Design and Implementation of an IEEE 802.15.4 Protocol Stack in Embedded Linux Kernel

The ZigBee standard is one of the most popular protocols which aimed at wireless sensor network applications. It relies on IEEE 802.15.4 to form a complete protocol stack. In most existing implementation, a central processor is used to execute embedded operating system and another microprocessor is required to carry out the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. In this paper, we present a design and implementation of IEEE 802.15.4 software stack in Embedded Linux kernel. We overcome many problems about embedding wireless communication protocols stack into Embedded Linux kernel including accurate timer implementation, precise beacon synchronization and various resource contention issues and successfully use a host CPU to carry out both IEEE 802.15.4 protocol stack and operating systems at the same time. Preliminary experiments show that our system operating normally and can offer developers another kind of feasible scheme.