An experimental test-bed for the evaluation of the hidden terminal problems on the IEEE 802.15.5 standard

In this paper we consider the implementation and experimental test-bed of the current IEEE 802.15.5 Low-Rate Wireless Personal Network (LR-WPAN) Mesh standard. The IEEE 802.15.5 enables the deployment of Wireless Mesh Sensor Networks (WMSN) consisting of hundreds or thousands of WPAN devices to monitor broad areas of interest in multiple technological fields (e.g., agriculture, forestry or industry, among others) during large periods of time. In this regard, real-world experimentation based on this specification is barely addressed in the related literature, mainly because an open-source IEEE 802.15.5 implementation was still unavailable. For this reason, we want to contribute with an overview of our developed free source code referred to the IEEE 802.15.5 standard and implemented under TinyOS-2.1. Test-bed experiments are conducted and discussed, paying special attention to one of the main unsolved concerns of the IEEE 802.15.5 standard: the well-known hidden terminal phenomena.