On bridge residence times in master-slave connected 802.15.4 clusters

Individual 802.15.4 beacon enabled clusters can be interconnected in a master-slave manner where the bridging function is performed by the cluster coordinator of one of the clusters. The bridge can deliver its data to the sink by using the CSMA-CA access just like an ordinary node, or through dedicated GTS access. We compare the performance of the two mechanisms and investigate the impact of bridge residence time on performance. Distinct regions can be identified in which either of the access mechanisms performs better, but in either case, best performance is obtained when the bridge residence time in the sink cluster is as short as possible.