Piggy-Backing Link Quality Measurements to IEEE 802.15.4 Acknowledgements

In this paper we present an approach to piggyback link quality measurements to IEEE 802.15.4 acknowledgement frames by generating acknowledgements in software instead of relying on hardware support. We show that the software-generated ACKs can be sent meeting the timing constraints of IEEE 802.15.4. This allows for a standard conforming, energy neutral dissemination of link quality related information in IEEE 802.15.4 networks. This information is available at no cost when transmitting data and can be used as input for various schemes for adaptive transmission power control and to assess the current channel quality.