Automatic parameter selection for the ZigBee distributed address assignment mechanism

Addressing in wireless sensor networks is to assign each newly-joining device a unique address. However, to allot the naming space in a large-scale distributed wireless sensor network is not an easy task. ZigBee is a popular communication standard for wireless sensor networks. It suggests a distributed address assignment mechanism. A parent device can calculate network addresses for its child devices without communicating with other devices. However, the parameter configuration of this mechanism strictly restricts the number of children of a device and the depth of the network. ZigBee does not recommend suitable parameters. The improper parameter configuration usually makes many devices isolated from the network which become orphan devices. In this paper, we propose two automatic parameter selection schemes for ZigBee address assignment scheme by probing the network and then selecting parameters in advance to alleviate the orphan problem. They can automatically suggest proper parameters for different network topologies and thus help the original ZigBee address assignment mechanism to effectively reduce orphans.