Interarrival time distribution of IEEE 802.15.4 under saturated traffic condition

IEEE 802.15.4 is an industry standard for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and wireless personal area networks (WPANs). This standard specifies the medium access control (MAC) and physical (PHY) layers of the OSI reference model. This paper analyzes the carrier sensing multiple access (CSMA) mechanism of the MAC layer of IEEE 802.15.4. It especially focuses on the distribution of interarrival time, which is a critical network performance metric to analyze network queue model and anomaly detection in the network. A simple but accurate analytic model is developed in order to derive the distribution of interarrival time. The analytic model deploys a discrete time Markov chain to model the behavior of network nodes. Extensive simulations are performed, using ns-2 simulator, to validate the developed analytic model. Simulation results are in good agreement with analytic results.