Multi-Agent Communication Protocols Meet Wireless: Redefining Smart Home Automation

The emergence of a number of new agent intercommunication protocols such as Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol, Linux Foundation's Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), and AGNTCY’s Agent Gateway Protocol (AGP) are promising, given how Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents communicate to ensure fully automated intelligence systems across multiple equipment, vendors, and AI frameworks. Table 1 summarizes the mission of these standards and their supporters as of May 2025.

This development and the emergence of next-generation wireless technologies have the potential to reshape smart home automation. These protocols, combined with Wi-Fi 6/7, Thread, and Matter connectivity, could enable the transition from simple device automation to cognitive orchestration where AI agents can collaborate, adapt, and anticipate user needs in real time.

The expected rapid adoption of these protocols will be of strategic importance. OpenAI's integration of MCP support and joining of the steering committee, combined with Microsoft's announcement to support A2A in Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, show how major technology companies are positioning these protocols as foundational to their Agentic AI strategies. Unlike traditional smart home systems that operate on rigid, pre-programmed rules, the use of protocols like MCP and A2A could enable adaptive, context-aware environments that can reason across multiple data sources and coordinate complex workflows autonomously.

The integration with advanced wireless infrastructure creates the low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity necessary for real-time agent coordination. Wi-Fi 6/7 networks provide the throughput required for multiple agents to access cloud-based language models simultaneously, while Thread mesh networking ensures reliable local communication even when Internet connectivity is compromised. Matter protocol compliance ensures that agents can discover and control devices across vendor boundaries, creating truly interoperable smart home experiences.

Beyond basic connectivity, emerging wireless technologies like Wi-Fi sensing, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) positioning, and ambient sensing give agentic systems a physical body and a sensory network—they can perceive, localize, and infer the state of their physical environment. These capabilities represent the missing links between natural language reasoning from Large Language Models (LLMs) and real-world context, enabling agents to understand not just what users say, but where they are, what they're doing, and how their environment is changing in real time.

Industry Implementations: From Device Silos to Collaborative Intelligence

The practical implementation of protocols such as MCP, ACP, and A2A could potentially transform how smart home platforms operate.

For example, Google's Workspace AI ecosystem exemplifies A2A implementation at scale, with multiple agents coordinating document analysis, meeting scheduling, and content creation, while sharing context through standardized communication protocols. This approach could be extended to smart home applications, where voice assistants, smart displays, thermostats, and connected appliance agents can all communicate via shared A2A fabric to orchestrate complex routines automatically.

Amazon’s Alexa LLM agents can operate across Wi-Fi 6E, Zigbee, and Matter networks, orchestrating home devices through conversational cues and cross-platform routines. Amazon's evolution of Alexa demonstrates the power of multi-agent communication architectures, where specialized agents handle different functions, while there is a need for these agents to communicate to ensure end-to-end automated assistance, whereby each agent shares its capability schema, allowing dynamic task delegation based on user requests and environmental context.

Samsung's SmartThings platform is evolving toward comprehensive multi-agent integration, enabling scenario-based orchestration across multiple device form factors. The platform's ambient sensing capabilities enhance this coordination by leveraging wireless signals to detect occupancy, motion, and environmental changes without requiring additional sensors. This convergence of multi-agent protocols and ambient intelligence creates seamless and adaptive experiences that can learn from user behavior and continuously optimize performance.

At CES 2025, LG showcased that it can use its LG ThinQ ecosystem to coordinate multiple tasks where kitchen devices communicate via Wi-Fi 6E to orchestrate complex workflows. Refrigerator agents analyze inventory and nutritional data, while coordinating with the oven and dishwasher to optimize cooking schedules, energy consumption, and grocery ordering. This collaborative approach transforms reactive appliances into predictive systems that anticipate household needs and coordinate resources efficiently. Agent communication protocols will have a fundamental role to play in this type of transformation to enable fully automated smart living use cases.

Implementations like Josh.ai represent the convergence of natural language processing with the capabilities of agent communication protocols. These systems understand multi-intent, compound instructions, and orchestrate responses across diverse smart home brands using optimized Wi-Fi mesh networks. The privacy-focused architecture demonstrates how local agent coordination can maintain data sovereignty, while enabling sophisticated multi-device automation through standardized protocol layers.

Apple's HomeKit could potentially evolve toward agentic capabilities. Using Thread mesh connectivity and Siri as the orchestration layer, HomeKit could support personalized routines and presence detection that adapt lighting, music, and temperature preferences based on learned user behavior, distinguish between household members using device proximity, and automatically adjust scenarios accordingly.

The open-source Home Assistant project with MCP integration could democratize access to agentic smart home capabilities. Home Assistant enables natural language control and monitoring of smart home devices through standardized context exchange between AI assistants and devices, creating an open-source foundation for AI-driven home automation. This implementation allows developers and enthusiasts to experiment with cross-vendor coordination without dependence on proprietary ecosystems, fostering innovation and accelerating protocol maturation across diverse hardware configurations and user-defined wireless networks.

Strategic Implementations

The newly emerged multi-agent communication protocols are designed to address multi-agent coordination challenges, while creating new market dynamics that favor interoperability over proprietary solutions. For example, MCP enables agents to access tools and context dynamically, while A2A facilitates agent-to-agent communication and task delegation. Together, they provide the foundational layer necessary for scalable, multi-vendor agentic systems that can adapt to diverse deployment scenarios.

Current market dynamics show strong industry momentum behind both protocols. Google's collaborative approach to A2A development, involving over 50 partners from the outset, demonstrates a commitment to open standardization, rather than proprietary control. Microsoft's rapid adoption of A2A alongside its existing MCP support shows how complementary these protocols are becoming. The open-source nature of these protocols and their support from major technology companies suggests that market consolidation around these protocols is likely. Although it is early to say, these trends could potentially create opportunities for universal standards with the potential to enable home automation across heterogeneous equipment from various vendors.

Security considerations present both challenges and opportunities in multi-vendor agentic deployments. The combination of protocols like MCP and A2A requires common security frameworks spanning databases, language models, and different vendor agents. This complexity creates barriers to adoption, but also opportunities for companies that can solve authentication, authorization, and data protection requirements across heterogeneous agent ecosystems.

Network performance implications require fundamental changes in wireless infrastructure design. Traditional optimization focused on throughput and coverage, but agentic systems demand low-latency coordination, context-aware bandwidth allocation, and reliable multi-agent communication patterns. Infrastructure vendors that optimize their platforms for multi-agent communication protocol traffic will capture disproportionate value as smart home deployments scale.

The protocols’ impact extends beyond technical implementation to business model innovation. The ability for agents to dynamically discover and utilize services through multi-agent communication protocols, combined with A2A's capability for distributed task execution, enables new service architectures where functionality can be composed dynamically, rather than pre-configured. This shift toward “Agent-as-a-Service” models could fundamentally change how smart home capabilities are developed, deployed, and monetized.

Organizations across the smart home value chain must prepare for the adoption of universal multi-agent communication protocols. The focus should be on providing rich telemetry and control interfaces that agents can leverage for intelligent coordination, rather than defending proprietary communication protocols that may become obsolete.

Wireless infrastructure vendors face the opportunity to differentiate their offerings by optimizing routers and gateways for multi-agent communication traffic. This requires developing the telemetry APIs necessary for network-aware agent decisions. Positioning residential gateways as multi-protocol agent hubs with embedded edge inference capabilities will create sustainable competitive advantages.

AI platform developers should build applications able to leverage multiple-agent communication across multiple modalities and device types. Telecommunications operators and Internet service providers can position themselves as enablers of the agentic transformation by developing services that are vendor-agnostic. This includes providing edge computing platforms optimized for agent hosting, developing new service models that bundle multi-agent communication capabilities, and creating premium offerings that guarantee performance levels necessary for real-time agent coordination.

The standardization landscape requires active participation from all stakeholders to ensure that protocol development serves broad market needs, rather than narrow vendor interests. Companies should actively contribute to developing these new open-source protocols, including MCP, A2A, ACP, and AGP, while building products that support these protocols interchangeably, ensuring flexibility as the market evolves.

The market outlook suggests that multi-agent communication protocols will become foundational to AI-native smart home infrastructure, making their support essential for scalable deployment of multi-agent communication systems. Companies that participate actively in evolving these protocols, while building compatible products and services, will be best positioned to capture value as the market transitions from experimental implementations to mainstream adoption. The convergence of these protocols with advanced wireless technologies represents the emergence of truly ambient intelligence that can adapt, learn, and anticipate user needs across previously incompatible device ecosystems, creating unprecedented opportunities for innovation in smart living experiences.

These protocols extend far beyond smart homes, with potential applications across smart buildings, manufacturing, healthcare, enterprise AI, retail, logistics and supply chains, education, customer support, robotics, and numerous other industries. ABI Research is tracking their development and will continue analyzing emerging business opportunities as the market evolves.