Performance of a very low power wireless protocol

The IEEE 802.11 standard falls short in meeting the low power requirements of many applications not directly associated with typical LAN (local area network) use. In 1998 the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory began research into a United States Navy program named reduced ships-crew by virtual presence (RSVP). This program calls for numerous battery-powered sensors to communicate wirelessly with a ship's wired backbone. These sensors must operate reliably for a period of 10 years without battery replacement. This paper compares the power performance of IEEE 802.11 against a Draper proprietary protocol in an environment characterized by low noise and slow-fast Rayleigh fading and shows that devices using the RSVP protocol can theoretically operate up to 100 times longer than those using the IEEE standard.