As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand, the need to combine communication technologies to cope with the limitations of one another and to support more diverse requirements will proceed to increase. Consequently, we started to see IoT devices being equipped with multiple radio technologies to connect to different networks over time. However, the detection of the available radio technologies in an energy-efficient way for devices with limited battery capacity and processing power has not yet been investigated. As this is not a straightforward task, a novel approach in such heterogeneous networks is required. This article analyzes different low-power wide-area network technologies and how they can be integrated in such a heterogeneous system. Our contributions are threefold. First, an optimal protocol stack for a constrained device with access to multiple communication technologies is put forward to hide the underlying complexity for the application layer. Next, the architecture to hide the complexity of a heterogeneous network is presented. Finally, it is demonstrated how devices with limited processing power and battery capacity can have access to higher bandwidth networks combined with longer range networks and on top are able to save energy compared to their homogeneous counterparts, by measuring the impact of the novel vertical handover algorithm.

中文翻译：

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异构低功耗广域网中的有效垂直切换

随着物联网（IoT）的不断扩展，结合通信技术以应对彼此的局限性以及支持更多不同需求的需求将不断增加。因此，我们开始看到物联网设备配备了多种无线电技术，可以随时间连接到不同的网络。但是，尚未对以有限的电池容量和处理能力的设备以节能方式检测可用的无线电技术。由于这不是一项简单的任务，因此在这种异构网络中需要一种新颖的方法。本文分析了不同的低功耗广域网技术以及如何将其集成到这样的异构系统中。我们的贡献是三倍。第一的，提出了一种用于受限设备的最佳协议栈，该设备可以访问多种通信技术，以隐藏应用程序层的潜在复杂性。接下来，提出隐藏异构网络复杂性的体系结构。最后，通过测量新型垂直切换算法的影响，证明了具有有限处理能力和电池容量的设备如何能够访问更高带宽的网络和更长距离的网络，并且与同类同类设备相比，它们可以节省能源。