Internet of Things (IoT) is a highly integrated and comprehensive information technology that is currently a research hotspot. However, it presents many challenges; e.g., the use of multiple products in one IoT can lead to incompatible communication. It is imperative to solve the problem of communication protocol heterogeneity. In this study, a multi-protocol fusion IoT called MPFIoT was designed, implemented, and applied to environmental monitoring in a community. A hierarchical design was adopted in MPFIoT. It was divided into four layers: a data perception layer, a wireless transmission layer, a gateway layer, and an application layer. First, in the data perception layer, various sensors were used in the community to collect diverse environmental information. Second, in the wireless transmission layer, four wireless communication protocols were applied: Wi-Fi, LoRa, ZigBee, and Bluetooth. Third, the gateway layer had two sub-layers: the protocol fusion sub-layer was designed to reduce the degree of heterogeneity between protocols, and the control command sub-layer was used to control nodes via the control command frame. Finally, the application layer communicated with the gateway layer through the TCP/IP protocol. Thus, MPFIoT with four layers was developed, and its functions and performance were tested. The test results indicated that multiple types of environmental data can be collected and transmitted by MPFIoT. The packet loss ratio was less than 2% and the transmission delay was approximately 500 ms, which satisfied the application requirements.

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