IEEE 802.15.4 Historical Evolution and Trends

For several years, the IEEE 802.15.4 standard has been the backbone of applications with low latency and small energy consumption requirements. Its popularity has made it the de facto standard for this type of network communication, and the IEEE 802.15.4 standard will continue to play an important role in the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. The standard has existed for the past 15 years and its applications have evolved over the years. In this paper, we present a concise and chronological description of the standard highlighting each feature that has been introduced over the years. A compendium of this kind can be valuable to researchers working on implementations and improvements and to users seeking a general reference. This is relevant now more than ever because the standard must coexist with hundreds of other standards that are also constantly evolving. As presented in this document and despite its popularity and importance, there are very few capable IEEE 802.15.4 simulators and these are often outdated and incomplete. The aim of this paper is to provide a quick reference but also present the evolution of the standard and its future directions. Similarly, we hope that this study fosters the creation of new implementations, particularly new simulations modules.