A Fast and Accurate Performance Analysis of Beaconless IEEE 802.15.4 Multi-Hop Networks

TL;DR

This paper presents an approximate analytical model for evaluating the performance of multi-hop wireless sensor networks based on beaconless IEEE 802.15.4, accurately predicting key metrics and aiding network design.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed stochastic process analysis coupled with fixed point equations to approximate network performance, validated against simulations.

Findings

Model accurately predicts packet discard probabilities and delays

Predictions are within 10% of simulation results

Enables QoS-aware sensor network design

Abstract

We develop an approximate analytical technique for evaluating the performance of multi-hop networks based on beaconless IEEE 802.15.4, a popular standard for wireless sensor networks. The network comprises sensor nodes, which generate measurement packets, relay nodes which only forward packets, and a data sink (base station). We consider a detailed stochastic process at each node, and analyse this process taking into account the interaction with neighboring nodes via certain time averaged unknown variables (e.g., channel sensing rates, collision probabilities, etc.). By coupling the analyses at various nodes, we obtain fixed point equations that can be solved numerically to obtain the unknown variables, thereby yielding approximations of time average performance measures, such as packet discard probabilities and average queueing delays. The model incorporates packet generation at the sensor nodes and queues at the sensor nodes and relay nodes. We demonstrate the accuracy of our model by an extensive comparison with simulations. As an additional assessment of the accuracy of the model, we utilize it in an algorithm for sensor network design with quality-of-service (QoS) objectives, and show that designs obtained using our model actually satisfy the QoS constraints (as validated by simulating the networks), and the predictions are accurate to well within 10% as compared to the simulation results.