What are Communication Protocols? Definition & Types

Communication protocols are rules that ensure that the data is shared successfully between two electronic devices without any error. These protocols are responsible for defining the solution of any possible error that can occur in communication. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss what is communication protocol, its importance, and the types of communication protocols.

What are Communication Protocols?

The main use of communication protocols is in telecommunication systems so that messages can transfer between computing systems without serious errors. They play an essential role in building systems that can receive and send messages with consistency. Moreover, with the help of these protocols, you can easily describe analog and digital communications synchronization. With this, you will also be able to describe their syntax and semantics.

Computer networks cannot exist without these protocols; therefore, they are implemented in hardware and software. Several rules set by these protocols include data formats, address formats, direction of information, and much more. When the source and destination devices agree on these rules, a communication channel is established between the two electronic devices.

Why is Communication Protocol Important?

To transfer information from source to destination, it is essential that you follow a set of rules for a better experience. Therefore, at this point, communication protocols help telecommunication companies make their messaging system error-free. In addition, protocols like TCP and UDP are responsible for maintaining the proper data transmission flow in computer networks.

Furthermore, these communication protocols do not limit their use cases to telecommunication systems. But in fact, different companies use communication protocols to ensure communication within their companies. Doing this helps them build a strong communication channel that enables their employees to share information. This system can be beneficial for companies that deal with oil and gas.

What Are the Types of Communication Protocols?

Moving on, let’s understand the two types of communication protocols. This includes the Inter System Protocol and Intra System Protocol. These protocols are helpful for analog and digital communications. To understand how these protocols work and what are main differences in them, let’s move towards the next section:

1. Inter-System Protocol

You can use the inter-system protocol to build effective communication between a microcontroller circuit and a computer. This protocol uses the inter-bus system to transfer data without any issues. Moreover, this protocol has three different categories, which you can see below:

UART Protocol: This is a half-duplex protocol, which stands for (Universal Asynchronous Transmitter and Receiver) whose main purpose is to receive and send signals. It has labeled data cable signal lines as Receiver (RX) and Transmitter (TX). Furthermore, it has two wired protocols, which help to send individual bits sequentially by taking bytes of data.
USB Protocol: This serial communication of two-wire protocol can help you transfer data between USB devices. The main use of this protocol is to send and receive data between host and peripheral devices at a max speed of 10kbps to 400mbps. Moreover, many devices like keyboards, mouse, and pen drives use the USB protocol with a max length of 4 meters.
USART Protocol: USART is a full-duplex protocol that has a data cable whose signal lines are labeled as RX and TX. With the help of this protocol, data is sent byte by byte along the clock pulses. This protocol can work as both receiver and transmitter.

2. Intra-System Protocol

The second communication protocol is Intra System Protocol, which helps build communication within circuit boards. This protocol increases the power consumption and complexity of the circuit. In addition to this, Intra System Protocol has three different categories, which you can check below:

I2C Protocol: This protocol connects the microcontroller with all the peripherals with the help of only two wires. These wires are SCL and SDA, which carry information from one end to the other. This protocol has the salve and master device concept, which helps build connections.
SPI Protocol: Motorola developed the SPI, which is a full-duplex protocol. This protocol usually has four wires which are SCL, MOSI, SS, and MISO. Moreover, circuit boards use this protocol for communication between master and slave devices. Its data transfer is not limited to 8-bit.
CAN Protocol: This protocol stands for controller area network and requires two wires because it is a serial communication protocol. In 1985, Rober Bosh developed this protocol which allows devices like microcontrollers to communicate with each other without the need for any host.

Communication Protocols in Real-time Communication

In real-time communication (RTC), communication protocols play a crucial role in enabling instantaneous exchange of information with minimal delay, allowing for applications such as video conferencing, instant messaging, real-time data streaming, and online gaming. Key protocols that facilitate real-time communication include:

Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC): WebRTC is an open-source project that provides web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication capabilities via simple application programming interfaces (APIs). It supports video, voice, and generic data to be sent between peers, allowing developers to build powerful voice and video communication solutions without the need for plugins or native apps.
Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP): RTP is used for delivering audio and video over IP networks, ensuring high-quality, real-time streaming. It is widely used in streaming media systems, teleconferencing, and web-based push-to-talk features, providing end-to-end network transport functions suitable for applications transmitting real-time data.
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP): SIP is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, modifying, and terminating real-time sessions that involve video, voice, messaging, and other communications applications and services between two or more endpoints on IP networks.
WebSocket: While not exclusively designed for RTC, WebSocket provides full-duplex communication channels over a single long-lived TCP connection, making it suitable for real-time web applications that require constant data exchange between the client and server without the overhead of HTTP request/response cycles.
Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP): SRTP is an extension of RTP that provides encryption, message authentication, integrity, and replay protection to the RTP data in both unicast and multicast applications. It’s crucial for secure voice and video communication on the internet.
Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT): Though MQTT is primarily used for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and the Internet of Things (IoT), it supports simple and efficient distribution of messages, enabling real-time messaging services with a low level of power consumption and minimal data packets.
XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol): Originally developed for instant messaging, XMPP has been extended to support a wide range of real-time communication services, including voice and video calls, collaborative spaces, and IoT applications.

You may also like: XMPP vs WebSocket: How to Choose for Chat App?

Seamless Integration of Communication Protocols with ZEGOCLOUD

If you want to use communication protocols that support cloud computing, ZEGOCLOUD can help you with this. This API/SDK provider supports many messaging protocols in its In-chat app feature. These protocols include MQTT, SIP, AMQP, TCP, RCS, and more. You can use its In-chat app API to build a strong communication platform with effective data transfer options.

Moreover, with ZEGOCLOUD, you can build fantastic chat platforms for your business. Not only this but with its different APIs, such as video call API and voice call API, you can improve the audio quality in real-time. Furthermore, the real-time communication network of ZEGOCLOUD covers more than 212 countries and provides an ultra-low latency rate globally.

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