The ANGEL IEEE 802.15.4 enhancement layer: Coupling priority queueing and service differentiation

The EU FP6 ANGEL project considers the usage of IEEE 802.15.4-based wireless sensor network technology in medical applications. Some key requirements found in this class of applications are not well supported by IEEE 802.15.4. In this paper we propose a wrapper layer on top of IEEE 802.15.4 that adds, amongst others, a mechanism combining priority queueing and per-packet parameter control to provide (stochastic) service differentiation. In this paper we describe the design and implementation of this mechanism and present measurement results, showing its effectiveness.