Performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4 standard for low data rate ad hoc wireless sensor networks

In IEEE 802.15.4 network, a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) coordinator must be firstly elected to start and manage network resources. This will restrict network flexibility and hinder self-configuration of nodes. It consumes much more energy and is also potential to cause network bottleneck in centralized WSN coordinator. The low data rate ad hoc wireless sensor network over IEEE 802.15.4 is implemented as an alternative to overcome network bottleneck problem. Comparison study is conducted to investigate performance of the proposed Ad hoc WSN both over the low data rate IEEE 802.15.4 and the high data rate IEEE 802.11. Performance evaluation by simulation approach is based on 3-key performance indicators such as throughput, packet delivery fraction, and end-to-end delay. Simulation results indicate that performance of Ad hoc WSN is better than of WSN in case of throughput and packet delivery ratio. Moreover, performance of Ad hoc WSN over IEEE 802.15.4 is similar to that over IEEE 802.11 on low data rate small scale networks.