On the use of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee as federating communication protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Tese de mestrado. Redes e Serviços de Comunicação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, Instituto Superior de Engenharia. 200

A Review on Wireless Home Automation Systems based on Zigbee Technology

Development in wireless home automation has resulted in enriching the consumer experience in very simple manner. Home automation is one of the major application areas of ZigBee wireless networking. This paper reviews ZigBee Technology and its application in Wireless Home Automation Systems and compares it with other major existing technologies in implementing WHAS. The paper also lists some future opportunities and the challenges that ZigBee holds in this field

IEEE 802.15.4 for wireless sensor networks: a technical overview

Low-rate low-power consumption and low-cost communication are the key points that lead to the specification of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. This paper overviews the technical features of the physical layer and the medium access control sublayer mechanisms of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol that are most relevant for wireless sensor network applications. We also discuss the ability of IEEE 802.15.4 to fulfil the requirements of wireless sensor network applications

A mobility enabled inpatient monitoring system using a ZigBee medical sensor network

This paper presents a ZigBee In-Patient Monitoring system embedded with a new ZigBee mobility management solution. The system enables ZigBee device mobility in a fixed ZigBee network. The usage, the architecture and the mobility framework are discussed in details in the paper. The evaluation shows that the new algorithm offers a good efficiency, resulting in a low management cost. In addition, the system can save lives by providing a panic button and can be used as a location tracking service. A case study focused on the Princes of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong is presented and findings are given. This investigation reveals that the developed mobile solutions offer promising value-added services for many potential ZigBee applications

Improving Mobile Sensor Connectivity Time in the IEEE 802.15.4 Networks

In the IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol for wireless sensor networks, a sensor node needs to associate with a coordinator before it starts sending or receiving data. The sensor node will mostly choose the nearest coordinator to associate with. However, this method is not suitable for a constantly moving sensor node because it will end up switching coordinators too often due to short connectivity time. The IEEE 802.15.4 has a simplistic and inadequate method of choosing a coordinator in this context. In this paper, we introduce a method to increase the mobile sensor node connectivity time with its co-ordinator in IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled mode. Our method is based on the timestamp of the beacons received from the nearby coordinators and filtering weak beacon signals. By choosing the coordinator which has sent the most recent received beacon with good signal quality, we increase the moving node connectivity time with the coordinator. Our technique results in significant improvement by reducing the number of times the moving node switches coordinators. This increases the throughput and reduces the wasted power in frequent associations

On the use of the ZigBee protocol for wireless sensor networks

This project was developed within the ART-WiSe framework of the IPP-HURRAY group (http://www.hurray.isep.ipp.pt), at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (http://www.ipp.pt). The ART-WiSe – Architecture for Real-Time communications in Wireless Sensor networks – framework (http://www.hurray.isep.ipp.pt/art-wise) aims at providing new communication architectures and mechanisms to improve the timing performance of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The architecture is based on a two-tiered protocol structure, relying on existing standard communication protocols, namely IEEE 802.15.4 (Physical and Data Link Layers) and ZigBee (Network and Application Layers) for Tier 1 and IEEE 802.11 for Tier 2, which serves as a high-speed backbone for Tier 1 without energy consumption restrictions. Within this trend, an application test-bed is being developed with the objectives of implementing, assessing and validating the ART-WiSe architecture. Particularly for the ZigBee protocol case; even though there is a strong commercial lobby from the ZigBee Alliance (http://www.zigbee.org), there is neither an open source available to the community for this moment nor publications on its adequateness for larger-scale WSN applications. This project aims at fulfilling these gaps by providing: a deep analysis of the ZigBee Specification, mainly addressing the Network Layer and particularly its routing mechanisms; an identification of the ambiguities and open issues existent in the ZigBee protocol standard; the proposal of solutions to the previously referred problems; an implementation of a subset of the ZigBee Network Layer, namely the association procedure and the tree routing on our technological platform (MICAz motes, TinyOS operating system and nesC programming language) and an experimental evaluation of that routing mechanism for WSNs

Solving Isolated Nodes Problem in ZigBee Pro for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network based on the ZigBee protocol consists of many sensor devices. In some cases, the sensor nodes may turn to isolated node because random distribution, particularly when creating the network. In this research was suggested two cases to overcome on the isolated node problem, the first case had able to overcome this problem by distributing the isolated nodes on the router nodes that carry the least number of sensor nodes, it helps to minimize the computational overhead on router nodes too, while the second one is able to overcome this problem by calculating the distance between the isolated nodes and the routers and then adds these nodes to the nearest routers. Subsequently, this method helps to minimize the energy consumption. The results show our approach able to solve the problem of isolated nodes using these two methods and when compared between them turns out the second method is better In terms of energy consumption. In addition, we are able to make the network larger scale

Managing your Trees: Insights from a Metropolitan-Scale Low-Power Wireless Network

Low-power wireless, such as IEEE 802.15.4, is envisioned as one key technology for wireless control and communication. In the context of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), it serves as an energy-efficient communication technology for both communications at building-scale networks and city-scale networks. Understanding real-world challenges and key properties of 802.15.4 based networks is an essential requirement for both the research community and practitioners: When deploying and operating low-power wireless networks at metropolitan-scale, a deep knowledge is essential to ensure network availability and performance at production-level quality. Similarly, researchers require realistic network models when developing new algorithms and protocols. In this paper, we present new and real-world insights from a deployed metropolitan-scale low-power wireless network: It includes 300,000 individual wireless connected meters and covers a city with roughly 600,000 inhabitants. Our findings, for example, help to estimate real-world parameters such as the typical size of routing trees, their balance, and their dynamics over time. Moreover, these insights facilitate the understanding and the realistic calibration of simulation models in key properties such as reliability and throughput