Extending Beacon-Enabled IEEE 802.15.4 to Achieve Efficient Energy Savings: Simulation-Based Performance Analysis

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) operate in hostile environments under resource-constrained conditions. Power conservation is a primary factor that drives the design of these networks. Therefore, WSNs should not utilize complex algorithms that are power-hungry. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is the appropriate suite of specifications that conforms to the distinguished characteristics of WSNs. This standard is suited for low data rate, low power, and low radio transmission ranges that are typical in WSNs. In this paper, we propose an extension to 802.15.4 that not only achieves efficient power savings, but also improves the reliability and the channel utilization in WSNs. In essence, we force each node that has just finished a successful packet transmission to sleep for a tunable period of time before contending for sending the next packet. We show through simulations that this behavior not only prolongs the lifetime of the WSN, but also achieves, compared to the original 802.15.4 standard, higher levels of channel utilization, better reliability, while preserving fairness among the nodes in the network.