Performance evaluation of an IEEE 802.15.4 sensor network with a star topology

One class of applications envisaged for the IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN (low data rate - wireless personal area network) standard is wireless sensor networks for monitoring and control applications. In this paper we provide an analytical performance model for a network in which the sensors are at the tips of a star topology, and the sensors need to transmit their measurements to the hub node so that certain objectives for packet delay and packet discard are met. We first carry out a saturation throughput analysis of the system; i.e., it is assumed that each sensor has an infinite backlog of packets and the throughput of the system is sought. After a careful analysis of the CSMA/CA MAC that is employed in the standard, and after making a certain decoupling approximation, we identify an embedded Markov renewal process, whose analysis yields a fixed point equation, from whose solution the saturation throughput can be calculated. We validate our model against ns2 simulations (using an IEEE 802.1...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: WINET
• Authors: Chandramani Kishore Singh, Anurag Kumar, P. M. Ameer
• Keywords: Analysis, Sensor, Throughput, WINET 2008