Abstract
Wireless home automation networks are gaining importance for smart homes. In this ambit, ZigBee networks play an important role. The ZigBee specification defines a default set of protocol stack parameters and mechanisms that is further refined by the ZigBee Home Automation application profile. In a holistic approach, we analyze how the network performance is affected with the tuning of parameters and mechanisms across multiple layers of the ZigBee protocol stack and investigate possible performance gains by implementing and testing alternative settings. The evaluations are carried out in a testbed of 57 TelosB motes. The results show that considerable performance improvements can be achieved by using alternative protocol stack configurations. From these results, we derive two improved protocol stack configurations for ZigBee wireless home automation networks that are validated in various network scenarios. In our experiments, these improved configurations yield a relative packet delivery ratio increase of up to 33.6%, a delay decrease of up to 66.6% and an improvement of the energy efficiency for battery powered devices of up to 48.7%, obtainable without incurring any overhead to the network.
Highlights
In our daily lives, wireless home automation networks (WHANs) promise an important role, as the devices in common use can be connected with each other to enhance user comfort and to allow efficient home management
The ZigBee protocol stack has been the subject of several performance studies [4,5,6,7], some of which focus on the use of ZigBee for WHANs [8,9]
The effect of changing the parameters and mechanisms of the communication protocol stack, as well as introducing new mechanisms is measured in terms of three main performance metrics: the end-to-end
Summary
Wireless home automation networks (WHANs) promise an important role, as the devices in common use can be connected with each other to enhance user comfort and to allow efficient home management. The potential of such wireless devices increases further as the connection to the Internet becomes possible for them. ZigBee has been defined on the basis of components developed and widely studied by the research community. A holistic evaluation of the ZigBee protocol stack, which is vital to observe the overall performance of the specification, is not publicly available in the literature
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