Performance comparison between slotted IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.1 lah in IoT based applications

In this paper, we present a performance comparison between IEEE 802.15.4 which specifies the physical and media access control layers for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs) like ZigBee, and IEEE 802.11ah, a new global WLAN standard using sub-1 GHz frequency band, in terms of throughput and energy consumption. Both standards are targeting low power applications with relatively high number of nodes as in IoT and M2M applications. The simulations results demonstrate the better performance of IEEE 802.11ah throughput mainly in congested networks. However in particular cases, the IEEE 802.15.4 outperforms the IEEE 802.11ah from energy consumption point of view.