Performance analysis of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee sensor networks using ADAPT algorithm

IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee Wireless sensor networks are now becoming popular due to rapid increase in the number of very small, integrated low-powered sensors and mobile devices capable of gathering critical, real-time information for remote surveillance, environmental monitoring, distributed target tracking etc. ZigBee is the only IEEE standard uniquely designed for low-power, a low-cost, low-data rate based wireless technology network, that provides network security, and application support services operating on top of the IEEE 802.15.4 Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) Layer wireless standard[1]. The survey on IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee sensor networks showed that the unreliability is the major limitation of such sensor networks, which is termed as MAC unreliability problem. The studies also highlighted that, this unreliability problem is due to the default MAC parameter settings suggested by the standard itself. Different solutions have come up to improve the reliability problem, such as setting a predefined value for parameters which is suitable only for static conditions, an adaptive technique for dynamic conditions based on mathematical model etc. In this proposed work, the impact of MAC parameters on packet delivery ratio and the effectiveness of ADAPT algorithm is analyzed for a ZigBee sensor network. A comparative study of ZigBee network with and without ADAPT is carried out based on simulated results obtained from NS2, which is an object oriented network simulating tool. As a modification, signature verification of each node on the sensor network is performed for security purposes.