Improving IEEE 802.15.4 performance with a switched Gold sequence chip formation

Low power, low data rate, low complexity wireless networks are among the most preferred ones in the data communication between wireless sensors, IoT devices, and control applications. IEEE 802.15.4 is a well-known standard for low rate wireless personal area networks which specifies only physical layer and media access control layer. However, IEEE 802.15.4 suffers from several limitations that play a role in deteriorating its performance such as using a standard PN sequence for every channel types. Noise level and interference are significant factors that should be taken into consideration for the achievement of successful communication in different channel characteristics. Utilization of a standard PN sequence would not give optimum performance results for every channel types. In this study, we design a IEEE 802.15.4 peer to peer network simulator to compare the performance of standard IEEE 802.15.4 PN chip sequences and generated Gold sequences in terms of data throughput. The results from Monte Carlo simulations show that Gold sequences give better throughputs compared to standard PN sequence of IEEE 802.15.4. However, both chip sequences could not achieve any data transfer for the noisier channels that show a chip error rate greater than 0.18. To overcome this problem, each symbol of the physical layer protocol data unit is matched with a Gold set with greater spreading factors. Obtained results show that, using variable length Gold sets according to operation environment increases the data throughput in IEEE 802.15.4 networks.