Multiple Intermittent Controllers for IoT Home Automation

The central controller in home automation systems is problematic but eliminating it requires the functionality be redistributed. This paper considers the problem of maintaining up-to-date status information for devices with multiple intermittent controllers such as smart phones. In order to suggest a robust protocol to handle this functionality, key insights from existing protocols, MQTT and CoAP are identified. This work then informs the proposal for four novel protocols which are then implemented and tested for comparison of their packet efficiency. It is demonstrated that the combination of devices registration and packet broadcasting makes for the most efficient protocol and should form the basis for further work going forward