A Cross-Layer Mechanism for Solving Hidden Device Problem in IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Networks

IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed to achieve low-power transmissions in low-rate and short-distance wireless personal area networks (WPANs). For the sake of reducing the control overheads, the modified CSMA/CA protocol used by 802.15.4 does not have the hidden device protection mechanism, such as RTS/CTS mechanism. Previous studies indicate that the probability of any two devices in a infrastructure network unheard of each other is around 41%. Therefore, the hidden device problem (HDP) results in inefficient data transmission and serious power consumption issues in WPAN. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer detection and allocation (CL-DNA) scheme to solve the HDP in IEEE 802.15.4 without the cost of extra control overhead in data transmissions. The proposed scheme detects hidden device relationships based on the overlapped signals and then allocates the hidden devices into distinct sub-periods for transmissions. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the goodput, and with reduction in the MAC delay and the power consumption.