An Efficient and Secured Media Access Mechanism Using the Intelligent Coordinator in Low-Rate WPAN Environment ⋆

Abstract. The convenience of IEEE 802.15.4 (Low-rate Wireless Personal Area Network) based wireless access network will lead to widespread deployment in the evolutionary computing and adaptive systems. However, this use is predicated on an implicit assumption of confidentiality and availability. In this environment, malicious device may obtain an unfair share of the channel bandwidth. For example, IEEE 802.15.4 requires nodes competing for getting access to the channel to wait for a ’backoff ’ interval, randomly selected from a specified range, before initiating a transmission. Malicious devices may wait for smaller ’backoff ’ intervals than well-behaved devices, thereby obtaining an unfair advantage. Such misbehavior can seriously degrade the throughput of well-behaved devices. In this paper, we proposed an intelligent coordinator, a modification to IEEE 802.15.4 specification to simplify the prevention of such malicious devices. Proposed coordinator is able to ascertain whether to apply PTP (Priority Time Period). Simulation results indicate that our prevention mechanism is successful in handling MAC layer misbehavior. We plan to foster our solution in the evolutionary computing systems through further development.