A generalized Markov chain model for effective analysis of slotted IEEE 802.15.4

TLDR

The paper proposes a generalized analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol, focusing on reliability, delay, and energy consumption, and introduces simple approximations for low‑traffic regimes. The authors model the IEEE 802.15.4 exponential backoff process with a Markov chain that incorporates retry limits, acknowledgements, and unsaturated traffic, and analyze how MAC parameters affect reliability, delay, and energy consumption. The analysis shows that delay distribution depends mainly on MAC parameters and collision probability, and the proposed approximations yield more accurate results than existing methods, as confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations.

Abstract

A generalized analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol in terms of reliability, delay and energy consumption is presented. The IEEE 802.15.4 exponential backoff process is modeled through a Markov chain taking into account retry limits, acknowledgements, and unsaturated traffic. Simple and effective approximations of the reliability, delay and energy consumption under low traffic regime are proposed. It is demonstrated that the delay distribution of IEEE 802.15.4 depends mainly on MAC parameters and collision probability. In addition, the impact of MAC parameters on the performance metrics is analyzed. The analysis is more general and gives more accurate results than existing methods in the literature. Monte Carlo simulations confirm that the proposed approximations offer a satisfactory accuracy.