Traffic handling of hybrid MAC in IEEE 802.15.4 networks

In this paper, we consider traffic handling techniques for the enhancement of quality of service (QoS) in data transmission of IEEE 802.15.4 networks. IEEE 802.15.4 networks employ a hybrid medium access control scheme for the data transmission, which comprises contention access period (CAP) and contention free period (CFP). We make end devices select the transmission mode (i.e., CAP or CFP) according to their traffic characteristics and QoS requirements in a distributed manner and the coordinator manage the CFP according to the data reception statistics. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the QoS with reduced computing complexity.