Performance Analysis of Industrial Wireless Network Based on IEEE 802.15.4a

The IEEE 802.15.4a standard provides a framework for low data rate communication systems, typically sensor networks. In this paper, we have established a realistic environment for the preliminary performance analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4a. Several sets of practical experiments are conducted to study its various features, including the effects of 1) numeral wireless nodes, 2) numeral data packets, 3) data transmissions with different upper-layer protocol. Time-delay is investigated as the most important performance metric. The results show that IEEE 802.15.4a is suitable for some industrial applications which have more relaxed throughput requirements and time-delay. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.