Low-rate Wireless Personal Area Networks Research Articles

IJARCCE - Computer and Communication Engineering

Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) is an emerging technology for future short range indoor and outdoor multimedia and data centric applications. Two types of WPANs have been standardized by the IEEE 802.15 working group; namely: High data Rate WPANs (HR-WPANs) and Low data Rate WPANs (LR-WPANs). These standards define the network architecture, the physical layer and the medium access control sublayer for these systems. A tremendous number of performance studies through mathematical analysis and simulation have been published. Also, many products have appeared in the market which indicate a clear sign of a quick acceptance to the published standards. An organized review of the network architecture, the physical layer specifications, the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols and the general network operation concepts of the WPAN systems deserves time and effort to be presented in a collective manner. In this paper we describe the concept of WPANs and its applications. Then, the communication architecture and the allocated frequency spectrum for WPAN operation are explained. The developed MAC sublayer protocols in the literature are explored.

Comparative performance analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 in WSN using NS2

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are type of network which is mainly deployed to those areas where infrastructure network is unavailable and where people cannot reach easily. To those areas sensors are deployed to collect information about the environment. Since sensors are run by battery power, long time use of sensors to those remote areas, is one of the main challenges for WSN. To deal with long time use of battery power, low power consumption technique is used. IEEE 802.15.4 standardization is used for Low Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LRWPAN). To get a lesser amount of consumption of power, few parameters of IEEE 802.15.4 are changed in our proposed strategy. At last comparison of proposed strategy and IEEE 802.15.4 is made where proposed strategy performs well for low power consumption.

A Mac Protocol Implementation for Wireless Sensor Network

IEEE 802.15.4 is an important standard for Low Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LRWPAN). The IEEE 802.15.4 presents a flexible MAC protocol that provides good efficiency for data transmission by adapting its parameters according to characteristics of different applications. In this research work, some restrictions of this standard are explained and an improvement of traffic efficiency by optimizing MAC layer is proposed. Implementation details for several blocks of communication system are carefully modeled. The protocol implementation is done using VHDL language. The analysis gives a full understanding of the behavior of the MAC protocol with regard to backoff delay, data loss probability, congestion probability, slot effectiveness, and traffic distribution for terminals. Two ideas are proposed and tested to improve efficiency of CSMA/CA mechanism for IEEE 802.15.4 MAC Layer. Primarily, we dynamically adjust the backoff exponent (BE) according to queue level of each node. Secondly, we vary the number of consecutive clear channel assessment (CCA) for packet transmission. We demonstrate also that slot compensation provided by the enhanced MAC protocol can greatly avoid unused slots. The results show the significant improvements expected by our approach among the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC standards. Synthesis results show also hardware performances of our proposed architecture.

Improving bridge collapse detection and on-site emergency alarms: A case study in Taiwan

During the past decades in Taiwan, numerous scour problems have led to the collapse of bridges. Such accidents have caused severe economic losses and killed many people. Although Taiwanese government agencies have mitigated this relationship between natural hazards and bridge collapse, two problems still exist at bridge sites: the lack of convenient mechanisms for bridge collapse detection and the lack of active mechanisms for on-site emergency alarms. Therefore, based on an approach consisting of mixed collapse detectors (i.e., bi-axial tilt sensors, electronic circuits) and compounded wireless networks (i.e., low-rate wireless personal area network, wireless local area network, worldwide interoperability for microwave access), this study proposes a bridge safety monitoring information system. While the mixed collapse detectors identify the status of various bridge elements, the compounded wireless networks streamline the information transmission between on-site bridges and off-site headquarters. This research is composed of two-year tests on six bridges. After 382 earthquakes and 13 typhoons, this study confirmed that the stability of the bridge safety monitoring information system achieved the anticipated results. Thus, this study provides a sound reference for similar applications in bridge and disaster management.

Reliable beacon transmission based MAC protocol for LR-WPANs over WLAN interferences

The use of IEEE 802.15.4 standard based application systems has been rapidly increasing, for example, in medical services, sensor networks, public safety systems, and home automation systems. However, issues arise from the fact that IEEE 802.15.4 standard based low rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs) use the same frequency bands as wireless local area networks (WLANs), and they interfere with each other. Based on past research on this issue, the interference has a more serious impact on LR-WPANs’ performance than on WLANs’ performance. In this paper we propose a method to improve LR-WPANs’ performance while coexisting with WLANs, which is called the reliable beacon transmission based medium access control (MAC) protocol. Since the reliability of a beacon frame is important, in this method, only the beacon frame is transmitted in interference-free channels, and the data packets are transmitted in interfered channels instead of abandoning the channels altogether. This method increases the reliability of beacon frames as well as overall channel utilizations. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated through extensive simulations, and this paper proves that this method improves the performance of IEEE 802.15.4 based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) over WLANs’ interferences.

An Improvement of Slotted CSMA/Ca in IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE802.15.4 defines MAC and PHY specification for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANS), which targets wireless networking among low-rate, low-power and low-cost devices for short range telecommunication. As the wireless sensor network used in ward monitoring system need to handle large amounts of data, this paper proposes an improved backoff algorithm in slotted CSMA/CA by introducing a weighting algorithm of. According to the comparison of and , we can dynamic change the minimum contention window each time at CSMA/CA begins. By NS2 simulation, when the traffic load is large, the delay time, packet loss rate and jitter of the improved dynamic algorithm can be significantly reduced.

A 2.4 GHz low power CMOS transceiver for LR-WPAN applications

A 2.4 GHz low power transceiver for low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN) applications is presented. The optimized low-IF receiver consists of a novel current reuse RF front-end with an inductor-less-load balun LNA and quadrature mixer, and an adaptive analog baseband to reduce power and area. It achieves −94 dBm of sensitivity, −9 dBm of IIP3 and 28 dBc of image rejection. The phase-locked loop based direct phase modulated transmitter is proposed to reduce power and deliver a +3 dBm output power. The phase noise of the low power frequency synthesizer with current reuse stacked LC-VCO achieves −107.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. An ultra-low power nonvolatile memory is used to store configuration data and save power. The chip is implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS process, and the area is less than 2.8 mm2. The transceiver consumes only 10.98 mW in the receiving mode and 13.32 mW in the transmitting mode.

QOS Analysis in IEEE 802. 15. 4 and Impact of Flag Mobility on Network Performance in WSN

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of large number of sensor nodes that are capable of communication, computation and sensing. Inherent limitations of WSN include limited storage, processing and transmission power. As compared to other network topologies, WSN has less communication Protocols mainly Zigbee/IEEE 802.15.4. IEEE 802.15.4 is a new standard, uniquely designed for low rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN), which is developed for applications that demand low throughput. IEEE 802.15.4 was designed for short range, low power, low complexity, low rate and low cost wireless network which provides two way wireless communication technology. For the analysis purpose, we have considered AODV as the Adhoc-routing protocol. Simulation has been carried out by using Qualnet Simulator 6.1. In this paper, we proposed a mobility control scheme and the impact of mobility over the performance of WSN is seen. In this paper, we have designed two scenarios, one is used with Random waypoint Mobility and the other is used by Mobility with Flag. Results of both the mobility schemes are compared to find out which mobility scheme gives overall best services. This paper provides the performance evaluation of quality of service parameters such as total packets received, received throughput, average end to end delay, average jitter and energy consumption as the performance metrics.

수직 분할 태스크 모델 기반의 IEEE 802.15.4 소프트웨어 구현과 성능평가

IEEE 802.15.4의 물리계층은 저속, 저전력, 저가격 기반의 LR-WPAN(Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network)의 물리계층으로 세계적으로 가장 많이 사용되고 있다. IEEE 802.15.4에 대한 기존의 많은 이론 연구들은 저전력 무선네트워크 환경에서의 에너지효율성, 전송처리율, 전송신뢰성에 대한 거시적 이해와 안목을 제공하는 중요한 결과들을 산출하고 있다. 이 논문에서는 이러한 이론연구에 실환경 요소를 보완하기 위해 MAC(Medium Access Control) 소프트웨어 구조부터 실제 네트워크 기반 성능분석에 이르는 실험연구를 수행한다. 연구에서는 수직분할 모델의 네트워킹 스택의 MAC 계층 기능으로 IEEE 802.15.4 MAC 스택을 구현하고 이를 네트워킹 스택에 통합하여 시험 분석을 수행한다. 이 연구에서 도출한 네트워크 소프트웨어 모델과 실험결과는 향후 IEEE 802.15.4 MAC 소프트웨어의 구현과 실용적인 네트워크 스택 환경에서의 성능에 참고자료로 활용될 수 있다. IEEE 802.15.4 is one of the most widely adopted physical layer standards in the area of LR-WPAN(Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network). Numerous previous researches have contributed to deep insights on energy efficiency, transmission throughput, and reliability that IEEE 802.15.4 delivers to the LR-WPAN. As a research that is orthogonal and complementary to previous researches, we explore the implementation and practical performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC software. We implement the MAC software from the perspective of the networking stack, exploring the issues raised when the MAC software serves as a functional component in a complete networking stack consisting of MAC, network as well as well as application support layers. The performance is evaluated on a realistic experimental software environment integrated with operating system, networking stack, and applications.

Wireless Instrumentation for the Water and Wastewater Industry

IEEE Std. 802.15.4 for low-rate wireless personal area networks has been the enabling technology for applications within the field of wireless instrumentation, with the oil and gas industries being an early adopter of the technology. The idea behind the presented work is that the water and wastewater industries can take advantage of technology and knowledge from the oil and gas industries rather than starting from scratch. Through our analysis we suggest several application areas within the water and wastewater infrastructures where wireless instrumentation could provide both operational and financial benefits.

Analysis of a dual‐resonant multiple split‐ring patch antenna

SummaryThe design and analysis of a new 0.06λ × 0.09λ compact circular polarized square‐shaped dual‐resonant multiple split‐ring patch antenna on a 1.905‐mm‐thick high‐dielectric ceramic–polytetrafluoroethylene composite is presented. The proposed antenna was designed and analyzed by using a high‐frequency electromagnetic simulator based on the finite element method and was fabricated on a printed circuit board. The measured −10 dB return loss bandwidths were 44.44% (0.7–1.1 GHz) and 34% (2.25–3.1 GHz) at 0.9 and 2.5 GHz center frequencies, respectively. The measured radiation patterns with 5.9 and 4.0 dBi maximum gains were symmetric and steady, making the proposed antenna suitable for radio frequency identification, wireless local area network, wireless body area network, Low Rate‐Wireless Personal Area Network (LR‐WPAN), and so on. The effects of linewidth, dielectric property of the substrate materials, and number of split rings on the return loss were investigated. The surface current distribution over the radiating patch and the characteristics of the Resistance, Inductance, Capacitance (RLC) equivalent circuit of the proposed antenna were also analyzed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Dynamic Topology Reformation Algorithm for Power Saving in ZigBee Sensor Networks

ZigBee is a protocol suite based upon IEEE standard 802.15.4 for the construction of low-rate wireless personal area networks. Since most of ZigBee devices are powered by battery, the power saving is an important issue. In the past several years, many solutions are proposed to extend battery life by reducing device transmitting and receiving time. However, few studies have noticed that most energy is consumed in sensing and monitoring rather than communicating activities, since the data rates in most ZigBee networks are low. Besides, energy will consume the most of those nodes which act as routers or are orphans that cannot join the network. In order to extend the life time of network, we proposed a dynamic topology reformation algorithm. The algorithm consists of a cluster reformation scheme for enhancing connectivity and a self-swapping method for averaging the loading of router nodes and end devices. As the experimental result shows, compared with the ZigBee standard, our method gains 6.02% to 15.13% improvement in network join ratio. And the role swapping balances the power consumption which makes the lifetime of the whole network 1.3 to 1.375 times longer.

An Efficient Backoff Algorithm for IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks

IEEE 802.15.4 is one of the most prominent MAC protocol standard designed to achieve low-power, low-cost, and low-rate wireless personal area networks. The contention access period of IEEE 802.15.4 employs carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) algorithm. A long random backoff time causes longer average delay, while a small one gives a high collision rate. In this paper, we propose an efficient backoff algorithm, called EBA-15.4MAC that enhances the performance of slotted CSMA/CA algorithm. EBA-15.4MAC is designed based on two new techniques; firstly, it updates the contention window size based on the probability of collision parameter. Secondly, EBA-15.4MAC resolves the problem of access collision via the deployment of a novel Temporary Backoff (TB) and Next Temporary Backoff (NTB). In this case, the nodes not choose backoff exponent randomly as mentioned in the standard but they select TB and NTB values which can be 10–50 % of the actual backoff delay selected by the node randomly. By using these two new methods, EBA-15.4MAC minimizes the level of collision since the probability of two nodes selecting the same backoff period will be low. To evaluate the performance of EBA-15.4MAC mechanism, the network simulator has been conducted. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly improves the throughput, delivery ratio, power consumption and average delay.

Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 Based Wireless Sensor Networks using LAR protocol for CBR and ZIGBEE Traffic Applications

IEEE 802.15.4 standard based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) emerges as the next generation wireless standard for low-rate wireless personal area networks. IEEE 802.15.4 standard offers low power, low data rate and short range networking for wireless battery powered devices. It has also started to demand much attention towards research. The performance of the network can be analysed by using different types of routing protocols. In this paper, the performance analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 based Wireless Sensor Networks is done by using  Location Aided Routing (LAR) protocols for the traffic applications such as Constant Bit Rate (CBR) and Zigbee traffic application. The LAR protocol enables the routing of data between the source and destination by using directional flooding technique. The performance metrics such as throughput, delay, jitter and packets dropped of LAR for  CBR and Zigbee traffic application is evaluated and analysed. The simulation is modelled by using QualNet.

(m,k)-firm pattern spinning to improve the GTS allocation of periodic messages in IEEE 802.15.4 networks

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard provides a flexible communication support for low-rate wireless personal area networks) applications. When active, the beacon-enabled mode provides a real-time communication to the supported application by adopting a guaranteed time slot (GTS) mechanism. However, this mechanism permits only up to seven real-time communicating devices. One way to deal with this limitation is to share the communication opportunities among the periodic tasks, by skipping some of the task activations in a controlled way. One of the widely accepted periodic task models that allows skips in periodic activations is the (m,k)-firm model. Motivated by this problem, this paper proposes the use of a dynamic GTS scheduling approach based on the (m,k)-firm task model, to deal with the GTS starvation problem. The proposed scheduling approach is based on pre-defined spins of the originally defined (m,k)-firm pattern. The use of an exact schedulability analysis test ensures that for each admitted message stream, at least m messages will be transmitted within each window of k consecutive deadlines. The schedulability analysis may be executed in polynomial time and therefore can be used as an online admission test for GTS requests. The effectiveness of the approach has been assessed both by a set of simulations and an experimental evaluation.

A Simple Time Shift Scheme for Beacon Broadcasting Based on Cluster-Tree IEEE 802.15.4 Low-Rate WPANs

Wireless sensor networks based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard is able to carry out short-distance transmissions in low-rate and low-power wireless personal area networks. To access the channel, it uses the slotted carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) in the contention access period (CAP) under superframe structure with beacon frame broadcast to bound the duration of superframe. However, the beacon frame is transmitted periodically without CSMA/CA so that it could be collided continuously. This type of collision causes node lost synchronization and unable to join a network because the beacon frame cannot be normally received. This paper proposes a simple time shift scheme based on IEEE 802.15.4 to keep original superframe structure and distribute transmission of beacon frame over active period to avoid beacon frame collisions. We use a simple function to allocate beacon frame transmission in the active period. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the beacon collision and lost synchronization rate, and it also improves the throughput.

Current Trends in Wireless Mesh Sensor Networks: A Review of Competing Approaches

Finding a complete mesh-based solution for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs) is still an open issue. To cope with this concern, different competing approaches have emerged in the Wireless Mesh Sensor Networks (WMSNs) field in the last few years. They are usually supported by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, the most commonly adopted LR-WPAN recommendation for point-to-point topologies. In this work, we review the most relevant and up-to-date WMSN solutions that extend the IEEE 802.15.4 standard to multi-hop mesh networks. To conduct this review, we start by identifying the most significant WMSN requirements (i.e., interoperability, robustness, scalability, mobility or energy-efficiency) that reveal the benefits and shortcomings of each proposal. Then, we re-examine thoroughly the group of proposals following different design guidelines which are usually considered by end-users and developers. Among all of the approaches reviewed, we highlight the IEEE 802.15.5 standard, a recent recommendation that, in its LR-WPAN version, fully satisfies the greatest number of WMSN requirements. As a result, IEEE 802.15.5 can be an appropriate solution for a wide-range of applications, unlike the majority of the remaining solutions reviewed, which are usually designed to solve particular problems, for instance in the home, building and industrial sectors. In this sense, a description of IEEE 802.15.5 is also included, paying special attention to its efficient energy-saving mechanisms. Finally, possible improvements of this recommendation are pointed out in order to offer hints for future research.

A STUDY OF ZIGBEE TECHNOLOGY

The zigbee communication is a communication technology to connect local wireless nodes and provides high stability and transfer rate due to data communication with low power. In the nodes away from coordinator in one PAN, the signal strength is weak causing the network a shortage of low performance and inefficient use of resources due to transferring delay and increasing delay time and thus cannot conduct seamless communication. This study suggests the grouping method, that makes it possible to perform wide range data transferring depending on the node signal strength in zigbee node and analyzes the suggested algorithm through simulation. Based on IEEE 802.15.4 Low Rate-Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN) standard, the Zigbee standard has been proposed to interconnect simple, low rate and battery powered wireless devices. The de-ployment of Zigbee networks is expected to facilitate numerous applications such as Home-appliance net-works, home healthcare, medical monitoring and environmental sensors. An effective routing scheme is more important for Zigbee mesh networks. In order to achieve effective routing in Zigbee Mesh networks, a Zigbee protocol module is realized using NS-2. The suitable routing for different data services in the Zigbee application layer and a best routing strategy for Zigbee mesh network are proposed. The ZigBee standard provides network, security, and application support services operating on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 Medium AccessControl (MAC) and Physical Layer wireless standard. It employs a group of technologies to enable scalable, self-organizing, self-healing networks that can manage various data traffic patterns. ZigBee is a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh networking standard. The low costal lows the technologyto be widely deployed in wireless control and monitoring applications, the low power-usage allows longerlife with smaller batteries, and the mesh networking which promises high reliability and larger range. ZigBee has-been developed to meet the growing demand for capable wireless networking between numerous low power devices. The aims of this network are to reduce the energy consumption and latency by enhancing routing algorithm. In a traditional tree routing when a node wants to transmit a packet to the destination, the packet has to follow child/parent relationship and go along tree topology, even if the destination is lying at nearby source. In order to solve this problem, an Enhanced Tree Routing Algorithm is introduced using ZigBee network. This algorithm can find the shortest path by computing the routing cost for all of router that stored in neighbor table, and transmit the packet to the neighbor router that can reduce the hop count of transmission. The enhanced tree routing algorithm can achieve more stable and better efficiency then the previous traditional tree routing algorithm.

A Beacon-enabled Least-time and Energy Efficient With One-level Data Aggregation Routing Protocol for WSNs using IEEE 802.15.4

The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) field of research is an interesting topic in the research community these days, because of its applicability in various fields such as civilian and medical research applications. Due to the resources and energy constraints in WSNs, routing can be considered as one of the most important issues in these networks. Every routing protocol designed for WSNs should be reliable, energy-efficient and prolong the network lifetime. This research proposes a beacon-enabled least-time and energy-efficient routing protocol with one-level data-aggregation using an IEEE 802.15.4 which is suitable for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks as WSNs, because of its low power consuming feature. The proposed protocol is compared to popular ad hoc and WSNs routing protocols i.e., Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector, Dynamic Source Routing, Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector routing, Directed Diffusion and Minimum Cost Forwarding. The propose work is simulated using network simulator 2. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperformed the routing protocols in the literature in terms of latency, throughput, average energy consumption and average network lifetime.

Modeling and Performance Analysis of Route-Over and Mesh-Under Routing Schemes in 6LoWPAN under Error-Prone Channel Condition

6LoWPAN technology has attracted extensive attention recently. It is because 6LoWPAN is one of Internet of Things standard and it adapts to IPv6 protocol stack over low-rate wireless personal area network, such as IEEE 802.15.4. One view is that IP architecture is not suitable for low-rate wireless personal area network. It is a challenge to implement the IPv6 protocol stack into IEEE 802.15.4 devices due to that the size of IPv6 packet is much larger than the maximum packet size of IEEE 802.15.4 in data link layer. In order to solve this problem, 6LoWPAN provides header compression to reduce the transmission overhead for IP packets. In addition, two selected routing schemes, mesh-under and route-over routing schemes, are also proposed in 6LoWPAN to forward IP fragmentations under IEEE 802.15.4 radio link. The distinction is based on which layer of the 6LoWPAN protocol stack is in charge of routing decisions. In route-over routing scheme, the routing distinction is taken at the network layer and, in mesh-under, is taken by the adaptation layer. Thus, the goal of this research is to understand the performance of two routing schemes in 6LoWPAN under error-prone channel condition.