Shortening orphan time in IEEE 802.15.4: What can be gained?

The duration time spent by end devices in orphan state in beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 networks has a direct relationship with their energy consumption. The latency experienced for performing a coordinator discovery process and a successful association is related to such factors as beacon interval length, channel interference, message signaling, etc. To mitigate the overall energy consumption of the end devices in Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs), different coordinator discovery schemes are proposed in this study. The main focus of this paper is to improve the overall energy consumption and success rate of end devices. However, the performance evaluation results reveal that the proposed passive coordinator discovery schemes have insignificant statistical difference in the overall success rate and energy consumption of the WBSN.