A New Topology Time Division Beacon Construction Approach for IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee Cluster-Tree Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard are constantly expanding. Applications like production control, building control are more and more based on WSN because of their energy efficiency, self-organizing capacity and protocol flexibility. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines 3 network topologies: the mesh topology, the star topology and the Cluster-Tree topology. However, the construction of Cluster-Tree networks based on the beacon mode is still undefined by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. A Beacon Cluster-Tree topology has the advantage of giving all the benefits of the Beacon mode (Synchronization, QoS support through Guaranteed Time Slots) and at the same time, allows the construction of large networks to cover large areas. In order to enable the construction of such topology, i.e., Beacon Cluster-Tree, we present, in this paper, a new topology construction approach. The presented approach is based on the exploitation of RF front-end capabilities in treating multipath signals and, thus, avoiding the introduction of beacon or Super Frames scheduling algorithms. Avoiding the introduction of scheduling algorithms ensures a simple solution that could be easily implemented and executed by sensor nodes.