RTXBEE: Real-time communication module for critical Internet of Things applications

The Internet of Things concept has expanded to a large area of applications evolving to the point of providing even real-time support. Critical applications become increasingly suitable at the Edge Layer where real-time operations need to be supported at both node and network level thus communication becomes crucial. This paper presents a real-time communication solution based on the highly popular XBee modules. We describe a predictable and modular driver for such modules along with a full communication platform ready to be integrated into an IoT design for real-time applications. The proposed communication module has been implemented at prototype level and successfully validated through an extensive set of simulations and experiments.