A Performance-to-Cost Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC With 802.15.4e MAC Modes

[EN] The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the widely adopted networking specification for Internet of Things (IoT). It defines several physical layer (PHY) options and medium access control (MAC) sub-layer protocols for interconnection of constrained wireless devices. These devices are usually battery-powered and need to support requirements like low-power consumption and low-data rates. The standard has been revised twice to incorporate new PHY layers and improvements learned from implementations. Research in this direction has been primarily centered around improving the energy consumption of devices. Recently, to meet specific Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of different industrial applications, the IEEE 802.15.4e amendment was released that focuses on improving reliability, robustness and latency. In this paper, we carry out a performance-to-cost analysis of Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME) and Time-slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) MAC modes of IEEE 802.15.4e with 802.15.4 MAC protocol to analyze the trade-off of choosing a particular MAC mode over others. The parameters considered for performance are throughput and latency, and the cost is quantified in terms of energy. A Markov model has been developed for TSCH MAC mode to compare its energy costs with 802.15.4 MAC. Finally, we present the applicability of different MAC modes to different application scenarios.This work was supported in part by the SERB, DST, Government of India under Grant ECRA/2016/001651.Choudhury, N.; Matam, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2020). A Performance-to-Cost Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC With 802.15.4e MAC Modes. IEEE Access. 8:41936-41950. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2976654S4193641950

Energy Efficient and Reliable Wireless Sensor Networks - An Extension to IEEE 802.15.4e

Collecting sensor data in industrial environments from up to some tenth of battery powered sensor nodes with sampling rates up to 100Hz requires energy aware protocols, which avoid collisions and long listening phases. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard focuses on energy aware wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and the Task Group 4e has published an amendment to fulfill up to 100 sensor value transmissions per second per sensor node (Low Latency Deterministic Network (LLDN) mode) to satisfy demands of factory automation. To improve the reliability of the data collection in the star topology of the LLDN mode, we propose a relay strategy, which can be performed within the LLDN schedule. Furthermore we propose an extension of the star topology to collect data from two-hop sensor nodes. The proposed Retransmission Mode enables power savings in the sensor node of more than 33%, while reducing the packet loss by up to 50%. To reach this performance, an optimum spatial distribution is necessary, which is discussed in detail

IEEE 802.15.4e: a Survey

Several studies have highlighted that the IEEE 802.15.4 standard presents a number of limitations such as low reliability, unbounded packet delays and no protection against interference/fading, that prevent its adoption in applications with stringent requirements in terms of reliability and latency. Recently, the IEEE has released the 802.15.4e amendment that introduces a number of enhancements/modifications to the MAC layer of the original standard in order to overcome such limitations. In this paper we provide a clear and structured overview of all the new 802.15.4e mechanisms. After a general introduction to the 802.15.4e standard, we describe the details of the main 802.15.4e MAC behavior modes, namely Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH), Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME), and Low Latency Deterministic Network (LLDN). For each of them, we provide a detailed description and highlight the main features and possible application domains. Also, we survey the current literature and summarize open research issues

Enhancement of the Contention Access Period for Reducing Energy Consumption of Industrial Internet of Things Based on IPv6

Abstract: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is an emerging technology in recent years, which is widely utilized for control, manage the manufacturing environment, and monitor production lines in the smart factories. The IPv6 has enabled the use of many IIoT devices, so these devices consume large amounts of energy. Many research efforts were made in this area aimed to improve power consumption and performance. This paper proposed the Contention Access Period Reduction Medium Access Control protocol (CAP Reduction MAC protocol) for reducing the CAP duration size based on IEEE 802.15.4e. The proposed MAC protocol leads to reduce the CAP portion. Thus the number of time slots, which assigned to the sensors will decrease. Moreover, this paper intends to estimate the performance of IIoT devices in terms of energy consumption, throughput, and delay time through an analysis of their respective ways of operation running the Contiki Operating System (OS). To validate the proposed protocol, different experiments are conducted based on the Cooja simulator. The proposed protocol can be reduced the overall energy consumption with up to 64.14 %, decreases the delay by 33.7 %, and increases throughput by 63.0 %

A Case for Time Slotted Channel Hopping for ICN in the IoT

Recent proposals to simplify the operation of the IoT include the use of Information Centric Networking (ICN) paradigms. While this is promising, several challenges remain. In this paper, our core contributions (a) leverage ICN communication patterns to dynamically optimize the use of TSCH (Time Slotted Channel Hopping), a wireless link layer technology increasingly popular in the IoT, and (b) make IoT-style routing adaptive to names, resources, and traffic patterns throughout the network--both without cross-layering. Through a series of experiments on the FIT IoT-LAB interconnecting typical IoT hardware, we find that our approach is fully robust against wireless interference, and almost halves the energy consumed for transmission when compared to CSMA. Most importantly, our adaptive scheduling prevents the time-slotted MAC layer from sacrificing throughput and delay

On Evaluating the Performance Impact of the IEEE 802.15.4 Security Sub-layer

Nowadays, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used in a wide range of application scenarios ranging from structural monitoring to health-care, from surveillance to industrial automation. Most of these applications require forms of secure communication. On the other hand, security has a cost in terms of reduced performance. In this paper we refer to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and investigate the impact of the 802.15.4 security sub-layer on the WSN performance. Specifically, we analyze the impact that security mechanisms and options, as provided by the standard, have on the overall WSN performance, in terms of latency, goodput, and energy consumption. To this end, we develop an analytical model and a security enabled simulator. We also use a real testbed, based on a complete open-source implementation of the standard, to validate simulation and analytical results, as well as to better understand the limits of the current WSN technology

Tackling Mobility in Low Latency Deterministic Multihop IEEE 802.15.4e Sensor Network

Providing reliable services for low latency (LL) applications within the IoT context is a challenging issue. Several wireless sensor network (WSN) applications require deterministic systems that ensure a reliable and low latency aggregation service. The IEEE 802.15.4e standard, which is considered as the backbone of the IoT regarding WSN, has presented the low-latency deterministic network mode (LLDN) that can fulfil the major requirements of low latency applications. Meanwhile, several LL applications, for example in the automotive industry, demand the support of sensor node mobility which in turn affects network performance. Node mobility triggers several dissociations from the network that will increase latency and degrade node throughput. In this paper, we investigate the impact of node mobility over the LLDN mode while defining key factors that maximize latency and degrade throughput. In addition, an enhanced version of the LLDN mode is presented and evaluated that supports node mobility while maintaining the targeted limits of LL application requirements. The proposed mobility aware (MA-LLDN) technique manages to reduce the dissociation overhead by a factor of 75% while the packet delivery ratio (PDR) has been enhanced by 30%. Furthermore, this paper presents an analytical model that provides a snapshot of the tradeoff process between different metrics in the IEEE 802.15.4e LLDN design, which must be considered prior network deployment in mobile LL applications