Performance evaluation of a converge-cast protocol for IEEE 802.15.4 tree-based networks

A significant challenge in wireless sensor networks is the transmission of data from a large number of nodes to a central collection point. This is commonly called converge-cast communication. At present, the IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee standards are widely used in the design of wireless sensor networks. The latter standard defines a methodology for converge-cast communication in tree-based network topologies. A key limitation of this approach is its associated implementation complexity and a lack of robustness in the face of node failures. Moreover, there has been little experimental evaluation of its performance. This paper introduces an alternative converge-cast communication protocol that overcomes the limitations outlined above and is compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using an experimental wireless sensor network test bed.