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Throughput analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled MAC protocol in the presence of hidden nodes

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Abstract

The presence of hidden nodes degrades the performance of wireless networks due to an excessive amount of data frame collisions. The IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol, which is widely used in current wireless sensor networks, does not provide any hidden node avoidance mechanisms and consequently could lead to severe performance degradation in networks with hidden nodes. This paper presents a simple technique based on discrete-time Markov chain analysis to approximate the throughput of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol in the presence of hidden nodes. Using different network configurations, we validate the applicability of the proposed analysis for generic star-topology networks. Based on the analysis, the effects of network size, topology, frame length and frame arrival rate on the throughput of the system are investigated.

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Notes

  1. The beacon-enabled mode is widely used with WSNs in particular for synchronised monitoring applications [22]

  2. A similar DTMC based analysis has been proposed in [3] to model the common channel in IEEE 802.15.4 star topology networks when all nodes share the same carrier sensing range. Because of the absence of hidden nodes, the DTMC presented in [3] has a less number of states, and its transition probabilities can be easily derived by modelling the behaviour of only a single node.

  3. BO = 6 is only used as an input for simulations. There is no significant impact of the value of BO parameter on the protocol’s throughput in always active networks (i.e., networks where beacon order (BO) = superframe order (SO)), in particular for higher BOs [3].

  4. Fairness indicates how fair a node in a given group gets the opportunity to contribute to the network throughput. For a given network, Fairness of Group j is expressed as

    $$Fairness\, of\, Group\, j = \frac{Th_{max-network} - Th_{min-Group\, j}}{Th_{max-network}}$$

    where Th max-network and \(Th_{min-Group\; j}\) represent the maximum throughput value contributed by a node from the entire network and the minimum throughput value contributed by a node from that particular group, respectively.

  5. Nodes in Fig. 11(a) and (b) are numbered for the simplicity of explanation.

  6. We assume symmetric hearing between nodes, i.e., Node A hears Node B \(\Longleftrightarrow\) Node B hears Node A Node A cannot hear Node B \(\Longleftrightarrow\) Node B cannot hear Node A.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    S. Wijetunge, U. Gunawardana & R. Liyanapathirana

Authors
  1. S. Wijetunge
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  2. U. Gunawardana
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  3. R. Liyanapathirana
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. Wijetunge.

Additional information

Part of this paper has been published in the Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT) 2011 with the title “Throughput Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC Protocol in the Presence of Hidden Nodes”.

Appendices

Appendix 1

In [3], Ramachandran et al. analyse the slotted CSMA/CA mechanism in star-topology IEEE 802.15.4 networks where all nodes share the same carrier sensing range (i.e., networks with no hidden nodes). In such networks,

the probability p c i|i that the channel is idle at the next backoff slot given that it is idle at the current backoff slot has been computed in [3] by noting that

$$p_i^c = p_{i|i}^c p_i^c + p_{i|b}^c (1-p_i^c )$$
(25)

where p c i and p c i|b are the probabilities that the channel is sensed idle and the channel is idle at the next backoff slot given that it is busy at the current backoff slot, respectively. The probability p c i|b is equal to 1/L where L is the length of the data frame in terms of number of backoff slots. By substituting p c i|b  = 1/L in (25), it has been shown that

$$p_{i|i}^c= \frac{P_i^c-p_{i|b}(1- p_i^c)}{p_i^c} = \frac{Lp_i^c-1+p_i^c}{Lp_i^c}.$$
(26)

Then, the probability that any node begins transmission, given that the channel has been idle for two consecutive backoff slots, has been given as

$$p_{t|ii}^n= \frac{p_t^n}{p_{ii}^c} = \frac{p_t^n}{p_{ii}^c p_i^c} = \frac{Lp_t^n}{Lp_i^c - 1 + p_i^c}.$$
(27)

where p n t and p c ii are the probabilities that an individual node transmits in a given backoff slot and the channel remains idle for two consecutive backoff slots, respectively. The last equality in (27) has been obtained using the expression for p c i|i in (26). The probabilities p c i and p n t in (27) have been computed by solving the steady state equations of the node state DTMC and channel state DTMC developed in [3].

Appendix 2

Simulated aggregate network throughput of six different network configurations of 12-node network, 20-node network, and 30-node network are compared in Figs. 18, 19 and 20, respectively. In all three networks, the network configurations that have similar average number of hidden nodes (h avg ) show similar throughput performance [see Figs. 18(g), 19(g), 20(g)].

Fig. 18
figure 18

Different configurations of 12-node-network (M = 12) and their normalised aggregate network throughput S. a Config. 1 (h avg = 4), b Config. 2 (h avg = 4), c Config. 3 (h avg = 4), d Config. 4 (h avg = 8), e Config. 5 (h avg = 8.167), f Config. 6 (h avg = 8.083)

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Fig. 19
figure 19

Different configurations of 20-node-network (M = 20) and their normalised aggregate network throughput S. a Config. 1 (h avg = 5), b Config. 2 (h avg = 4.9), c Config. 3 (h avg = 5.1), d Config. 4 (h avg = 15), e Config. 5 (h avg = 14.97), f Config. 6 (h avg = 15.23)

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Fig. 20
figure 20

Different configurations of 30-node-network (M = 30) and their normalised aggregate network throughput S. a Config. 1 (h avg = 10), b Config. 2 (h avg = 10.133), c Config. 3 (h avg = 9.867), d Config. 4 (h avg = 20), e Config. 5 (h avg = 19.8), f Config. 6 (h avg = 20.067), g Throughput

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Wijetunge, S., Gunawardana, U. & Liyanapathirana, R. Throughput analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled MAC protocol in the presence of hidden nodes. Wireless Netw 20, 1889–1908 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-013-0637-2

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