A novel method for mitigating the effects of dynamic coexistence on the operation of IEEE 802.15.4‐based mobile WSNs. Issue 3 (6th September 2014) - Deylami, Mohammad
Abstract: Wireless networks dynamically coexist when their transmission ranges overlap as a result of mobility. Mobile wireless sensor networks (WSNs) may suffer from significant degradation of performance due to the interference caused by dynamic coexistence, which is particularly critical for health monitoring WSNs. In this paper, we propose a novel method to detect and mitigate the harmful effects of dynamic coexistence on the operation of IEEE 802.15.4‐based mobile health monitoring WSNs. IEEE 802.15.4 uses the guaranteed time slots (GTS) mechanism to eliminate contention; however, successful transmissions cannot be guaranteed for coexisting WSNs. We show that using limited clear channel assessments at the beginning of the GTS enables the mobile WSNs to avoid collisions with minimum overhead. This method can also be used in combination with the previously proposed mechanisms for coexistence management. We analytically investigate the effects of using this method on the performance of the dynamically coexisting WSNs. We use OPNET simulation to investigate the coexistence of health monitoring WSNs and also to validate the proposed method. Our results indicate that using the proposed mechanism, 2–10 coexisting mobile WSNs with relatively high transmission rates (20–30% of maximum throughput) can achieve 20–90% higher rates of successful transmissions, with less than 10% increase in power consumption. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Abstract : We propose a novel method to detect and mitigate the harmful effects of dynamic coexistence on the operation of IEEE 802.15.4‐based mobile health monitoring Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). We show that using Clear Channel Assessments at the beginning of the Guaranteed Time Slots enables the mobile WSNs to avoid collisions with minimum overhead. Our results indicate that using this mechanism, typical WSNs can achieve 20–90% higher rates of successful transmissions, with less than 10% increase in power consumption.