The Internet of Things (IoT) and the Smart Grid both are being discussed as the technologies that
would dominate Korean IT industry by 2020. The PLC, Zigbee, NFC, ANT, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and RFID
are considered to be the foundation technologies for the Smart Grid and in this paper, we propose a
Zigbee-based Smart Grid Home Network System. A comparative analysis has been carried out by
performing additional Mobile WiMAX-based simulations with respect to the research paper published in the
conference proceedings and we confirmed that all the proposed system worked normally. Although the
simulation results showed that the Mobile WiMAX has a better capability than Zigbee, the latter has more
advantages in terms of scalability and the possibility of reducing the battery size as it features low-cost and
low-power characteristics. As a standard technology for the low-cost and low-power oriented networks, the
scalability can be achieved by its low-cost characteristic (i.e., many Zigbee equipments can be installed
widely) and the size of battery can be reduced its low-power use characteristic. Considering the operating
life, we’ve concluded that Zigbee could be more efficient for certain areas. The proposed foundation
technology used for the system in this paper can be adapted to various areas of the IoT. Thus, in this
paper, the OPNET Modeler 14.5 PL8, Zigbee-based scenario and WiMAX-based scenario had been used for
the designing and simulations of both systems. We expect that it would be possible to apply the
technology to a variety of fields of health-care, building and facility management, accident and disaster
monitoring and meteorological observation as well.