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The Application of Wifi Technology in Smart Home

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AIACT IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1061 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012010 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1061/1/012010

The Application of Wifi Technology in Smart Home

Jie Ding1, Tian-ran Li1 and Xue-Li Chen1

1
Nanjing Normal University,Nanjing ,China

*E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. With the continuous maturity of WiFi technology and the growing development of
smart home, the use of WiFi technology to control home systems on smartphones will become
an important part of people's lives in the future. More and more enterprises have joined the
industries of developing smart home devices. More and more enterprises have joined the ranks
of developing smart home devices. Firstly, this article introduces the concept of WiFi
technology and the concept of smart home, and expounds its development trend. Secondly, it
introduces the overall structure design of the system. Finally, it describes the hardware and
software design of the system.

1. Introduction
With the rapid development of science and technology, the world has stepped into the era of
informationization. Due to the continuous improvement of technology, people are more comfortable
with home conditions and are more convenient and safer. As a result, smart buildings and homes are
spawned. Smart home is through a home network of bus home devices connected to the information
related to the implementation of network monitoring and control in order to manage centralized or
off-site. At present, the development trend of smart home is from centralized control to distributed
control. There are four mainstream wireless technologies currently used in smart home: Bluetooth,
WiFi, Z-Wave, Zig-bee. The most competitive technology is WiFi technology and Zig-bee [1].
Therefore, this article will introduce the smart home control system based on WiFi.

2. WiFi technology principle

The full name of WiFi is Wireless Fidelity, it is 802.11b wireless network specification and a
short-range wireless transmission technology that aims to improve the interoperability of wireless
network products based on the IEEE802.11 standard. WiFi typically uses 2.4G UHF or 5G SHF ISM
RF bands. Wireless LAN connections are usually protected by password, but they can also be open,
passwordless, and network-wide devices can be connected.
The principle of the smart home control system based on WiFi is that a number of wireless smart
nodes form a home area network, each smart sub-node includes a WiFi receiving module, and the
home gateway has a wireless WiFi transmitting module. Receive and transmit module communicate
through WiFi.
The advantages of WiFi are as follows:
 It covers a wide area and has a long effective distance. The communication distance in the open
area is up to 305m, and the communication distance in the closed area is 76-122m. It can be
applied not only to the local rooms but also to the entire buildings.

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AIACT IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1061 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012010 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1061/1/012010

 Transmission speed is very fast, up to 54Mbps. In addition to the low cost, it has low power
consumption, in line with the modern "green low-carbon" appeal. According to the research, the
WiFi signal belongs to a kind of microwave and has little impact on the human body. The impact
of the radiation generated by Wi-Fi on the human body is negligible within a safe range.
However, since WiFi uses RF technology, air is used as a medium to transmit and receive data,
signals that transmitted through radio waves are easily disturbed by external environments, and the
security is not high, so they are not suitable for smart home control systems that require high security.

3. Smart home

3.1. Concept and development process

The concept of smart home originated in the United States in the early 1980s, calling it Smart Home. It
has undergone four generations of development: the first generation completes home networking
through coaxial lines and two cores to achieve lighting, curtains and a small amount of security control;
The second generation is through bus and IP technology networking, to be able to complete the video
intercom and security business; The third generation is a centralized intelligent control system, by the
central control computer to complete security, measurement and other functions; The fourth
generation that is based on the Internet of things technology can be based on user needs to achieve
personalized features [2].
Smart home should be integrated into four parts: building automation systems, communications
systems, room automation systems, computer-aided equipment management system [3]. Smart home
control system has intelligent, information-oriented functions, control functions, communication
functions, monitoring functions, timing functions and abnormal protection, leakage protection [4].
China introduced the concept of smart home from the late 1980s. China started to promote the
construction of intelligent residential quarters through the concept and technology of intelligent
buildings. Adopting the intelligent residential district system mode of "smart residential as the basic
unit, intelligent building's management center as the central node, and Hybrid Fiber Coax(HFC)
network as the data transmission medium", it has the functions of Safety Automation (SA),
Communication Network (CN) and Management Automation (MA) and other functions that Satisfy
residential needs.[5]

3.2. Development Opportunities

Thanks to socio-economic progress, government support and technological development and business
competition, smart home has been able to develop rapidly in recent years.

3.2.1. Social and economic progress. Under the influence of the reform and opening up and economic
globalization, the economy of our country has shifted from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality
development stage. As the economic level continues to rise, people's demands for living quality are
getting higher and higher. Nowadays, the younger generation is more receptive to advanced
technologies, which provides a solid foundation for the development of smart home.

3.2.2. Support of the government. Since 2010, the state and the government have promulgated many
policies to promote the development of the smart home industry. In 2010, the State Council passed the
"Decision on Accelerating the Fostering and Development of Strategic Emerging Industries" issued by
the State Council in 2011, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology promulgated the
"Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Development of the Internet of Things" in 2011, explicitly including
smart home in the demonstration projects of 9 major key areas. It is precisely because of state support
that smart home as a new industry can be developed so rapidly, largely to help improve the technology
and increase the popularity of smart home.

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AIACT IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1061 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012010 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1061/1/012010

3.2.3. Business competition. In other countries, Apple, Google and other leading enterprises have long
been put into the smart home industry. In China, Alibaba, 360, Xiaomi and Jingdong started to think
of smart home as an important area for future development. The emergence of many competitors in
some ways to promote the development of the industry has a positive lead role.

4. The overall design of the system

It takes Andriod system as a platform, the system includes CPU, WiFi module, a smart phone as a
carrier control terminal and intelligent control system. Intelligent control system includes home
lighting intelligent control system, home appliances intelligent control system, audio-visual equipment
intelligent control system and video real-time monitoring system, and finally by Andriod system smart
phones through WiFi network to achieve the purpose of controlling home appliances.
The function of this system is to send the control command to the CPU by the smart phone through
the WiFi network. The processor receives the command and parses it to remotely set the door, air
conditioner, monitoring probe and light. Users can also use the smart phone to gather real-time data
sent by the central processing unit.
Hardware platform is an important part of determining system performance and stability. This
article chooses STM32 core controller as the central processor, QUALCOMM's QCA9531 chip as the
WiFi module, the smart phone based on Andriod system as the control terminal.
The control terminal transmits the information to the WiFi module connected to the same network
via WiFi. The WiFi module transmits the received signal to the CPU through the serial port, and the
CPU realizes control over the home appliance according to the received instructions. The overall
structure of the system shown in Figure 1.
Home lighting
intelligent control
system
Audio-visual equipment
intelligent control
system intelligent control Control terminal
CPU WiFi module
system (smart phone)
Household appliances
intelligent control
system

Video real-time
monitoring system
Figure 1. Overall structure diagram of the system

5. The hardware design of System

STM32F107 processor module's main role is to communicate with the host computer to receive
real-time operation from the mobile phone side instructions, and then analyze the operation of
instructions and perform the appropriate work; The OpenWrt firmware is embedded in the
QCA9531WiFi wireless communication module, and the data forwarding and transmission of the
QCA9531WiFi wireless communication module is realized by configuring the network serial port
function and the push function of the OpenWrt system. The STM32F107 processor mainly realizes the
data communication with the WiFi wireless communication module through the serial port and
provides 5V power for the WiFi wireless module.

5.1. STM32 processor module

The STM32F107 microcontroller uses the Cortex-M3 core with CPU speeds up to 72 MHz. They
target applications requiring connectivity and real-time performance with 64-256KB of on-chip Flash
memory, 64KB of SRAM and 14 communications interfaces. The STM32F107 Interconnect has a
built-in USB OTG full-speed (12Mb / s) device, host and OTG mode control module. The biggest

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AIACT IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1061 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012010 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1061/1/012010

highlight of the STM32F107VCT chip is the integration of most of the mainstream peripheral
networks, CAN, USB, UART, motor control and so on.
Compared to using more STM32F103VB series, the STM32F107VCT series has an
interconnection interface and more internal resources, the F107 increases the number of the IEEE
Ethernet interface, it has two IIS audio interface, and all 64kb SRAM cache.

5.2. WiFi wireless communication module

The WiFi wireless communication module in this system adopts Qualcomm QCA9531 chip.
QCA9531 frequency will be higher, up to 650MHZ . QCA9531 supports MINIPCIE interface and can
be extended to 5G dual-band and LTE data module applications, QCA9531 increases the number of
external interfaces and increases memory that is up to 128MB, QCA9531 improves performance and
expand memory, and optimizes for radio frequency. Compared with the AR9341, there will be no
restricted situation, and it has more associated users, supporting the concurrent number of up to 50
users, with a measurement of 150 people. QCA9531's block diagram shown in Figure 2.

25MHZ SPI
UART LED
XTAL FLASH
4 10/100 ETHERNET

2G4_CH_0
PORTS

2G4_TX_0 Match

Switch
2G4_RX_0 Match
QCA9531

2G4_TX_1 Match

2G4_CH_1
Switch
WAN PORT

2G4_RX_1 Match
10/100

3.3V
DDR2 USB
Input

Figure 2. QCA9531 module diagram

6. The software design of System

The software design of the system is based on the Andriod system above the Linux system. Andriod
operating system with high degree of freedom, openness, wide range of applications, and has great
potential for development, it is also very competitive in the future. This article chooses Andriod
operating system as a platform to develop the intelligent home control system. By installing the APP
interface on the smart phone, the user can realize the switch control of the home appliance, the
centralized control of the home lighting, and real-time monitoring of the home situation, it not only
can control the electrical equipment in the house centrally, but also can realize the remote management,
reduce the potential safety hazard and apply the modern advanced technology to people's life truly.
APP software interface is mainly consisted by welcome interface, login interface, the main
interface. User interface design is shown in Figure 3. Firstly, the user needs to register an account in
the APP, set a password, and log in to the main interface of the management through the registered
account to ensure the privacy of the user. The main interface contains settings interface, you can set
the switch tone, the interface style and so on. It can increase the users’ experience and personalization.
Home control interface has four sub-modules: smart home appliances control interface, smart home
lighting control interface, audio and video equipment control interface and video surveillance
interface.

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AIACT IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1061 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012010 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1061/1/012010

Main interface
Log out Setting

Home appliances
control interface
Welcome interface Login interface Main interface
Home appliances
intelligent control
interface

connect Quit
Home lighting
Home control
User registration intelligent control
interface Cancel
interface

Whether to
Audio-video equipment Open the device
disconnect
intelligent control
interface No
Yes

Video surveillance Close the device

interface disconnect connect
Leave the current interface Leave the interface
Back to mainpage Back to main page

Figure 3. Design of user interface operation Figure 4. Subsystem workflow

This article uses MATLAB GUI user interface to simulate the design of the interface. For example,
take home appliances control interface to introduce its subroutine flow chart shown in Figure 4. There
are two "connect" and "exit connection" control buttons respectively, click the connect button to
connect the device, after the success of the connection ,it can choose to open and close the home
appliances; click the exit button can choose to exit whether to disconnect, if so, then Disconnect the
device and exit the current interface and return to the main interface; If not, do not disconnect the
device and return to the main interface to control the other sub-modules; If canceled, it stay in the
current interface. The main interface is shown in Figure 5, the subsystem interface is shown in Figure
6.

Figure 5.The main interface of Smart home Figure 6. Home appliances control interface
control system Conclusion

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AIACT IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1061 (2018)
1234567890 ‘’“” 012010 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1061/1/012010

This article firstly introduces the WiFi technology principle and the development overview of the
smart home, Secondly, the design of hardware and software of this system is described. The
STM32F107VCT chips and QCA9531 is used to control the home system through Andriod platform.
Finally, the APP of Matlab software is designed based on GUI of Matlab.
The system has the following advantages:
 The system structure is simple, the user interface is concise, cost-effective and easy to operate.
 Choose STM32 processor to be the central processor, the selected STM32F107VCT series is an
Internet-connected products for Internet of things, it is cost-effective. Choose QCA9531 as WiFi
wireless communication module, QCA9531 not only increases the number of interfaces and has
more memory, but also increases the number of concurrent users, associates more users,
optimizes the overall performance.
 The system uses Matlab GUI interface for app design, it can realize the appropriate functions,
users can easily control smart home appliances to realize the function of equipment.

References
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[2] A Review of Smart Homes-Past, Present, and Future. Muhammad Raisul Alam,Mamun Bin
Ibne Reaz,Mohd Alauddin Mohd Ali. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS MAN AND
CYBERNETICS PART C-APPLICATIONS AND REVIEWS . 2012
[3] Y. Wenbo, W. Quanyu and G. Zhenwei, "Smart home implementation based on Internet and
WiFi technology," 2015 34th Chinese Control Conference (CCC), Hangzhou, 2015, pp.
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[4] A. Nacer, B. Marhic and L. Delahoche, "Smart Home, Smart HEMS, Smart heating: An
overview of the latest products and trends," 2017 6th International Conference on Systems and
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[5] H. Jiang, B. Liu and C. W. Chen, "Performance analysis for ZigBee under WiFi interference in
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