Evaluating the Performance of the IEEE 802.15.4 Standard in Supporting Time-Critical Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The performance of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) at monitoring time-critical events is an important research topic, mainly due to the need to ensure that the actions to be taken upon these events are timely. To determine the effectiveness of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard at monitoring time-critical events in WSNs, we introduce a routing scheme based on drain announcements that seeks minimum routing overhead. We carried out a novel performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.15.4 technology under different conditions, to determine whether or not near-real-time event monitoring is feasible. By analyzing different simulation metrics such as packet loss rate, average end-to-end delay, and routing overhead, we determine the degree of effectiveness of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard at supporting time-critical tasks in multi-hop WSNs, evidencing its limitations upon the size and the amount of traffic flowing through the network.

Diseño de una arquitectura para redes de sensores con soporte para aplicaciones de detección de eventos

“…Utilizando el estándar IEEE 802.15.4 para la monitorización de eventos de tiempo crítico en WSNs, hemos desarrollado un esquema de encaminamiento basado en anuncio del dreno llamado DABR [75], y otro llamado MRLG [76] para redes con drenos móviles, teniendo ambos la nalidad de minimizar la sobrecarga de encaminamiento. Con este protocolo de encaminamiento se pretende reducir la sobrecarga de encaminamiento para el descubrimiento de rutas por los nodos sensores, cuando requieren enviar información al dreno de la red.…”