Time-slot relaying based link extension for wide area monitoring networks

In a star network, the coverage of networking is limited by the transmission range of the device. After the initial deployment of the wide area monitoring network, the geographical environment may be changed and some place will be totally different to the times designed over 20 years ago. To keep infrastructure costs to a minimum, it is required to extend the coverage of the monitoring network without restructuring the whole network. For extending networking coverage, a star network may include repeaters between powered coordinator and energy-constrained end point device, while preserving the star topology without burden for reconfiguring the end device. In this paper, a low energy repeater, Time-slot Relaying based Link Extension (TRLE) operating in a star topology, is introduced. The TRLE repeater is operated over the IEEE 802.15.4 PHY and provides synchronous relaying of the frames to inward or outward between the PAN coordinator and a device, in order to extend the coverage of a star network.