. The development of mesh capabilities for Bluetooth is likely to coincide with much stronger uptake. Bluetooth Smart Mesh has the advantage of being developed later than existing mesh protocols: its developers have been able to use the experiences of earlier work on mesh technologies to guide progress on a forthcoming standard.

Bluetooth standards development has 15 years of experience in creating protocols that offer consumers ease of use and interoperability across many different types of device, using the results of billions of systems in the field to fine tune the standards to the state they are in today. Bluetooth Smart Mesh will ensure that the mesh capabilities of the network will not result in a break in compatibility.

The groundwork has already been laid. Version 4.1 of Bluetooth Smart introduced the concept of the Scatternet, an addition to the existing Piconet approach used by the protocols. The Piconet uses a conventional master-slave configuration where one master is logically connected to a set of slaves, with the master initiating communication. The Scatternet makes it possible for a master node with a logical connection to one or more slave nodes to also be a slave of another node. This ability to swap modes makes it possible for a Scatternet to implement multi-hop connectivity without forcing a complete change away from the pure master-slave Piconet architecture.

The result of these developments will make Bluetooth not only a major player in the smart-home ecosystem, it is likely to become the smart choice for low-power networking whatever the device.