Performance Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC with Different Backoff Ranges in Wireless Sensor Networks

The IEEE 802.15.4 MAC (medium access control) is a protocol used in many applications including the wireless sensor network. Yet the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer cannot support different throughput performance for individual nodes with the current specifications. However, if certain nodes are sending data more frequently compared to others, with the standard MAC, it is hard to achieve network efficiency. Therefore, we modified the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC and additionally proposed a new state transition scheme. By adjusting the minBE value of some nodes to a smaller value and by dynamically changing the value depending on the transmission conditions, we shortened the backoff delay of nodes with frequent transmission. It was observed through our simulations that the throughput of the node with a lower minBE value increased significantly, compared to nodes with the original BE range of 3 to 5. Also by the use of the state transition scheme the total network efficiency increased leading to increase in throughput performance