A Simple Time Shift Scheme for Beacon Broadcasting Based on Cluster-Tree IEEE 802.15.4 Low-Rate WPANs

Wireless sensor networks based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard is able to carry out short-distance transmissions in low-rate and low-power wireless personal area networks. To access the channel, it uses the slotted carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) in the contention access period (CAP) under superframe structure with beacon frame broadcast to bound the duration of superframe. However, the beacon frame is transmitted periodically without CSMA/CA so that it could be collided continuously. This type of collision causes node lost synchronization and unable to join a network because the beacon frame cannot be normally received. This paper proposes a simple time shift scheme based on IEEE 802.15.4 to keep original superframe structure and distribute transmission of beacon frame over active period to avoid beacon frame collisions. We use a simple function to allocate beacon frame transmission in the active period. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the beacon collision and lost synchronization rate, and it also improves the throughput.