Towards the design of efficient nonbeacon-enabled ZigBee networks

This paper presents experimental results of the communication performance evaluation of a prototype ZigBee-based patient monitoring system commissioned in an in-patient floor of a Portuguese hospital (HPG -Hospital Privado de [email protected]?es). Besides, it revisits relevant problems that affect the performance of nonbeacon-enabled ZigBee networks. Initially, the presence of hidden-nodes and the impact of sensor node mobility are discussed. It was observed, for instance, that the message delivery ratio in a star network consisting of six wireless electrocardiogram sensor devices may decrease from 100% when no hidden-nodes are present to 83.96% when half of the sensor devices are unable to detect the transmissions made by the other half. An additional aspect which affects the communication reliability is a deadlock condition that can occur if routers are unable to process incoming packets during the backoff part of the CSMA-CA mechanism. A simple approach to increase the message delivery ratio in this case is proposed and its effectiveness is verified. The discussion and results presented in this paper aim to contribute to the design of efficient networks, and are valid to other scenarios and environments rather than hospitals.

[1]  Andrea Conti,et al.  An Overview on Wireless Sensor Networks Technology and Evolution , 2009, Sensors.

[2]  Matt Welsh,et al.  Sensor networks for emergency response: challenges and opportunities , 2004, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[3]  Carlo Fischione,et al.  Analytical Modelling of IEEE 802.15.4 for Multi-Hop Networks with Heterogeneous Traffic and Hidden Terminals , 2010, 2010 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference GLOBECOM 2010.

[4]  Gregory J. Pottie,et al.  Instrumenting the world with wireless sensor networks , 2001, 2001 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Proceedings (Cat. No.01CH37221).

[5]  Richard Tynan,et al.  An energy-efficient and low-latency routing protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2005, 2005 Systems Communications (ICW'05, ICHSN'05, ICMCS'05, SENET'05).

[6]  Natalija Vlajic,et al.  Performance of IEEE 802.15.4 in wireless sensor networks with a mobile sink implementing various mobility strategies , 2008, 2008 33rd IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN).

[7]  José A. Afonso,et al.  Evaluation of the Impact of the Topology and Hidden Nodes in the Performance of a ZigBee Network , 2009, S-CUBE.

[8]  Eduardo Tovar,et al.  Improving Quality-of-Service in Wireless Sensor Networks by Mitigating “Hidden-Node Collisions” , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[9]  Moe Z. Win,et al.  Network localization and navigation via cooperation , 2011, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[10]  Cem Ersoy,et al.  Wireless sensor networks for healthcare: A survey , 2010, Comput. Networks.

[11]  Choong Seon Hong,et al.  Development of ZigBee Mobile Router for supporting network mobility in healthcare system , 2009, 2009 Digest of Technical Papers International Conference on Consumer Electronics.

[12]  Francesca Cuomo,et al.  Performance analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 wireless sensor networks: An insight into the topology formation process , 2009, Comput. Networks.

[13]  Abhiman Hande,et al.  Self-Powered Wireless Sensor Networks for Remote Patient Monitoring in Hospitals , 2006 .

[14]  Ian F. Akyildiz,et al.  Sensor Networks , 2002, Encyclopedia of GIS.

[15]  Ian F. Akyildiz,et al.  On network connectivity of wireless sensor networks for sandstorm monitoring , 2011, Comput. Networks.

[16]  Shiann-Tsong Sheu,et al.  Grouping strategy for solving hidden node problem in IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN , 2005, First International Conference on Wireless Internet (WICON'05).

[17]  Andrea Conti,et al.  Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks: Technologies, Analysis and Design , 2008 .

[18]  Archana Bharathidasan,et al.  Sensor Networks : An Overview , 2002 .

[19]  Giuseppe Di Battista,et al.  26 Computer Networks , 2004 .

[20]  Pilar Barreiro,et al.  A Review of Wireless Sensor Technologies and Applications in Agriculture and Food Industry: State of the Art and Current Trends , 2009, Sensors.

[21]  A. M. Abdullah,et al.  Wireless lan medium access control (mac) and physical layer (phy) specifications , 1997 .

[22]  A. Girotra,et al.  Performance Analysis of the IEEE 802 . 11 Distributed Coordination Function , 2005 .

[23]  José A. Afonso,et al.  Experimental Evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee for Multi-patient ECG Monitoring , 2010, eHealth.

[24]  Moe Z. Win,et al.  Ranging With Ultrawide Bandwidth Signals in Multipath Environments , 2009, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[25]  Jiasong Mu,et al.  A Study on the Routing Selection Method in Zigbee Networks Based on the Mobility of the Nodes and the Scale of the Network , 2010, 2010 International Conference on Communications and Mobile Computing.

[26]  Andreas Willig,et al.  Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2005 .

[27]  Qihao Weng,et al.  Remote Sensing Sensors and Applications in Environmental Resources Mapping and Modelling , 2007, Sensors.

[28]  Andrea Conti,et al.  Mathematical Evaluation of Environmental Monitoring Estimation Error through Energy-Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.

[29]  José A. Afonso,et al.  HM4All: A vital signs monitoring system based in spatially distributed ZigBee networks , 2010, 2010 4th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare.

[30]  A. Varga,et al.  THE OMNET++ DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION SYSTEM , 2003 .

[31]  Ling-Jyh Chen,et al.  An Evaluation Study of Mobility Support in ZigBee Networks , 2010, J. Signal Process. Syst..

[32]  Hyun Yoe,et al.  Study on the Context-Aware Middleware for Ubiquitous Greenhouses Using Wireless Sensor Networks , 2011, Sensors.