Distributed Duty Cycle Management (DDCM) for IEEE 802.15.4 Beacon-Enabled Wireless Mesh Sensor Networks

This paper proposes an extension to the current IEEE802.15.4 standard in which flexible mesh networking in the low power beacon mode is enabled through the use of a distributed duty cycle management (DDCM) strategy in conjunction with a distributed time beacon scheduling (DTBS) technique. The DTBS technique enables a beacon enabled coordinator to calculate its time schedule to transmit beacons, thus avoiding potential collisions, without the need of a central coordinator. The proposed DDCM strategy is able to re-configure, in an IEEE802.15.4 beacon-enabled wireless mesh sensor network, nodes' duty cycle based only on locally available network information. DDCM features the allocation, deallocation and reallocation of superframe slots as well as the prevention and resolution of slot conflicts within a mesh network in a distributed fashion. The feasibility of our proposal is demonstrated and evaluated through network simulations. The proposed DDCM algorithm shows low slot collision probability and better energy efficiency than current state-of-the-art approaches.