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IEEE - 802.15.4-ARTIGO-A Comprehensive Performance Study of IEEE 802.15.4
IEEE - 802.15.4-ARTIGO-A Comprehensive Performance Study of IEEE 802.15.4
IEEE - 802.15.4-ARTIGO-A Comprehensive Performance Study of IEEE 802.15.4
Abstract— IEEE 802.15.4 is a new standard uniquely network more cost-efficient than a wired network in
designed for low rate wireless personal area networks (LR- general.
WPANs). It targets low data rate, low power consumption The release of IEEE 802.15.4 (referred to as 802.15.4
and low cost wireless networking, and offers device level
wireless connectivity. We develop an NS2 simulator for hereinafter), "Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC)
IEEE 802.15.4 and conduct several sets of experiments to and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications for Low Rate
study its various features, including: (1) beacon enabled Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs)" [1]1 ,
mode and non-beacon enabled mode; (2) association, tree represents a milestone in wireless personal area networks
formation and network auto-configuration; (3) orphaning and wireless sensor networks. 802.15.4 is a new standard
and coordinator relocation; (4) carrier sense multiple access
with collision avoidance (CSMA-CA), both unslotted and uniquely designed for low rate wireless personal area
slotted; and (5) direct, indirect and guaranteed time slot networks. It targets low data rate, low power consump-
(GTS) data transmissions. In non-beacon enabled mode tion and low cost wireless networking and offers device
and under moderate data rate, the new IEEE 802.15.4 level wireless connectivity. A host of new applications
standard, compared with IEEE 802.11, is more efficient can benefit from the new standard, such as those using
in terms of overhead and resource consumption. It also
enjoys a low hop delay (normalized by channel capacity) sensors that control lights or alarms, wall switches that
on average. In beacon enabled mode, an LR-WPAN can can be moved at will, wireless computer peripherals,
be flexibly configured to meet different needs, such as link controllers for interactive toys, smart tags and badges,
failure self-recovery and low duty cycle. In both beacon tire pressure monitors in cars, inventory tracking devices.
enabled mode and non-beacon enabled mode, association
802.15.4 distinguishes itself from other wireless stan-
and tree formation proceed smoothly and the network can
shape up efficiently by itself. We also discuss some issues dards such as IEEE 802.11 (referred to as 802.11 here-
that could degrade the network performance if not handled inafter) [2] and Bluetooth [3] by some unique features
properly. (see section II). However, there are no simulations or im-
Index Terms— 802.15.4, LR-WPAN, WPAN, wireless plementations available so far to test these new features.
sensor networks, low power, low data rate, (non-)beacon We develop an NS2 simulator for 802.15.4 and carry out
enabled mode. several sets of experiments to evaluate its performances,
in hopes of helping IEEE to verify and/or improve the
design, and facilitating researchers and manufacturers to
I. BACKGROUND AND M OTIVATION develop products based upon this new standard. 802.15.4
OMPARED with wired networks, wireless net- has been designed as a flexible protocol in which a
C works provide advantages in deployment, cost,
size, and distributed intelligence. Wireless technology
set of parameters can be configured to meet different
requirements. As such, we also try to find out how users
not only enables users to set up a network quickly, but can tailor the protocol to their needs and where the trade-
also enables them to set up a network where it is in- off is for some applications.
convenient or impossible to wire cables. The “care free” The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In
feature and convenience of deployment make a wireless section II, we give a brief description of 802.15.4. Next,
in section III, we outline the NS2 simulator for 802.15.4.
Jianliang Zheng and Myung J. Lee are with the Department of Then, in section IV, we define a set of performance
Electrical Engineering, City College, The City University of New metrics and present the experimental setup. In section V,
York, New York, NY 10031 USA (e-mail: zheng@ee.ccny.cuny.edu,
lee@ccny.cuny.edu)
we give out the experimental results with discussions.
The research is supported by Samsung Advanced Institute of Tech-
nology. 1 All results in this paper apply to the IEEE 802.15.4 draft D18 [1]
2
Finally, in section VI, we conclude. from MAC sublayer. The turnaround time from
transmitting to receiving, or vice versa, should be
II. A B RIEF D ESCRIPTION OF IEEE 802.15.4 no more than 12 symbol periods.
• Energy detection (ED) within the current channel: It
The new IEEE standard, 802.15.4, defines the physical
is an estimate of the received signal power within
layer (PHY) and medium access control sublayer (MAC)
the bandwidth of an IEEE 802.15.4 channel. No
specifications for low data rate wireless connectivity
attempt is made to identify or decode signals on
among relatively simple devices that consume minimal
the channel in this procedure. The energy detection
power and typically operate in the Personal Operating
time shall be equal to 8 symbol periods. The result
Space (POS) of 10 meters or less. An 802.15.4 net-
from energy detection can be used by a network
work can simply be a one-hop star, or, when lines of
layer as part of a channel selection algorithm, or
communication exceed 10 meters, a self-configuring,
for the purpose of clear channel assessment (CCA)
multi-hop network. A device in an 802.15.4 network
(alone or combined with carrier sense).
can use either a 64-bit IEEE address or a 16-bit short
• Link quality indication (LQI) for received packets:
address assigned during the association procedure, and
Link quality indication measurement is performed
a single 802.15.4 network can accommodate up to 64k
for each received packet. The PHY layer uses re-
(216 ) devices. Wireless links under 802.15.4 can operate
ceiver energy detection (ED), a signal-to-noise ratio,
in three license free industrial scientific medical (ISM)
or a combination of these to measure the strength
frequency bands. These accommodate over air data rates
and/or quality of a link from which a packet is
of 250 kb/sec (or expressed in symbols, 62.5 ksym/sec)
received. However, the use of LQI result by the
in the 2.4 GHz band, 40 kb/sec (40 ksym/sec) in the
network or application layers is not specified in the
915 MHz band, and 20 kb/sec (20 ksym/sec) in the 868
standard.
MHz. Total 27 channels are allocated in 802.15.4, with
• Clear channel assessment (CCA) for carrier sense
16 channels in the 2.4 GHz band, 10 channels in the 915
multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA-
MHz band, and 1 channel in the 868 MHz band.
CA): The PHY layer is required to perform CCA us-
Wireless communications are inherently susceptible
ing energy detection, carrier sense, or a combination
to interception and interference. Some security research
of these two. In energy detection mode, the medium
has been done for WLANs and wireless sensor net-
is considered busy if any energy above a predefined
works [13]–[16], [20], [22], but pursuing security in
energy threshold is detected. In carrier sense mode,
wireless networks remains a challenging task. 802.15.4
the medium is considered busy if a signal with the
employs a fully handshaked protocol for data transfer re-
modulation and spreading characteristics of IEEE
liability and embeds the Advanced Encryption Standard
802.15.4 is detected. And in the combined mode,
(AES) [4] for secure data transfer.
both conditions aforementioned need to be met in
In the following subsections, we give a brief overview
order to conclude that the medium is busy.
of the PHY layer, MAC sublayer and some general
• Channel frequency selection: Wireless links under
functions of 802.15.4. Detailed information can be found
802.15.4 can operate in 27 different channels (but
in [1].
a specific network can choose to support part of
the channels). Hence the PHY layer should be able
A. The PHY layer to tune its transceiver into a certain channel upon
The PHY layer provides an interface between the receiving the request from MAC sublayer.
MAC sublayer and the physical radio channel. It pro- • Data transmission and reception: This is the es-
vides two services, accessed through two service access sential task of the PHY layer. Modulation and
points (SAPs). These are the PHY data service and the spreading techniques are used in this part. The 2.4
PHY management service. The PHY layer is responsible GHz PHY employs a 16-ary quasi-orthogonal mod-
for the following tasks: ulation technique, in which each four information
• Activation and deactivation of the radio bits are mapped into a 32-chip pseudo-random noise
transceiver: Turn the radio transceiver into (PN) sequence. The PN sequences for successive
one of the three states, that is, transmitting, data symbols are then concatenated and modulated
receiving, or off (sleeping) according to the request onto the carrier using offset quadrature phase shift
3
keying (O-QPSK). The 868/915 MHz PHY em- the active superframe to a device. These portions
ploys direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) with are called GTSs, and comprise the contention free
binary phase shift keying (BPSK) used for chip period (CFP) of the superframe.
modulation and differential encoding used for data • Providing a reliable link between two peer MAC
symbol encoding. Each data symbol is mapped into entities: The MAC sublayer employs various mech-
a 15-chip PN sequence and the concatenated PN anisms to enhance the reliability of the link between
sequences are then modulated onto the carrier using two peers, among them are the frame acknowledg-
BPSK with raised cosine pulse shaping. ment and retransmission, data verification by using
a 16-bit CRC, as well as CSMA-CA.
B. The MAC sublayer
The MAC sublayer provides an interface between the C. General Functions
service specific convergence sublayer (SSCS) and the The standard gives detailed specifications of the fol-
PHY layer. Like the PHY layer, the MAC sublayer also lowing items: type of device, frame structure, superframe
provides two services, namely, the MAC data service structure, data transfer model, robustness, power con-
and the MAC management service. The MAC sublayer sumption considerations, and security. In this subsection,
is responsible for the following tasks: we give a short description of those items closely related
• Generating network beacons if the device is a to our performance study, including type of device,
coordinator: A coordinator can determine whether superframe structure, data transfer model, and power
to work in a beacon enabled mode, in which consumption considerations.
a superframe structure is used. The superframe Two different types of devices are defined in an
is bounded by network beacons and divided into 802.15.4 network, a full function device (FFD) and a
aNumSuperframeSlots (default value 16) equally reduced function device (RFD). An FFD can talk to
sized slots. A coordinator sends out beacons pe- RFDs and other FFDs, and operate in three modes
riodically to synchronize the attached devices and serving either as a PAN coordinator, a coordinator or a
for other purposes (see subsection II-C). device. An RFD can only talk to an FFD and is intended
• Synchronizing to the beacons: A device attached for extremely simple applications.
to a coordinator operating in a beacon enabled The standard allows the optional use of a superframe
mode can track the beacons to synchronize with structure. The format of the superframe is defined by
the coordinator. This synchronization is important the coordinator. From Fig. 1, we can see the superframe
for data polling, energy saving, and detection of comprises an active part and an optional inactive part,
orphanings. and is bounded by network beacons. The length of the
• Supporting personal area network (PAN) as- superframe (a.k.a. beacon interval, BI) and the length
sociation and disassociation: To support self- of its active part (a.k.a. superframe duration, SD) are
configuration, 802.15.4 embeds association and dis- defined as follows:
BO
association functions in its MAC sublayer. This not BI = aBaseSuperf rameDuration ∗ 2
SO
only enables a star to be setup automatically, but SD = aBaseSuperf rameDuration ∗ 2
also allows for the creation of a self-configuring, Where,
peer-to-peer network. aBaseSuperframeDuration = 960 symbols
• Employing the carrier sense multiple access with BO = beacon order
collision avoidance (CSMA-CA) mechanism for SO = superframe order
channel access: Like most other protocols designed The values of BO and SO are determined by the coordi-
for wireless networks, 802.15.4 uses CSMA-CA nator. The active part of the superframe is divided into
mechanism for channel access. However, the new aNumSuperframeSlots (default value 16) equally sized
standard does not include the request-to-send (RTS) slots and the beacon frame is transmitted in the first
and clear-to-send (CTS) mechanism, in considera- slot of each superframe. The active part can be further
tion of the low data rate used in LR-WPANs. broken down into two periods, a contention access period
• Handling and maintaining the guaranteed time slot (CAP) and an optional contention free period (CFP). The
(GTS) mechanism: When working in a beacon en- optional CFP may accommodate up to seven so-called
abled mode, a coordinator can allocate portions of guaranteed time slots (GTSs), and a GTS may occupy
4
Beacon Beacon
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
CAP CFP
more than one slot period. However, a sufficient portion association response frame. Unslotted CSMA-CA
of the CAP shall remain for contention based access of or slotted CSMA-CA is used in the data extraction
other networked devices or new devices wishing to join procedure.
the network. A slotted CSMA-CA mechanism is used • GTS data transmission: This only applies to data
for channel access during the CAP. All contention based transfer between a device and its coordinator, either
transactions shall be complete before the CFP begins. from the device to the coordinator or from the
Also all transactions using GTSs shall be done before coordinator to the device. No CSMA-CA is needed
the time of the next GTS or the end of the CFP. in GTS data transmission.
Data transfer can happen in three different ways: (1) Power conservation has been one of research focuses for
from a device to a coordinator; (2) from a coordinator wireless networks [9]–[12], [17], [19], [21], since most
to a device; and (3) from one peer to another in a devices in wireless networks are battery powered. The
peer-to-peer multi-hop network. Nevertheless, for our standard was developed with the limited power supply
performance study, we classify the data transfer into the availability in mind and favors battery powered devices.
following three types: The superframe structure, the indirect data transmission
• Direct data transmission: This applies to all data and the BatteryLifeExtension option are all examples. If
transfers, either from a device to a coordinator, the BatteryLifeExtension is set to TRUE, all contention
from a coordinator to a device, or between two based transactions are required to begin within mac-
peers. unslotted CSMA-CA or slotted CSMA-CA BattLifeExtPeriods (default value 6) full backoff periods
is used for data transmission, depending whether after the inter-frame space (IFS) period of the beacon
non-beacon enabled mode or beacon enabled mode frame.
is used.
• Indirect data transmission: This only applies to data
III. NS2 S IMULATOR
transfer from a coordinator to its devices. In this
mode, a data frame is kept in a transaction list The 802.15.4 NS2 [5] simulator developed at the
by the coordinator, waiting for extraction by the Joint Lab of Samsung and the City University of New
corresponding device. A device can find out if it has York confirms to IEEE P802.15.4/D18 Draft. Fig. 2
a packet pending in the transaction list by checking outlines the function modules in the simulator, and a
the beacon frames received from its coordinator. brief description is given below for each of the modules.
Occasionally, indirect data transmission can also • Wireless Scenario Definition: It selects the rout-
happen in non-beacon enabled mode. For example, ing protocol; defines the network topology; and
during an association procedure, the coordinator schedules events such as initializations of PAN
keeps the association response frame in its trans- coordinator, coordinators and devices, and starting
action list and the device polls and extracts the (stopping) applications. It defines radio-propagation
5
model, antenna model, interface queue, traffic pat- • Hop delay: The transaction time of passing a packet
tern, link error model, link and node failures, su- to a one-hop neighbor, including time of all neces-
perframe structure in beacon enabled mode, radio sary processing, backoff as well as transmission,
transmission range, and animation configuration. and averaged over all successful end-to-end trans-
• Service Specific Convergence Sublayer (SSCS): missions within a simulation run. It is not only
This is the interface between 802.15.4 MAC and used for measuring packet delivery latency, but also
upper layers. It provides a way to access all the used as a negative indicator of the MAC sublayer
MAC primitives, but it can also serve as a wrapper capacity. The MAC sublayer has to handle the
of those primitives for convenient operations. It is packets one by one and therefore a long delay
an implementation specific module and its function means a small capacity.
should be tailored to the requirements of specific • RTS/CTS overhead: The ratio of request-to-send
applications. (RTS) packets plus clear-to-send (CTS) packets
• 802.15.4 PHY: It implements all 14 PHY primitives. sent to all the other packets sent in 802.11. This
• 802.15.4 MAC: This is the main module. It imple- metric is not applicable to 802.15.4, in which
ments all the 35 MAC sublayer primitives. RTS/CTS mechanism is not used. We compare the
performances of 802.11 and 802.15.4 to justify the
dropping of RTS/CTS mechanism in 802.15.4.
Wireless • Successful association rate: The ratio of devices
Scenario Definition
successfully associated with a coordinator to the
total devices trying to associate with a coordinator.
Upper Layers In our experiments, a device will retry in one
• CSMA-CA second if it fails to associate with a coordinator in
Routing • Beacon and Sync.
• Assoc. and Disassoc. the previous attempt. The association is considered
802.2 LLC
• Direct/Indirect/GTS Tx successful if a device is able to associate with a
SSCS • Filtering
• ED coordinator during a simulation run, even if multiple
• Error Modeling
• CCA
• Enhanced Nam Anima. association attempts have been made.
• LQI 802.15.4 MAC
• Filtering • Association efficiency: The average number of at-
• Multi-Channel
802.15.4 PHY tempts per successful association.
• Orphaning rate: A device is considered orphaned if
NS2 it misses aMaxLostBeacons (default value 4) bea-
cons from its coordinator in a row. The orphaning
rate is defined as the ratio of devices orphaned at
Fig. 2. NS2 Simulator for IEEE 802.15.4 least once to the total devices that are in beacon
enabled mode and keep tracking beacons. This
metric is not applicable to devices in non-beacon
IV. P ERFORMANCE M ETRICS AND E XPERIMENTAL enabled mode or devices in beacon enabled mode
S ETUP but not tracking beacons. In our experiments, all
A. Performance Metrics devices in beacon enabled mode track beacons.
We define the following metrics for studying the • Orphaning recovery rate: Two different versions are
performance of 802.15.4. All metrics are defined with defined for this metric. One is the ratio of orphaned
respect to MAC sublayer and PHY layer in order to devices that have successfully relocated their co-
isolate the effects of MAC and PHY from those of upper ordinators, i.e., have recovered from orphaning, to
layers. the total orphaned devices. The other is the ratio
• Packet delivery ratio: The ratio of packets success- of recovered orphanings to the total orphanings, in
fully received to packets sent in MAC sublayer. which multiple orphanings of a device are counted.
This metric does not differentiate transmissions and No further attempt is made if the orphaning recov-
retransmissions, and therefore does not reflect what ery procedure fails.
percentage of upper layer payload is successfully • Collision rate: The total collisions during a simu-
delivered, although they are related. lation run.
6
• Collision rate between hidden terminals: The to- is two-ray ground reflection. Beacon order (BO) and
tal collisions that occur between hidden terminals superframe order (SO) take the same value in all beacon
during a simulation run. Hidden terminals prevent enabled modes, that is, the optional inactive part is not
carrier sense from working effectively, and therefore included in superframes. Most experiments run 10 times
transmissions from them are likely to collide at with random seeds, but those with a traffic load of 0.2
a third node [23]. In 802.11, the request-to-send packet per second (pps) and those with a traffic load of
(RTS) and clear-to-send (CTS) mechanism is used 0.1 pps run 20 times and 40 times respectively. Other
to tackle this problem [2]. experiment specific configuration information is given
• Repeated collision rate: The total collisions that in the following paragraphs corresponding to each set of
happen more than once between the same pair of experiments.
packets during a simulation run.
• Collision distribution: The time distribution, within
a superframe, of collisions. This metric is only used 88 96 92 100
64 76 68 80 72 84 61
in beacon enabled mode.
44 56 48 60 52 41
• Duty cycle: The ratio of the active duration, includ-
83 28 36 32 40 25 73
ing transmission, reception and carrier sense time, 99 51 16 20 24 13 53 85
of a transceiver to the whole session duration. 71 39 8 9 5 33 65
91 59 23 4 1 17 45 93
B. Experimental Setup 79 31 12 0 10 29 77
95 47 19 3 2 21 57 89
Five sets of experiments are designed to evaluate the 67 35 7 11 6 37 69
various performance behaviors of 802.15.4, including 87 55 15 22 18 14 49 97
those applicable to all wireless networks (such as packet 75 27 38 30 34 26 81
delivery ratio, packet delivery latency, control overhead, 43 50 58 46 54 42
Bluetooth, on the other hand, is one-hop star or so-called coordinators and different beacon orders. The same
piconet, which consists of one coordinator and up to network topology, transmission range, frequency band,
seven devices. In a piconet, a device only communicates data rate, and peer-to-peer application sessions are used
with its coordinator. Although scatternets can be used as in the first set of experiments. Except node 0, which is
to extend the coverage and the number of devices of a the PAN coordinator, and the leaf nodes depicted in grey,
Bluetooth network, our research work showed that there which are pure devices, all the other nodes serve as both
are scalability problems in scatternets [7]. Furthermore, a coordinator (to its children) and a device (to its parent).
all the devices in either 802.15.4 or 802.11 share a single So we have 73 coordinators and 100 devices. This set
chip code for spread spectrum, while different devices of experiments run in a mixed mode, with different
in Bluetooth are assigned different chip codes. Based on percentage of coordinators beaconing (0%, 25%, 50%,
the above facts, we select 802.11 instead of Bluetooth for 75% and 100%). The beacon order varies and takes the
comparison. The performance is evaluated with respect values of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10. The application traffic
to the following parameters as well as those listed in the is fixed at 1 pps.
previous paragraph: Experiment set 3 – Orphaning: The third set of
• 101 nodes evenly distributed in an 80 x 80 m area
2 experiments are used to study the device orphaning
(Fig. 3 (a)). behavior, namely, how often orphanings happen and
• 9 meter transmission range, which only covers the what percentage of orphanings, in terms of number
neighbors along diagonal direction. of orphaned devices or number of orphanings, can be
• 802.15.4 operates at an over air data rate of 250 recovered. The experimental setup is the same as that of
kbps (in the 2.4 GHz ISM band) and in non-beacon the second set of experiments.
enabled mode, and 802.11 operates at a data rate of Experiment set 4 – Collision: The fourth set of ex-
2 Mbps. periments target the collision behavior of 802.15.4. The
• Poisson traffic with the following average packet experiments run in a beacon enabled star environment.
rates: 0.1 packet per second (pps), 0.2 pps, 1 pps, Nevertheless, except some beacon specific metrics, most
5 pps and 10 pps. of the metrics extracted from this set of experiments
• We apply two types of application traffic: (1) peer- are general and can serve for both beacon and non-
to-peer application traffic, which consists of six beacon enabled modes. Besides the general parameters
application sessions between the following nodes: given above, the following parameters are used in the
64 → 62, 63 → 61, 99 → 85, 87 → 97, 88 → 98, experiments:
and 100 → 86, and (2) multiple-to-one application • 7 nodes form a star with a radius of 10 meters, with
traffic, which consists of twelve application sessions one coordinator at the center and six devices evenly
from nodes 64, 62, 63, 61, 99, 85, 87, 97, 88, 98, distributed around it (Fig. 3 (b)).
100 and 86 to node 0. The first type of application • 15 meter transmission range, which enables the
traffic is used to study the general peer-to-peer be- coordinator to reach all the devices. However, a
havior of 802.15.4 and, for comparison, it is applied device can only reach the coordinator and two
to both 802.15.4 and 802.11. The second type of devices adjacent to it. In other words, devices are
application traffic targets the important application hidden from each other unless they are adjacent to
of 802.15.4, wireless sensor networks, where traffic each other.
is typically between multiple source nodes and a • Operates at an over air data rate of 250 kbps (in the
sink. It is only applied to 802.15.4. Although the 2.4 GHz ISM band).
second type of application traffic is not used for • Poisson traffic with the average packet rate of 1 pps.
comparing 802.15.4 with 802.11, we include it here • Six application sessions, one for each device, are
to facilitate the comparison of 802.15.4 behaviors setup from the devices to the coordinator.
under different application traffic. We refer to the • The beacon order changes from 0 to 8.
second type of application traffic as sink-type ap- Experiment set 5 – Direct, indirect and GTS data
plication traffic hereinafter. transmissions: The last set of experiments are used to
Experiment set 2 – Association efficiency: The second investigate the different features of the three data trans-
set of experiments are designed to evaluate the asso- mission methods in 802.15.4. We compare the packet
ciation efficiency under different number of beaconing delivery ratio, hop delay and duty cycle of the three
8
different methods. All the parameters are the same as 802.15.4s to denote the data series corresponding to peer-
those in the fourth set of experiments, except that only to-peer application traffic and sink-type application traf-
two application sessions originating from adjacent de- fic respectively (see Fig. 4 and Fig. 6). However, when
vices are used, and that three different data transmission experiment results are not specific to a certain application
methods are used. traffic (e.g., the data series 802.15.4 in Fig. 5) or only
one application traffic is applied (e.g. for 802.11), the
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS protocol name is used only to denote the corresponding
A. Comparing IEEE 802.15.4 with IEEE 802.11 data series.
For peer-to-peer application traffic, as shown in Fig. 4,
the packet delivery ratio of 802.11 decreases slowly from
99.53% to 98.65% when the traffic load changes from
100
Packet Delivery
90
0.1 packet per second (pps) to 10 pps. On the other
Ratio (%)
3
per Poisson Pkt
Number of Nodes
90 0% BC
hop delay according to the media data rate, which gives 75
25% BC
60
us a different view that the hop delay of 802.11 is 45 50% BC
around 3.3 times of that of 802.15.4 (data series 802.11* 30 75% BC
15
and 802.15.4p in Fig. 6). The hop delay for sink-type 0 100% BC
1 2 3 4
application traffic is 6.3% (for 0.1 pps) to 20.9% (for 10 Attempts per Successful
pps) higher than that for peer-to-peer application traffic Association
(data series 802.15.4s and 802.15.4p in Fig. 6). The
increment of delay is expected, since all the traffic flows
now need to converge on the sink node. Fig. 9. Attempts per Successful Association vs. Beaconing Coordi-
nator (BC) Ratio
B. Association Efficiency
100
100 is sent, or a passive channel scan, in which no beacon
80 67
60 52 request frame is sent, to locate a suitable coordinator.
40 22 Active channel scan is used in our experiments, since a
20
0
0 device needs to explicitly request for beacons in non-
0 25 50 75 100 beacon enabled environment. When a coordinator re-
Beaconing Coordinator Ratio (%) ceives the beacon request frame, it handles it differently
depending on whether itself is in beacon enabled mode
or non-beacon enabled mode. If the coordinator is in
Fig. 7. Devices Associated with Beaconing Coordinators beacon enabled mode, it discards the frame silently, since
beacons will be bent periodically anyway. Otherwise,
the coordinator needs to unicast a beacon to the device
soliciting beacons. In our experiments, we vary the
1.8
percentage of beaconing coordinators to see the different
effects of beaconing coordinators and non-beaconing
Attempts per
Association
Successful
1.6
1.4
coordinators.
1.2 In general, the successful association rate is very
1.0 high (more than 99%) for different combinations of
0 25 50 75 100 beaconing coordinators and non-beaconing coordinators,
Beaconing Coordinator Ratio (%)
as illustrated in Table I. From Fig. 7, we can see that a
device gets an almost equal chance to associate with a
beaconing coordinator or a non-beaconing coordinator.
Fig. 8. Association Efficiency vs. Beaconing Coordinator Ratio However, this result is obtained for beacon order 3 and
it may be different for other beacon orders. Normally, a
10
TABLE II
D ISTRIBUTION OF A SSOCIATION ATTEMPTS ( EXPRESSED IN NUMBER OF DEVICES )
beaconing coordinator with a larger beacon order (i.e., hidden terminal problems as a fact of lacking RTS/CTS,
longer superframe) reacts slowly to a beacon request, that is, even the first step of the association may fail.
which means it will not get the same chance to serve The situation is better if there are multiple beaconing
as a coordinator for a certain device, when competing coordinators around, since they will continue beacon-
with other non-beaconing coordinators or beaconing ing as usual even if a beacon request is received. Of
coordinators with smaller beacon orders. course, if beacons are sent with high frequency (low
The association efficiency shown in Fig. 8, in terms beacon order), then the collisions will increase, which
of attempts per successful association, is high. The will bring down the association efficiency. In summary,
association procedure is a multi-step procedure as briefly non-beaconing coordinators are likely to affect the first
described by the following pseudo code (for device part step of the association procedure, while the beaconing
only): coordinators can affect all the steps. As revealed by our
experimental results, beaconing coordinator as a whole is
1: channel scan
a better choice regarding association efficiency, provided
2: if coordinators not found
the beacon order is not too small.
3: association fail Table II gives out the distribution of association at-
4: elseif no coordinators permit association tempts, which shows that most of the devices succeed in
5: association fail their first association attempt, a small part of the devices
6: else try twice or three times, and three devices try four times.
7: select a proper coordinator Association is the basis of tree formation in a peer-to-
8: send association request to the coord. peer multi-hop network. The efficiency of tree formation
9: wait for ACK is directly related to association efficiency. Tree is a
10: if ACK not received useful structure and can be used by network layer,
11: association fail especially for routing purpose. In this set of experiments,
12: else a tree is quickly formed thanks to the high association
13: send data request to the coord. efficiency. Various configurations are also done during
14: wait for ACK this procedure, such as select a channel and an identifier
15: if ACK not received (ID) for the PAN, determine whether beacon enabled
16: association fail mode or non-beacon enabled mode to be used, choose
17: else the beacon order and superframe order in beacon enabled
18: wait for association response mode, assign a 16-bit short address for a device, set
19: if asso. response not received the BatteryLifeExtension option and many other options
20: association fail in the MAC layer PAN information base (MPIB). The
21: elseif association not granted smooth procedure of association and tree formation
22: association fail indicates that an 802.15.4 network has a feature of self-
23: else configuration and can shape up efficiently.
24: association succeed
If there are multiple non-beaconing coordinators around, C. Orphaning
they all will try to unicast a beacon, using unslotted The orphaning study is conducted in an environment
CSMA-CA, to the device asking for beacons. These with all coordinators beaconing. Specifically we exam-
beacons are likely to collide at the device due to the ine the orphaning behavior for different beacon orders.
11
TABLE III
S UCCESSFUL A SSOCIATION R ATE VS . B EACON ORDER
Beacon order 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 10
Successful association rate (%) 99 96 95 100 99 100 100 99
Association
10
8 1 as shown by data series “Devices Recovered”), but
6
4 the recovery rate of orphaning itself is not that bad
2
0 (from 30% to 89% as shown by data series “Orphanings
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Recovered”). One point worth mentioning is that, a
Beacon Order
device failed to recover from all orphanings still benefits
from the recovery mechanism, since its association with
the coordinator is prolonged, though not to the end of
Fig. 10. Association Attempts vs. Beacon order the session.
D. Collision
100
Orphaning and
Devices
80
Ratios (%)
Recovery
Orphaned
60 Devices
40 Recovered 10000
20 Orphanings
Number of
7500
Collisions
0 Recovered
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5000
2500
Beacon Order 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Collisions 246859 1348 463 373 322 190 219 237 279
Beacon Order
Fig. 11. Orphaning and Recovery
Terminals (%)
give out the association results. Table III and Fig. 10 100
btw. Hidden
80
suggest that the performance of beacon enabled modes 60
with small beacon orders is not so good as that with large 40
20
beacon orders. For example, the attempts per successful 0
association for beacon order 0 is “outstanding” among 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
its peers. And the successful association rate for beacon Beacon Order
Packet Delivery
100 100.0
Ratio of Repeated
Ratio (%)
99.5 direct
Collisions (%)
80 four times
99.0 indirect
60 three times
98.5
GTS
twice
40 once 98.0
20 3 4 5 6 7 8
0 Beacon Order
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
four times 0.0 0.0 39. 48. 26. 54. 56. 67. 44.
three times 0.0 0.0 30. 25. 42. 15. 6.8 12. 21.
twice 9.5 56. 7.8 5.8 14. 3.3 12. 5.7 9.3 Fig. 16. Different Data Transmission Methods: Packet Delivery Ratio
once 90. 43. 22. 20. 16. 27. 24. 14. 23.
Beacon Order
2.0
indirect
vary when traffic load changes. Perfect synchronization
1.5
1.0 GTS among devices is also assumed in the measurement,
0.5 which is generally not true in practice. Some margin
0.0 should be provided for the non-perfect synchronization,
3 4 5 6 7 8 which means an increment in duty cycle. One more
Beacon Order point about power conservation is that, it is acquired
at the cost of delay, as clearly shown in Fig. 17. The
power consumption mechanisms employed in 802.15.4
Fig. 18. Different Data Transmission Methods: Duty Cycle
are based on the assumption of low data rate and should
be used properly.
sake of completion. Small beacon orders 0, 1 and 2
are not shown in the above figures, since, in GTS data VI. C ONCLUSIONS
transmission, we only allocate one slot for each device At its heart, the new IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which
and the slot is too short for holding a data frame. is designed for low rate wireless personal area networks
No significant difference has been observed in the (LR-WPANs), is an enabling standard. It brings to light
packet delivery ratio among the three data transmission a host of new applications as well as changes many
methods. Nevertheless, the hop delay varies, which will other existing applications. It is the first standard to
definitely affect the packet delivery ratio in upper layers. allow simple sensors and actuators to share a single
The hop delay in direct data transmission is much shorter standardized wireless platform.
than those in indirect and GTS data transmissions. To evaluate the general performance of this new
One fundamental aspect of 802.15.4 is low power standard, we develop an NS2 simulator, which covers
consumption, which is very desirable in a wireless all the 802.15.4 PHY and MAC primitives, and carry
sensor network, as the replacement of batteries is very out five sets of experiments, that is, experiments of:
cumbersome due to the large number of sensors. Most (1) comparing the performance between 802.15.4 and
power-saving mechanisms in 802.15.4 are based on 802.11; (2) association and tree formation study; (3)
beacon enabled mode. In direct data transmission, if orphaning and coordinator relocation investigation; (4)
the BatteryLifeExtension option is set to TRUE, the examination of unslotted CSMA-CA and slotted CSMA-
receiver of the beaconing coordinator is disabled after CA behaviors; and (5) comparing three different data
macBattLifeExtPeriods (default value 6) backoff periods transmissions, namely, direct, indirect and guaranteed
following the inter-frame space (IFS) period of the bea- time slot (GTS) data transmissions. Detailed experimen-
con frame. Using default configuration, this means that tal results are presented, and analyses and discussions
the transceiver of a coordinator or a device is required are given.
14
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