An Analytical MAC Model for IEEE 802.15.4 Enabled Wireless Networks With Periodic Traffic

Abstract

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which supports low-cost communications, has been applied in a variety of wireless networks. Developing accurate analytical models for the IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol is critical for the design and performance evaluation of such networks. Periodic traffic is a common traffic pattern generated in many practical application scenarios, for which most existing analytical models assuming either saturated or random network traffic patterns become inapplicable. In this paper, we develop an accurate and scalable analytical model to analyze the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol with the periodic traffic. Our model can accurately capture the protocol stochastic behavior in each period in scenarios such as with or without retransmissions and with single clear channel assessment (CCA) or double CCAs. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the proposed model by both transient and aggregate performance evaluations, and the results show that the model captures MAC behavior with periodic traffic accurately. We also discuss about extending the proposed model to account for heterogeneous scenarios and the hidden node problem.