A Survey of Short-Range Wireless Communication for Ultra-Low-Power Embedded Systems

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This review paper is a good and complete work. I may consider it suitable for publication in this Journal.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author,

The paper is well organized and well written. The first part of the paper on the different short range wireless communications is very interesting and should be of interest for newcomers in the field. 

The paper is of good quality overall (well written, well organized), nevertheless it's not a classical review paper. I mean, usually, paper begins by exposing a problem and the core of the paper is a review of how research teams have tackled this problem. On a sense this paper is not a review but rather the description of different technologies of short-range wireless and the description of their main applications. I am not used of this kind of paper. Definitively, it's interesting and it has represented a large amount of work, that's why I suggested to accept it...without having a clear advice on its scientific soundness.

 

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article contains a review of short-range wireless communications technologies and their relation with the use of low-power microcontrollers. The main weaknesses to be addressed are the following:

- A review focused on the relation between the development of short-range wireless communication and low-power microcontrollers is an interesting idea as both are part of many devices and applications for their low energy consumption. However, the paper needs a deeper insight into the technical issues of these systems since the two parts of the survey (Sect. 5 and Sect. 3-4) seem disconnected: an analysis and investigation of the consumed powers of these technologies in the applications of interest is needed for understanding where and how communications and microcontrollers are the dominant design factors in systems with strict energy requirements. Therefore, the motivation behind the survey would appear stronger.

- The survey of the communication technologies is divided in the Sections 3 and 4, focused on NFC, but this proposed division could be improved: for instance, RFID is present also in Sect. 3. If we use the physical wireless propagation phenomenon for dividing the technologies (i.e. near field and far field), the content should be reorganized accordingly.

- The survey of the communication technologies is missing an important case, i.e. UWB and it should be included.

- Tables and figures should be put at the top or bottom of the page, possibly not just after the title of a section or subsection. Table 3 is about RFID technologies, not just short range.

- WiFi is not split into many "smaller" standards but I would say that IEEE 802.11 has many versions, which refer to different design requirements or generations of this technology.

 

 

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have addressed the issues raised by the reviewers. Minor comments:

- Table 1: I would not say that UWB has the identification as its main application. Data transfer and, in particular, positioning are more appropriate as stated also in the text.

- Table 1: the references [5]-[13] used in the table could be replaced by the standards since Table 1 presents the overview of the short range technologies and the current references are not so representative of the related technologies.

- Also citation used for IEEE 802.11 in Sect. 3.4 ([48]) could be replaced by the citation to the official standard or at least a recent paper revising the IEEE 802.11 status.

- One missing citation in '...Wireless Power Transfer antenna [? ]...'

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf