Internet of things (IoT) with coap and HTTP protocol: A study on which protocol suits IoT in terms of performance

Abstract

Behind Internet of Things (IoT) system, there are constrained devices and protocols that handle all the communication in the system. Constrained devices are equipped with sensor and communication capabilities to allow them to send data over the network. There are limitations on these constrained devices as they have limited resources such as processing power, memory and power consumption. In order to fit the needs for IoT systems, different types of protocols have been developed. These protocols lie in a communication protocol stacks that are from the Application layer, Transport layer, Network Layer and Network access layer. These protocols are designed to cater for the need of the systems to run smoothly with the limited resources available for the constrained devices. For this paper, the focus lies on two (IoT) protocols on the application layer: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). It extends how the protocol structures the message format, communication establishment and how request is handled from the client. The study is designed on different test beds based on performance factor to meet the requirement of the device’s resources. The results and analysis of this study contributes to the findings of the performance where CoAP is faster than HTTP with smaller data. The study strengthens the use of CoAP for constrained devices in relation to the limited resources mentioned before thus contributing to how data are managed in any IoT environment.