1

Adaptive IEEE 802.15.4 Protocol

for Reliable and Timely Communications
Pangun Park, Piergiuseppe Di Marco, Carlo Fischione, Karl Henrik Johansson
AbstractThe IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless sensor
networks can support energy efcient, reliable, and timely packet
transmission by tuning the medium access control parameters
macMinBE, macMaxCSMABackoffs, and macMaxFrameRetries.
Such a tuning is difcult, because simple and accurate models of
the inuence of these parameters on the probability of successful
packet transmission, packet delay, and energy consumption
are not available. Moreover, it is not clear how to adapt the
parameters to the changes of the network and trafc regimes by
algorithms that can run on resource-constrained nodes. In this
paper, a generalized Markov chain is proposed to model these
relations by simple expressions without giving up the accuracy.
In contrast to previous work, the presence of limited number
of retransmissions, acknowledgments, unsaturated trafc, and
packet size is accounted for. The model is then used to derive
an adaptive algorithm for minimizing the power consumption
while guaranteeing reliability and delay constraints in the packet
transmission. The algorithm does not require any modication
of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and can be easily implemented
on network nodes. Numerical results show that the analysis is
accurate, that the proposed algorithm satises reliability and
delay constraints, and ensures a longer lifetime of the network
under both stationary and transient network conditions.
Keywords: IEEE 802.15.4, Wireless sensor network,
Markov chain model, Optimization.
I. INTRODUCTION
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard has received considerable at-
tention as a low data rate and low power protocol for wireless
sensor network (WSN) applications in industry, control, home
automation, health care, and smart grids [1], [2]. Many of these
applications require that packets are received with a given
probability of success. In addition to such a reliability con-
straint, other applications ask for timely packet delivery [3]. It
is known that IEEE 802.15.4 may have poor performance in
terms of power consumption, reliability and delay [4], unless
the medium access control (MAC) parameters are properly
selected. It follows that (a) it is essential to characterize the
protocol performance limitations, and (b) to develop methods
to tune the IEEE 802.15.4 parameters to enhance the network
lifetime and improve the quality of the service experienced by
the applications running on top of the network.
This paper focuses on the modelling and optimization of the
performance metrics (reliability, delay, power consumption)
for IEEE 802.15.4 WSNs. This problem is specially appealing
for many control and industrial applications [2], [5]. We show
The authors are with the ACCESS Linnaeus Center, Electrical En-
gineering, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. E-mails:
{pgpark,pidm,carlofi,kallej}@ee.kth.se.
This work was supported by the EU project FeedNetBack, the Swedish Re-
search Council, the Swedish Strategic Research Foundation, and the Swedish
Governmental Agency for Innovation System.
that existing analytical studies of IEEE 802.15.4 are not ade-
quate to capture the real-world protocol behavior, when there
are retry limits to send packets, acknowledgements (ACKs),
and unsaturated trafc. We derive and use a new model to
pose an optimization problem where the objective function is
the power consumption of the nodes, the constraints are the
reliability and delay of the packet delivery. Our aim is the
design of distributed and adaptive algorithms that are simple
to implement on sensor nodes, but still exible, scalable, and
able to provide high quality of service for WSN applications.
The remainder of this paper is as follows. In Section II,
we summarize existing work of analytical modelling and
adaptive tuning of IEEE 802.15.4. Section III lists the main
contributions of the paper and their relation to the literature.
In Section IV, we propose a generalized Markov chain model
of CSMA/CA with retry limits and unsaturated trafc regime.
In Section V, the optimization problem to adapt the MAC
parameters is investigated. In addition, practical issues on how
to implement the algorithm on sensors are also discussed.
Numerical results achieved during stationary and transitionary
conditions are reported in Section VI. Finally, Section VII
concludes the paper.
II. RELATED WORK
The modelling of IEEE 802.15.4 is related to IEEE
802.11 [6]. We rst discuss the literature concerning the anal-
ysis of IEEE 802.11 and 802.15.4, then we review previous
work about adaptive MAC mechanisms for these protocols.
A. Analytical Model of MAC
Both IEEE 802.11 and 802.15.4 are based on a MAC that
uses a binary exponential backoff scheme. Bianchis model
describes the basic functionalities of the IEEE 802.11 through
a Markov chain under saturated trafc and ideal channel
conditions [7]. Extensions of this model have been used to
analyze the packet reception rate [8], the delay [9], the MAC
layer service time [10] and throughput [11] of IEEE 802.11.
The analysis of the packet delay, throughput, and power
consumption of IEEE 802.15.4 WSNs has been the focus of
several simulations-based studies, e.g., [12], [13], and some
more recent analytical works, e.g., [4], [14][17]. Inspired by
Bianchis work, a Markov model for IEEE 802.15.4 and an
extension with ACK mechanism have been proposed in [4]
and [14]. A modied Markov model including retransmissions
with nite retry limits has been studied in [16] as an attempt to
model the slotted carrier sense multiple access with collision
avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism. However, the analysis
gives inaccurate results because the power consumption and
2
throughput expressions under unsaturated trafc with nite
retry limits show a weak matching with simulation results.
In [17], a throughput analysis has been performed by an
extension of the Markov chain model proposed [15]. The
superframe structure, ACK, and retransmissions are consid-
ered. However, the proposed Markov chain does not model the
length of data and ACK packets, which is crucial to analyze
the performance metrics for IEEE 802.15.4 networks with
low data rate. Furthermore, in [15], the power consumption,
reliability, and delay performance are not investigated. We
remark here that all analytical models available from the
literature use numerical methods to solve nonlinear equa-
tions [4], [14][17], which often is a major drawback for in-
network processing [18].
B. Adaptive Tuning of MAC
Several algorithms to tune the MAC of IEEE 802.11 and
IEEE 802.15.4 protocols have been proposed. The algorithms
can be grouped in those based on the use of physical layer
measurements, and those based on the use of link-layer
information.
An adaptive tuning based on physical layer measurements
has been investigated in [19][21], where a p-persistent IEEE
802.11 protocol has been considered to optimize the average
backoff window size. The channel access probability p that
maximizes the throughput or minimize the power consumption
is derived. This algorithm and its scalability to the network
size have been studied also for IEEE 802.15.4 [20]. However,
that study was less successful, because the channel sensing
mechanism, the optional acknowledgement (ACK), and re-
transmission mechanisms are hard to be approximated by a
p-persistent MAC. Furthermore, in [20] and [21] a saturated
trafc regime is assumed, which is a scenario of reduced
interest for typical WSN applications.
Link-based optimizations for IEEE 802.11 and 802.15.4
have been investigated in [22][26], where simple window
adjustment mechanisms that are based on ACK transmissions
have been considered. In these papers, the algorithms adapt the
contention window size depending on the successful packet
transmission, packet collision and channel sensing state, but
the algorithms are not grounded on an analytical study. In [22],
different backoff algorithms are presented to improve the
channel throughput and the fairness of channel usage for
IEEE 802.11. A fair backoff algorithm is studied also in [23]
and [24]. A link-based algorithm of the IEEE 802.15.4 random
backoff mechanism to maximize the throughput has been
presented in [25]. In [26], a dynamic tuning algorithm of the
contention window size is evaluated on goodput, reliability,
and average delay.
An IEEE 802.15.4 enhancement based on the use of link-
layer information has some drawback. First, it requires a
modication of the standard. Then, although link-based mech-
anisms are simple to implement, the ACK mechanism may be
costly since it introduces large overhead for small packets.
For instance, alarm messages in industrial control application
are a single byte whereas the ACK has a size of 11 byte.
In addition, the ACK mechanism requires extra waiting time.
Moreover, link-based algorithms adapt the MAC parameters
for each received ACK, which mean a slow and inefcient
adaptation to network, trafc, and channel variations.
III. ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION
We consider a star network with a personal area network
(PAN) coordinator, and N nodes transmitting toward the PAN.
These nodes use the beacon-enabled slotted CSMA/CA and
ACK. The important parameters of the CSMA/CA algorithm
are the minimum value of the backoff exponent macMinBE,
the maximum number of backoffs macMaxCSMABackoffs and
the maximum number of retries macMaxFrameRetries that
each node can select. See details of IEEE 802.15.4 in [1]
and [27].
In this paper, we propose a novel modelling and adaptive
tuning of IEEE 802.15.4 for reliable and timely communica-
tion while minimizing the energy consumption. The protocol
is adjusted dynamically by a constrained optimization problem
that each node of the network solves. The objective function,
denoted by

E
tot
, is the total energy consumption for transmit-
ting and receiving packets of a node. The constraints are given
by the probability of successful packet delivery (reliability)
and average delay. The constrained optimization problem for
a generic transmitting node in the network is
min
V

E
tot
(V) (1a)
s.t.

R(V) R
min
, (1b)

D(V) D
max
, (1c)
V
0
V V
m
. (1d)
The decision variables of the node V = (m
0
, m, n) are
m
0
macMinBE,
m macMaxCSMABackoffs ,
n macMaxFrameRetries .

R(V) is the reliability, and R

min
is the minimum desired
probability for successful packet delivery.

D(V) is the average
delay for a successfully received packet, and D
max
is the de-
sired maximum average delay. The constraint V
0
V V
m
captures the limited range of the MAC parameters. In the
problem, we used the symbol to evidence that the energy,
reliability, and delay expression are approximations. We will
show later that we use approximations of high accuracy and
reduced computational complexity so that nodes can solve the
problem.
Main contributions of the paper are the following: (a) the
modelling of the relation between the MAC parameters of
IEEE 802.15.4 and the selected performance metrics, (b) the
derivation of simple relations to characterize the operations
of the MAC by computationally affordable algorithms, (c)
formulation and solution of a novel optimization problem for
the MAC parameters, (d) discussion on a practical implemen-
tation of the optimization by an adaptive algorithm and (e)
performance evaluations of the algorithm by simulation of both
stationary and transient network conditions.
Unlike previous work, we propose a generalized Markov
model of the exponential backoff process including retry lim-
its, acknowledgements and unsaturated trafc regime. How-
ever, the numerical evaluation of these performance metrics
3
asks in general for heavy computations. This is a drawback
when using them to optimize the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC pa-
rameters by in-network processing [18], because a complex
computation is out of reach for resource limited sensing de-
vices. Therefore, we devise a simplied and effective method
that reduces drastically the computational complexity while
ensuring a satisfactory accuracy.
Based on our novel modelling, we propose an adaptive
tuning of MAC parameters that uses the physical layer mea-
surement of channel sensing. This adaptive IEEE 802.15.4 is
furnished with two distinctive features: it does not require
any modication of the existing standard, and it makes an
optimization of all the MAC parameters of IEEE 802.15.4.
Specically, in contrast to link-based adaptation [22][26],
our algorithm does not require ACK mechanism or request to
send/clear to send (RTS/CTS) handshakes (or related standard
modication). In contrast to [19][21], we do not use the
(inaccurate) p-persistent approximation and the modication
of the standard therein proposed, and we do not require any
hardware modication to make an estimate of the signal-
to-noise ratio. Our adaptive tuning optimizes the considered
MAC parameters, all at once, and not only some of them, as
proposed in [19][26].
The proposed adaptive IEEE 802.15.4 improves the power
efciency substantially while guaranteeing reliability and de-
lay constraints. The adaptation is achieved by distributed
asynchronous iterations that only require channel condition
information, the number of nodes of the network, and the
trafc load. We show that the convergence is fast and robust
to errors in the estimation of the channel condition, number
of nodes, and trafc load. A good fairness is also achieved.
IV. ANALYTICAL MODELLING OF IEEE 802.15.4
In a star network, all N nodes contend to send data to
the PAN coordinator, which is the data sink. Throughout this
paper we consider applications where nodes asynchronously
generate packets with probability 1 q when a node sends
a packet successfully or discard a packet or the sampling
interval is expired. Otherwise a node stays for L
0
S
b
s without
generating packets with probability q, where L
0
is an integer
and S
b
is the time unit aUnitBackoffPeriod (corresponding to
20 symbols). The data packet transmission is successful if an
ACK packet is received.
In such a scenario, we propose an effective analytical model
of the slotted CSMA/CA by a Markov chain. The chain gives
us the objective function, energy (1a), and constraints on
reliability (1b) and delay (1c) of the optimization problem.
Monte Carlo simulations validate the proposed model.
A. Markov Chain Model
In this section, we develop a generalized Markov chain
model of the slotted CSMA/CA mechanism of beacon-enabled
IEEE 802.15.4. Compared to previous results, e.g., [4], [14]
[17], the novelty of this chain consists in the modelling of the
retry limits for each packet transmission, ACK, the inclusion
of unsaturated trafc regimes, and packet size.
Let s(t), c(t) and r(t) be the stochastic processes represent-
ing the backoff stage, the state of the backoff counter and the
0 , 1 , 0 0 , 0 , 0 0 , 1 , 0 0 , 2 W , 0
0
0 , 1 W , 0
0

0 , 1 , 1 0 , 0 , 1 0 , 1 , 1 0 , 2 W , 1
1
0 , 1 W , 1
1

0 , 1 , m 0 , 0 , m 0 , 1 , m 0 , 2 W , m
m
0 , 1 W , m
m

1 1
1 1
1 1

0
W
1
1
W
1
m
W
1
c
P 1
c
P 1
c
P 1
n , 1 , 0 n , 0 , 0 n , 1 , 0 n , 2 W , 0
0
n , 1 W , 0
0

n , 1 , 1 n , 0 , 1 n , 1 , 1 n , 2 W , 1
1
n , 1 W , 1
1

n , 1 , m n , 0 , m n , 1 , m n , 2 W , m
m
n , 1 W , m
m

1 1
1
1
1 1

0
W
1
1
W
1
m
W
1
c
P 1
c
P 1
c
P 1
c
P
c
P
c
P
c
P
c
P
c
P
0
Q
q
q 1
0 , 0 , 2 0 , L , 2
c

n , 1 L , 2
c
n , 0 , 2
0 , 0 , 1
0 , 1 L , 1
s

n , 0 , 1
n , 1 L , 1
s

q 1
q
q
q
q 1
q 1
1 L0
Q
1
Q
1 1
Fig. 1. Markov chain model for CSMA/CA of IEEE 802.15.4.
state of retransmission counter at time t experienced by a node
to transmit a packet. By assuming independent probability
that nodes start sensing, the stationary probability that a
node attempts a rst carrier sensing in a randomly chosen
slot time is constant and independent of other nodes. The
triple (s(t), c(t), r(t)) is the three-dimensional Markov chain
in Fig. 1, where we use (i, k, j) to denote a particular state.
We denote the MAC parameters by V = (m
0
, m, n), m
b

macMaxBE, W
0
2
m0
, W
m
2
min(m0+m,m
b
)
.
The Markov chain consists of four main parts corresponding
to the idle-queue states, backoff states, clear channel assess-
ment (CCA) states, and packet transmission states. The states
(Q
0
, . . . , Q
L01
) correspond to the idle-queue states when
the packet queue is empty and the node is waiting for the
next packet generation time. Note that the idle-queue states
(Q
0
, . . . , Q
L01
) take into account the sampling interval. The
states from (i, W
m
1, j) to (i, W
0
1, j) represent the
backoff states. The states (i, 0, j) and (i, 1, j) represent rst
CCA (CCA
1
) and second CCA (CCA
2
), respectively. Let
be the probability that CCA
1
is busy, and the probability
that CCA
2
is busy. The states (1, k, j) and (2, k, j) cor-
respond to the successful transmission and packet collision,
respectively. By knowing the duration of an ACK frame, ACK
timeout, inter-frame spacing (IFS), data packet length, and
header duration, we dene the packet successful transmission
time L
s
and the packet collision time L
c
as
L
s
= L + t
ack
+ L
ack
+ IFS ,
L
c
= L + t
m,ack
, (2)
where L is the total length of a packet including overhead
4
b
0,0,0
=
_

_
_
1
2
_
1(2x)
m+1
12x
W
0
+
1x
m+1
1x
_
1y
n+1
1y
+ (1 )
1x
m+1
1x
1y
n+1
1y
+ (L
s
(1 P
c
) + L
c
P
c
)(1 x
m+1
)

1y
n+1
1y
+ L
0
q
1q
_
x
m+1
(1y
n+1
)
1y
+ P
c
(1 x
m+1
)y
n
+ (1 P
c
)
(1x
m+1
)(1y
n+1
)
1y
__
1
if m m
b
m
0
_
1
2
_
1(2x)
m
b
m
0
+1
12x
W
0
+
1x
m
b
m
0
+1
1x
+ (2
m
b
+ 1)x
m
b
m0+1 1x
mm
b
+m
0
1x
_
1y
n+1
1y
+ (1 )
1x
m+1
1x

1y
n+1
1y
+ (L
s
(1 P
c
) + L
c
P
c
)(1 x
m+1
)
1y
n+1
1y
+ L
0
q
1q
_
x
m+1
(1y
n+1
)
1y
+ P
c
(1 x
m+1
)y
n
+(1 P
c
)
(1x
m+1
)(1y
n+1
)
1y
__
1
otherwise
(3)
and payload, t
ack
is ACK waiting time, L
ack
is the length of
ACK frame, and t
m,ack
is the timeout of the ACK, see details
in [1].
We have the following results:
Lemma 1: Let the stationary probability of the Markov
chain in Fig. 1 be
b
i,k,j
= lim
t
P(s(t) = i, c(t) = k, r(t) = j),
where i (2, m), k (1, max(W
i
1, L
s
1, L
c
1)), j
(0, n). Then, for 0 i m
b
i,k,j
=
W
i
k
W
i
b
i,0,j
, 0 k W
i
1 , (4)
where
W
i
=
_
2
i
W
0
, i m
b
m
0
,
2
m
b
, i > m
b
m
0
,
and
b
i,0,j
=
_
(1 )(1 )P
c
m

i=0
( + (1 ))
i
_
j
( + (1 ))
i
b
0,0,0
, (5)
where b
0,0,0
given in Eq. (3), x = +(1 ), y = P
c
(1
x
m+1
), and P
c
is the collision probability. Moreover,
b
1,k,j
= (1 P
c
)(1 x)
m

i=1
b
i,0,j
, 0 k L
s
1 ,
(6)
and
b
2,k,j
= P
c
(1 x)
m

i=1
b
i,0,j
, 0 k L
c
1 . (7)
Proof: See Appendix A.
We remark here that the term b
0,0,0
, which plays a key
role in the analysis, is different from the corresponding term
given in [4], [14][17] due to our accurate modelling of the
retransmissions, ACK, unsaturated trafc, and packet size. In
the next section, we demonstrate the validity of the Markov
chain model by Monte Carlo simulations.
Now, starting from Lemma 1, we derive the channel sensing
probability and the busy channel probabilities and . The
probability that a node attempts CCA
1
in a randomly chosen
time slot is
=
m

i=0
n

j=0
b
i,0,j
=
1 x
m+1
1 x
1 y
n+1
1 y
b
0,0,0
. (8)
This probability depends on the probability P
c
that a trans-
mitted packet encounters a collision, and the probabilities
and . These probabilities are developed in the following.
The term P
c
is the probability that at least one of the N1
remaining nodes transmit in the same time slot. If all nodes
transmit with probability , P
c
is
P
c
= 1 (1 )
N1
,
where N is the number of nodes. Similarly to [4], we derive
the busy channel probabilities and as follows. We have
=
1
+
2
, (9)
where
1
is the probability of nding channel busy during
CCA
1
due to data transmission, namely,

1
= L(1 (1 )
N1
)(1 )(1 ) ,
and
2
is the probability of nding the channel busy during
CCA
1
due to ACK transmission, which is

2
= L
ack
N(1 )
N1
1 (1 )
N
(1 (1 )
N1
)(1 )(1 ) ,
where L
ack
is the length of the ACK. With a similar way, the
probability of nding the channel busy during CCA
2
is
=
1 (1 )
N1
+ N(1 )
N1
2 (1 )
N
+ N(1 )
N1
. (10)
Now, we are in the position to derive the carrier sensing
probability and the busy channel probabilities and by
solving the system of non-linear equations (8), (9), and (10) for
these probabilities, see details in [28]. From these probabilities
then one could derive the expressions of the reliability, delay
for successful packet delivery, and power consumption that
are needed in (1). The drawback of such an approach is that
there is no closed form expression for these probabilities, the
system of equations that gives , and must be solved by
numerical methods. This may be computationally demanding
and therefore inadequate for use in simple sensor devices. In
the following, we instead present a simple analytical model of
the reliability, delay for successful packet delivery, and power
consumption. The key idea is that sensor nodes can estimate
the busy channel probabilities and and the channel sensing
probability . Therefore, nodes exploit local measurements to
evaluate the performance metrics, rather than solving nonlinear
equations. Details follow in the sequel, where we derive these
approximate expressions for Eqs. (1a)(1c).
5
3 4 5 6 7 8
0.8
0.82
0.84
0.86
0.88
0.9
0.92
0.94
0.96
0.98
1


sim, q=0.3
app, q=0.3
pollin, q=0.3
sim, q=0.5
app, q=0.5
pollin, q=0.5
sim, q=0.7
app, q=0.7
pollin, q=0.7
MAC parameter, m0
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
(a) m
0
= 3, . . . , 8, m
b
= 8, m = 4, n = 3
2 3 4 5
0.65
0.7
0.75
0.8
0.85
0.9
0.95
1


sim, q=0.3
app, q=0.3
pollin, q=0.3
sim, q=0.5
app, q=0.5
pollin, q=0.5
sim, q=0.7
app, q=0.7
pollin, q=0.7
MAC parameter, m
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
(b) m = 2, . . . , 5, m
0
= 3, m
b
= 8, n = 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0.8
0.82
0.84
0.86
0.88
0.9
0.92
0.94
0.96
0.98
1


sim, q=0.3
app, q=0.3
pollin, q=0.3
sim, q=0.5
app, q=0.5
pollin, q=0.5
sim, q=0.7
app, q=0.7
pollin, q=0.7
MAC parameter, n
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
(c) n = 0, . . . , 7, m
0
= 3, m
b
= 8, m = 4
Fig. 2. Reliability as a function of the trafc regimes q = 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and MAC parameters m
0
= 3, . . . , 8, m
b
= 8, m = 2, . . . , 5, n = 0, . . . , 7 with
Pollins Markov chain model [4]. The length of the packet is L = 3 and the number of nodes is N = 20.
B. Reliability
The main contributions of this section are the derivation
of both precise and approximated expression of the reliabil-
ity (1b) of the optimization problem (1), where we recall the
reliability is the probability of successful packet reception.
Proposition 1: The reliability is
R(V) = 1
x
m+1
(1 y
n+1
)
1 y
y
n+1
. (11)
Proof: In slotted CSMA/CA, packets are unsuccessfully
received due to two reasons: channel access failure and retry
limits. Channel access failure happens when a packet fails to
obtain idle channel in two consecutive CCAs within m + 1
backoffs. Furthermore, a packet is discarded if the transmission
fails due to repeated collisions after n+1 attempts. Following
the Markov model presented in Fig. 1, the probability that the
packet is discarded due to channel access failure is
P
dc
= x
m+1
n

j=0
y
j
=
x
m+1
(1 y
n+1
)
1 y
. (12)
The probability of a packet being discarded due to retry limits
is
P
dr
= y
n+1
. (13)
The reliability is given by
R(V) = 1 P
dc
P
dr
,
from which the proposition follows.
Approximation 1: An approximation of the reliability is

R(V) = 1 x
m+1
(1 + y) y
n+1
(14)
where
y =(1 (1 (1 + x)(1 + y)

b
0,0,0
)
N1
)(1 x
2
) ,

b
0,0,0
=2/(W
0
(1 + 2x)(1 + y) + 2L
s
(1 x
2
)(1 + y)
+ L
0
q/(1 q)(1 + y
2
+ y
n+1
)) ,
and y = (1 (1 )
N1
)(1 x
2
).
Proof: The expression of the state probability b
0,0,0
is
the main responsible for the non-linear equations that give
, and . Therefore, we approximate b
0,0,0
. Let the approx-
imation be

b
0,0,0
. Given z 0, we use that
1 z
m+1
1 z
1 + z , if z 1 . (15)
By using this approximation, Eq. (44) is approximated by
m

i=0
Wi1

k=0
n

j=0
b
i,k,j

b
0,0,0
2
[(1 + 2x)W
0
+ 1 + x] (1 + y) .
(16)
Similarly, Eq. (45) is approximated by
m

i=0
n

j=0
b
i,1,j
b
0,0,0
(1 )(1 + x)(1 + y) 0 . (17)
Eq. (46) is approximated by
n

j=0
_
Ls1

k=0
b
1,k,j
+
Lc1

k=0
b
2,k,j
_
b
0,0,0
L
s
(1 x
m+1
)(1 + y), (18)
where we assume that the packet collision time is approx-
imated to the packet successful transmission time, namely
L
s
L
c
. Finally, using K
0
= L
0
q/(1 q), the approximated
idle-queue stages of Eq. (47) is
L01

l=0
Q
l
b
0,0,0
K
0
_
1 + y + P
c
(1 x
m+1
)(y
n
y 1)

.
(19)
By summing together Eqs. (16)(19), the approximated state
probability is

b
0,0,0

2
W
0
r
1
+ 2r
2
(20)
where
r
1
= (1 + 2x)(1 + y) ,
r
2
= L
s
(1 x
2
)(1 + y) + K
0
(1 + y
2
+ y
n+1
) ,
y = (1 (1 )
N1
)(1 x
2
) .
Now, we put

b
0,0,0
into Eq. (11) to obtain the approximated
reliability:

R(V) = 1 x
m+1
(1 + y) y
n+1
,
6
3 4 5 6 7 8
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90


sim, q=0.3
app, q=0.3
sim, q=0.5
app, q=0.5
sim, q=0.7
app, q=0.7
MAC parameter, m0
a
v
e
r
a
g
e
d
e
l
a
y
(
m
s
)
(a) m
0
= 3, . . . , 8, m
b
= 8, m = 4, n = 3
2 3 4 5
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13


sim, q=0.3
app, q=0.3
sim, q=0.5
app, q=0.5
sim, q=0.7
app, q=0.7
MAC parameter, m
a
v
e
r
a
g
e
d
e
l
a
y
(
m
s
)
(b) m = 2, . . . , 5, m
0
= 3, m
b
= 8, n = 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
3
4
5
6
7
8
9


sim, q=0.3
app, q=0.3
sim, q=0.5
app, q=0.5
sim, q=0.7
app, q=0.7
MAC parameter, n
a
v
e
r
a
g
e
d
e
l
a
y
(
m
s
)
(c) n = 0, . . . , 7, m
0
= 3, m
b
= 8, m = 4
Fig. 3. Average delay as a function of the trafc regimes q = 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 and MAC parameters m
0
= 3, . . . , 8, m
b
= 8, m = 2, . . . , 5, n = 0, . . . , 7.
The length of the packet is L = 3 and the number of nodes is N = 20.
where y = (1(1 )
N1
)(1x
2
) and is the approximated
carrier sensing probability = (1 + x)(1 + y)

b
0,0,0
.
We remark that

R(V) is a function of the measurable busy
channel probabilities and , the channel access probability
and the MAC parameters m
0
, m
b
, m, n. The approximation
is based on estimated values of x and .
We use Monte Carlo simulations of the Markov chain in
Fig. 1 to validate the approximated model of the reliability.
The simulations are based on the specications of the IEEE
802.15.4 [1] with several values of the trafc regime and MAC
parameters. Simulation data was collected out of 5 runs, each
lasting 210
5
time slots. Fig. 2 compares the reliability given
by Eq. (14), the analytical model in [4], and Monte Carlo
simulations as a function of the trafc regimes q = 0.3, 0.5, 0.7
with N = 10 nodes and different MAC parameters m
0
, m, n.
In the gure, note that Pollin refers to the reliability model
derived in [4]. Our analytical expression matches quite well
the simulation results. The expression is closer to simulation
results under low trafc regime q = 0.5, 0.7 than high trafc
regime q = 0.3 because the approximation given by Eq. (15)
holds if x = + (1 ) 1, but x increases as the trafc
and the number of nodes increases. The reliability approaches
1 under very low trafc regime q = 0.7. In Fig. 2(a), 2(b),
the reliability increases as MAC parameters m
0
, m increase,
respectively. In Fig. 2(c), we observe that the improvement of
reliability is small as the retry limits n increases for n 3.
Notice that the reliability saturates to 0.95 for trafc regime
q = 0.3 for n 3. Hence, the retransmissions are necessary
but not sufcient to obtain high reliability under high trafc
regimes.
C. Delay
In this section, we derive the constraint of average delay (1c)
of the optimization problem (1). The average delay for a
successfully received packet is dened as the time interval
from the instant the packet is at the head of its MAC queue
and ready to be transmitted, until the transmission is successful
and the ACK is received. In this section, we develop an
approximation for such an average delay, which is given by
Approximation 2. To this aim, we need some intermediate
technical steps. In particular, we characterize (a) the expression
of the delay for a successful transmission at time j + 1 after
jth events of unsuccessful transmission due to collision and
(b) the expected value of the approximated backoff delay due
to busy channel. We address these issues in the following.
Let D
j
be the random time associated to the successful
transmission of a packet at the jth backoff stage. Denote with
A
j
the event of a successful transmission at time j + 1 after
jth events of unsuccessful transmission. Let A
t
be the event
of successful transmission within the total attempts n. Then,
the delay for a successful transmission after jth unsuccessful
attempts is
D =
n

j=0
1
Aj |At
D
j
,
where 1
Aj|At
is 1 if A
j
|A
t
holds, and 0 otherwise and D
j
=
L
s
+j L
c
+

j
h=0
T
h
, with T
h
being the backoff stage delay,
L
s
is the packet successful transmission time, and L
c
is the
packet collision transmission time as dened in Eq. (2).
Lemma 2: The probability of successful transmission at
time j + 1 after jth events of unsuccessful transmission due
to collision is
Pr(A
j
|A
t
) =
(1 y) y
j
1 y
n+1
. (21)
Proof: A transmission may be successful with probability
1 P
c
, or collide with probability P
c
. Then, the probability
of the event A
j
|A
t
is
Pr(A
j
|A
t
) =
P
j
c
(1 x
m+1
)
j

n
k=0
(P
c
(1 x
m+1
))
k
where the normalization comes by considering all the possible
events of successful attempts A
t
. Note that (1 x
m+1
) is the
probability of successful channel access within the maximum
number of m backoff stages.
In the following, we give the total backoff delay T
h
. Let
T
h,i
be the random time needed to obtain two successful
CCAs from the selected backoff counter value in backoff level
i. Recall that a node transmits the packet when the backoff
counter is 0 and two successful CCAs are detected [1]. Denote
with B
i
the event occurring when the channel is busy for i
times, and then idle at the time i + 1. Let B
t
be the event
of having a successful sensing within the total number of m
sensing attempts. If the node accesses an idle channel after its
7
3 4 5 6 7 8
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
x 10
4


E
tot, i
, sim, q=0.5
E
tot, i
, app, q=0.5
E
tot, s
, sim, q=0.5
E
tot, s
, app, q=0.5
E
tot, i
, sim, q=0.7
E
tot, i
, app, q=0.7
E
tot, s
, sim, q=0.7
E
tot, s
, app, q=0.7
MAC parameter, m0
p
o
w
e
r
c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
(
W
)
(a) m
0
= 3, . . . , 8, m
b
= 8, m = 4, n = 3
2 3 4 5
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
x 10
4


E
tot, i
, sim, q=0.5
E
tot, i
, app, q=0.5
E
tot, s
, sim, q=0.5
E
tot, s
, app, q=0.5
E
tot, i
, sim, q=0.7
E
tot, i
, app, q=0.7
E
tot, s
, sim, q=0.7
E
tot, s
, app, q=0.7
MAC parameter, m
p
o
w
e
r
c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
(
W
)
(b) m = 2, . . . , 5, m
0
= 3, m
b
= 8, n = 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
x 10
4


E
tot, i
, sim, q=0.5
E
tot, i
, app, q=0.5
E
tot, s
, sim, q=0.5
E
tot, s
, app, q=0.5
E
tot, i
, sim, q=0.7
E
tot, i
, app, q=0.7
E
tot, s
, sim, q=0.7
E
tot, s
, app, q=0.7
MAC parameter, n
p
o
w
e
r
c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
(
W
)
(c) n = 0, . . . , 7, m
0
= 3, m
b
= 8, m = 4
Fig. 4. Average power consumption of I-mode and S-mode as a function of the trafc regimes q = 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 and MAC parameters m
0
= 3, . . . , 8,
m
b
= 8, m = 2, . . . , 5, n = 0, . . . , 7. The length of the packet is L = 3 and the number of nodes is N = 20.
i th busy CCA, then
T
h
=
m

i=0
1
Bi|Bt
T
h,i
,
where
T
h,i
= 2 T
sc
+
i

k=1
T
sc
h,k
+
i

k=0
T
b
h,k
, (22)
and where 2T
sc
is the successful sensing time,

i
k=1
T
sc
h,k
is the unsuccessful sensing time due to busy channel during
CCA, and

i
k=0
T
b
h,k
is the backoff time.
Lemma 3: The expected value of the approximated backoff
delay is
E[

T
h
] =2S
b
_
1 +
1
4
_
1
1
m+1
_
2W
0
1 (2)
m+1
1 2

3(m + 1)
m+1
1
_
+
3
1
(W
0
+ 1)
__
,
(23)
where = max(, (1 )).
Proof: By considering the busy channel during two
CCAs, the probability of the event B
i
|B
t
is approximated by

Pr(B
i
|B
t
) =

i

m
k=0

k
, (24)
where = max(, (1 )) (note that this is the term that
gives the approximation, see accurate model in [29]). The
approximation of the average backoff period is
E[

T
h
] =
m

i=0

Pr(B
i
|B
t
) E[

T
h,i
] (25)
=2T
sc
+
m

i=0

Pr(B
i
|B
t
)
i

k=0
_
2
k
W
0
1
2
S
b
+ 2T
sc
k
_
where the approximated sensing time E[

T
h,i
] considers the
worst case, i.e., a failure of the second sensing (CCA
2
), which
implies that T
sc
= S
b
and that each sensing failure takes 2T
sc
in Eq. (22).
Now, we are in the position to derive an approximation of
the average delay for successfully received packets.
Approximation 2: The expected value of the approximated
delay is

D(V) =T
s
+E[

T
h
]
+
_
y
1 y

(n + 1) y
n+1
1 y
n+1
_
(T
c
+E[

T
h
]) . (26)
Proof: By considering the Lemma 2, we derive

D(V) =
n

j=0
Pr(A
j
|A
t
) E[

D
j
]
where E[

D
j
] = T
s
+ j T
c
+

j
h=0
E[

T
h
] and E[

T
h
] is given
in Lemma 3.
Fig. 3 shows the average delay as obtained by Eq. (26)
as a function of different trafc regimes q = 0.3, 0.5, 0.7
with a given number of nodes N = 10 and different MAC
parameters m
0
, m, n. The analytical model predicts well the
simulation results. The accuracy is reduced under high trafc
regime q = 0.3 due to the approximation given by Eq. (15).
Observe that the average delay increases as trafc regime
increases due to high busy channel probability and collision
probability. Fig. 3(a) shows that the average delay increases
exponentially as m
0
increases. Hence, we conclude that m
0
is the key parameter on average delay in comparison to m, n.
D. Power Consumption
Here, we derive the objective function, power consumption
of the node (1a) of the optimization problem (1). We propose
two models for the average power consumption, depending on
the radio state during the backoff mechanism specied by the
IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Let us denote by I-mode and S-mode
the situation when the radio is set in idle mode or in sleep
mode during backoff period, respectively.
Approximation 3: The energy consumption of the I-mode

E
tot,i
(V) is given by Eq. (27) and of the S-mode

E
tot,s
(V)
is given by Eq. (28), where state probability

b
0,0,0
is given
in Eq. (20), P
i
, P
sc
, P
sp
, P
w
, P
t
and P
r
are the average power
consumption in idle-listen, channel sensing, sleep states, wake-
up state, transmit and receiving states, respectively.
Proof: By considering the Markov chain given in Fig. 1,
we see that the average power consumption of I-mode

E
tot,i
(V) is

E
tot,i
(V) =E
b,i
+ E
sc
+ E
t
+ E
q
+ E
w,i
.
8

E
tot,i
(V) =
P
i

2
_
(1 x)(1 (2x)
m+1
)
(1 2x)(1 x
m+1
)
W
0
1
_
+ P
sc
(2 ) + (1 )(1 ) (P
t
L + P
i
+ L
ack
(P
r
(1 P
c
) + P
i
P
c
))
+ P
w
q
_
x
m+1
(1 + y) + P
c
(1 x
2
)y
n
+ (1 P
c
)(1 x
2
)(1 + y)
_

b
0,0,0
(27)

E
tot,s
(V) =P
sc
(2 ) + (1 )(1 ) (P
t
L + P
i
+ L
ack
(P
r
(1 P
c
) + P
i
P
c
)) + P
w
_

b
0,0,0
(1 (0.5x)
m+1
)
W
0
(1 0.5x)

1 y
n+1
1 y
_
(28)
In the following, we derive these terms.
The idle backoff power consumption is
E
b,i
=P
i
m

i=0
Wi1

k=1
n

j=0
b
i,k,j
=
P
i

2
_
(1 x)(1 (2x)
m+1
)
(1 2x)(1 x
m+1
)
W
0
1
_
, (29)
where the carrier sensing probability is measured by each
node and P
i
is the average power consumption in idle-listen.
By putting together Eqs. (44), (45) and (8), the average
power consumption of the sensing state is
E
sc
=P
sc
m

i=0
n

j=0
(b
i,0,j
+ b
i,1,j
) = P
sc
(2 ) , (30)
where P
sc
is the average power consumption in channel
sensing. Similarly, by substituting Eq. (46) and Eq. (8), the
average power consumption for packet transmission including
both successful transmission and packet collision E
t
is
E
t
=P
t
1

i=2
L1

k=0
n

j=0
b
i,k,j
+ P
i
1

i=2
n

j=0
b
i,L,j
+
n

j=0
L+L
ack
+1

k=L+1
(P
r
b
1,k,j
+ P
i
b
2,k,j
) (31)
=(1 x) (P
t
L + P
i
+ L
ack
(P
r
(1 P
c
) + P
i
P
c
)) ,
where P
t
and P
r
are the average power consumption in trans-
mit and receiving states, respectively. Analogously, E
q
is the
power consumption of idle stage without packet generation:
E
q
= P
sp
L01

l=0
Q
l
0 , (32)
where P
sp
is the average power consumption in sleep states,
which we assume negligible. Since a node wakes up only after
generating packet, the wake-up power consumption E
w,i
is
E
w,i
=P
w
(1 q)Q
L01
=P
w
q
_
x
m+1
(1 + y) + P
c
(1 x
2
)y
n
+(1 P
c
)(1 x
2
)(1 + y)
_

b
0,0,0
, (33)
where P
w
is the average power consumption in wake-up
state and the state probability

b
0,0,0
is given in Eq. (20).
By summing Eqs. (29)(33), we obtain the average power
consumption of I-mode in closed form.
The average power consumption of S-mode

E
tot,s
(V) during
backoff states can be derived by following an approach similar
to the I-mode:

E
tot,s
(V) =E
b,s
+ E
sc
+ E
t
+ E
q
+ E
w,s
,
where the sleep backoff power consumption is
E
b,s
= P
sp
m

i=0
Wi1

k=1
n

j=0
b
i,k,j
0 ,
the wake-up power consumption is
E
w,s
=P
w
m

i=0
n

j=0
b
i,1,j
P
w
_

b
0,0,0
W
0
1 (0.5x)
m+1
1 0.5x
1 y
n+1
1 y
_
, (34)
and E
sc
, E
t
, E
q
is given in Eqs. (30), (31), (32), respectively.
Note that since the radio is set in sleep mode during backoff
period, node wakes up for each CCA
1
state.
Fig. 4 compares the analytical model and simulation results
of power consumption for both I-mode and S-mode as a
function of different trafc regimes q = 0.5, 0.7 with a number
of nodes N = 10 and different MAC parameters m
0
, m, n.
We observe that the power consumption of I-mode increases
as MAC parameters (m
0
, m, n) increase under low trafc
regime q = 0.5, 0.7 since the node needs to stay more time
in idle sleep stage without packet generation under low trafc
regime q = 0.5, 0.7, the main component of average power
consumption is the idle backoff time rather than transmit
or receiving power consumption i.e., P
t
> P
i
> P
sp
and
P
r
> P
i
> P
sp
. However, the power consumption of S-
mode decreases as m
0
increases because of sleep mode during
the backoff time. It is interesting to observe that the power
consumption has a weaker dependence on m and n than m
0
.
V. IEEE 802.15.4 OPTIMIZATION
In the previous sections we developed the expressions of the
performance metrics. Here, we present a novel approach where
each node locally solves the optimization problem. Consider
the reliability, delay and power consumption as investigated in
Section IV. The optimization problem (1) can be written by
using Eq. (14) of Approximation 1 for reliability constraint,
Eq. (26) of Approximation 2 for delay constraint and Eq. (27)
or (28) of Approximation 3 for power consumption. Note
that the power consumption is given by Eq. (27) if the I-
mode is selected, and it is given by Eq. (28), if the S-mode
is selected. The solution of the optimization problem gives
9
the optimal MAC parameter (m
0
, m, n) that each node uses
to minimize its energy expenditure, subject to reliability and
delay constraints. Notice that the problem is combinatorial
because the decision variables take on discrete values.
A vector of decision variables V is feasible if the reliability
and delay constraints are satised. The optimal solution may
be obtained by checking every combination of the elements of
V that gives feasibility, and then checking the combination that
gives the minimum objective function. Clearly, this approach
may have a high computational complexity, since there are
648 = 192 combinations of MAC parameters to check [1].
Therefore, in the following we propose an algorithm that gives
the optimal solution by checking just a reduced number of
combinations.
From Figs. 2, 3 and 4, we remark here that the reliability
and power consumption of both I-mode and S-mode are
increasing function as the parameter n increases. This property
is quite useful to solve (1) by a simple algorithm with reduced
computational complexity, as we see next.
The search of optimal MAC parameters uses an iterative
procedure according to the component-based method [30].
In particular, the probabilities , , and are estimated
periodically by each node. If a node detects a change of
these probabilities, then the node solves the local optimiza-
tion problem (1) using these estimated values. The solution
is achieved by nding the value of n that minimizes the
energy consumption given a pair of values for m
0
and m.
Since the power consumption is increasing with n, it follows
that the minimum is attained at the lowest value of n that
satises the constraints. Given that the reliability is increasing
with n, simple algebraic passages give that such a value is
n = f(m
0
, m), with
f(m
0
, m) =
_
ln(1 x
m+1
(1 + y) R
min
)
ln( y)
1
_
, (35)
where y = (1 (1 )
N1
)(1 x
2
) and
=
2r
3
2
m0
r
1
+ 2r
2
,
with
r
1
= (1 + 2x)(1 + y) ,
r
2
= L
s
(1 x
2
)(1 + y) +
L
0
q(1 + y
2
+ y
n+1
)
1 q
,
r
3
= (1 + x)(1 + y) ,
and y = (1 (1 )
N1
)(1 x
2
). Eq. (35) returns the
optimal retry limits given a pair m
0
, m. Notice that x and y
are measurable since node estimates , , and . By using this
simple algorithm, a node checks just 64 = 24 combinations
of the MAC parameters m
0
, m instead of 6 4 8 = 192
combinations that would be required by an exhaustive search.
We have seen by the Approximations 1, 2 and 3 that
the performance metrics are function of the busy channel
probabilities and and the channel access probability .
Once these probabilities are known at a node, the optimal
MAC parameters of that node can be readily computed by the
simple algorithm. In the algorithm, the number of nodes and
packet generation rates are assumed to be known, whereas
the busy channel probability and channel access probability
are periodically estimated in each node during the sensing
states of the MAC layer, and they do not require an ACK
mechanism, as we describe the details in the following. In
addition, the robustness of the algorithm to possible errors in
the estimation of the number of nodes and trafc load is then
investigated in Section VI-C.
The average busy channel probabilities and are es-
timated at each node while sending a data packet to the
coordinator. These probabilities are initialized at the beginning
of the nodes operation. The estimations of the busy channel
probabilities and the channel access probability use a sliding
window. When the node senses the channel at CCA
1
or
CCA
2
, these probabilities are updated by =
b
+ (1

b
) , =
b
+ (1
b
)

for some
b
(0, 1), respectively.
Note that and

are the busy channel probability of CCA
1
and CCA
2
of the current sliding window, respectively. There-
fore, a node does not require any extra communication and
sensing state to estimate these probabilities compared to the
IEEE 802.15.4 standard. By contrast, the estimation algorithms
for IEEE 802.11 proposed in [19] and [31] are not energy
efcient since a node needs to sense the channel state during
the backoff stage. This allows one to estimate the average
length of idle period. Hence, these schemes are implementable
only in I-mode. By contrast, our scheme is applied in both I-
mode and S-mode and does not require any computation load
during the backoff stage.
During an initialization phase of the algorithm, a node
communicates with the initial MAC parameters m
0
= 3, m
b
=
8, m = 4, n = 3. Then, the busy channel probabilities and
and the channel access probability are estimated in each node
during the channel sensing state of IEEE 802.15.4 without any
extra states. The application requirements are communicated
by the coordinator to the node if there are changes. It is
also possible that each node makes a decision of application
requirements depending on the data type e.g., strict delay
requirement for alarm message.
VI. NUMERICAL RESULTS FOR THE ADAPTIVE
IEEE 802.15.4 ALGORITHM
In the following, we present Monte Carlo simulations to
analyze the performance of our adaptive tuning algorithm
of the MAC parameters, under both stationary and transient
conditions. The analytical modelling that we have proposed in
Section IV is based on a Markov chain that has been validated
experimentally in [32]. Therefore, the Monte Carlo simulations
that we use here are representative of the real-world behavior
of the network.
In the stationary conditions, the application requirements
and network scenario are constant, whereas in transient con-
dition there are variations. The simulations are based on the
specications of the IEEE 802.15.4 and the practical imple-
mentation aspects described in Section V. In the simulations,
the network considers the I-mode and S-mode of the node
to compare the performance on the reliability, average packet
delay and power consumption. Furthermore, we investigate the
fairness of resource allocation, robustness to network changes
and sensitivity to inaccurate parameter estimations. Note that
it is not possible to compare our algorithm to other algorithms
10
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
0.85
0.9
0.95
1


Imode, R
min
= 0.9, D
max
=50
Imode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=50
Smode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=20
Smode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=100
default MAC
trafc load, q
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
(a) Reliability
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100


Imode, R
min
= 0.9, D
max
=50
Imode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=50
Smode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=20
Smode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=100
default MAC
trafc load, q
a
v
e
r
a
g
e
d
e
l
a
y
(
m
s
)
(b) Average delay
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
0.45
0.5


Imode, R
min
= 0.9, D
max
=50
Imode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=50
Smode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=20
Smode, R
min
= 0.95, D
max
=100
trafc load, q
p
o
w
e
r
g
a
i
n
(c) Power gain
Fig. 5. Stationary condition: reliability, average delay and power gain of the I-mode, S-mode of proposed scheme and IEEE 802.15.4 with default parameter
(macMinBE = 3, macMaxBE = 5, macMaxCSMABackoffs = 4, macMaxFrameRetries = 3) as a function of the trafc load q = 0.2, . . . , 0.7, the reliability
requirement R
min
= 0.9, 0.95 and delay requirement Dmax = 20, 50, 100 ms for the length of the packet L = 7 and N = 10 nodes. Note that default
MAC refers to IEEE 802.15.4 with default MAC parameters.
0.9 0.92 0.94 0.96 0.98
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100

0.2
0.205
0.21
0.215
0.22
0.225
0.23
0.235
0.24
0.245
0.25
z
reliability requirement, Rmin
d
e
l
a
y
r
e
q
u
i
r
e
m
e
n
t
,
D
m
a
x
Fig. 6. Stationary network condition: power consumption of S-mode as a
function of reliability constraint R
min
= 0.9, . . . , 0.99 and delay requirement
Dmax = 10, . . . , 100 ms for the trafc load q = 0.5, the length of packet
L = 3 and N = 10 nodes.
from the literature as the link-based ones [22][26], because
they modify the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and are focused on
different performance metrics (e.g., throughput). However, it
is possible to show that our algorithm outperform signicantly
the results in [22][26]. This is due to that these results use
the ACK feedback, which has a low update frequency with
respect to the channel and network variations, whereas our
algorithm reacts much faster. Details follow in the sequel.
A. Protocol Behavior in Stationary Conditions
In this subsection, we are interested to the improvement
of performance metrics of the proposed scheme at stationary
conditions of the network, namely without changing applica-
tion requirements and network scenarios. We also present a
fairness analysis of the adaptive protocol.
Figs. 5 compare the reliability, average delay and power
gain values of the protocol as obtained by our algorithm and
with default MAC parameters. Both the I-mode and S-mode for
various trafc congurations and requirements are considered.
The requirements for both the I-mode and S-mode are R
min
=
0.9, 0.95, D
max
= 50 and R
min
= 0.95, D
max
= 20, 100 ms,
respectively. Fig. 5(a) shows that both I-mode and S-mode
satisfy the reliability constraint for different trafc regime. We
observe strong dependence of the reliability of default MAC
with different trafc regime due to the xed MAC parameters.
At the high trafc regime q = 0.2, the reliability of default
MAC is 0.86. In Fig. 5(b), the delay constraint is fullled both
I-mode and S-mode. Observe that average delay of I-mode
decreases when trafc regime is low q 0.5. This is due
to that the optimal MAC parameters at higher trafc regime
increase more than the ones at lower trafc regime to satisfy
the reliability constraint.
Recall that the target of our proposed adaptive algorithm is
to use the tradeoff between application constraints and energy
consumption instead of just maximization of reliability or
minimization of delay. Therefore, to characterize quantitatively
the power consumption, we dene the power gain as
=
E
def
E
tot
(V)
E
def
where E
def
and E
tot
(V) are the average power consumption
of I-mode or S-mode for default MAC and proposed scheme,
respectively. The closer to 1, the better the power efciency.
Fig. 5(c) shows that the power gain increases as trafc regime
increases. This improvement is higher for S-mode than I-mode,
e.g., 0.49 for S-mode with R
min
= 0.95, D
max
= 100.
Although there is a strong dependence of the power gain on
the trafc regime, our proposed algorithm gives a better energy
efciency than the default MAC. Therefore, the numerical
results show clearly the effectiveness of our adaptive IEEE
802.15.4 protocol while guaranteeing the constraints.
Next, we observe the tradeoff between the power con-
sumption, reliability and delay constraints. Fig. 6 show the
dependence of the power consumption in S-mode with reli-
ability and delay constraints for a given trafc load, length
of packets, and number of nodes. Observe that as the delay
constraint becomes strict the power consumption increases. In
other words, the reliability constraint of S-mode is less critical
than delay constraint, see more results in [29].
The fairness of resource management is one of the most
important concerns when implementing the tuning algorithm
of the MAC parameters. We use Jains fairness index [33] to
show the fairness of our proposed scheme for both I-mode and
S-mode. We compute the fairness index of 10 nodes in a stable
network. The closer fairness index to 1, the better the achieved
fairness. Fig. 7 shows the fairness index of the reliability for
11
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
0.999
0.9991
0.9992
0.9993
0.9994
0.9995
0.9996
0.9997
0.9998
0.9999
1


Imode, R
min
= 0.99, D
max
= 10
Imode, R
min
= 0.99, D = 50
Smode, R
min
= 0.99, D = 10
Smode, R
min
= 0.99, D = 50
max
max
max
trafc load, q
f
a
i
r
n
e
s
s
i
n
d
e
x
o
f
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
Fig. 7. Fairness index of the reliability as a function of the trafc load
q = 0.5, . . . , 0.9, reliability requirement R
min
= 0.99 and delay requirement
Dmax = 10, 50 ms for the length of the packet L = 3 and N = 10 nodes.
the different requirements and trafc congurations with a
given length of the packet and number of nodes. Fig. 7 reports
a very high fairness achievement on reliability greater than
0.999. A similar behavior is found for delay and power con-
sumption. In other words, the MAC parameters of each node
converge to the optimal MAC parameter values. Therefore we
conclude that most of the nodes can share equally the common
medium.
B. Protocol Behavior in Transient Conditions
The adaptive IEEE 802.15.4 protocol is based on the
estimation of the busy channel probabilities and and the
channel access probability . In this section, we investigate the
convergence time of the optimal MAC parameters obtained by
our adaptive algorithm when the delay constraint changes.
Figs. 8(a), 8(b), 8(c), 8(d) show the behavior of channel
state, MAC parameters, reliability and packet delay when the
delay requirement changes for both I-mode and S-mode with
a given trafc load, length of packets, and number of nodes,
respectively. Fig. 8(a) reports the busy channel probabilities
and and channel access probability over time. In
Section V, we noticed that the update frequency of , ,
is different. is updated in each aUnitBackoffPeriod and
and are updated when a node stay in CCA
1
and CCA
2
,
respectively. Hence, the update frequency order of , , and
is rst, then , and nally . We remark here that the update
frequency of link-based adaptation is lower than the update
frequency of of our algorithm since link-based adaptation
requires an ACK transmission [22][26]. The update frequency
of channel estimation is a critical issue where the trafc regime
is low such as in monitoring applications.
Fig. 8(b) shows the adaptation of the MAC parameters. The
optimal (m
0
, m, n) of I-mode and S-mode adapts to (3, 2,
0) and (8, 5, 0) before the requirement changes, respectively.
Observe that the algorithm returns different parameters for
I-mode and S-mode due to the different power consumption
model, see details in Section IV. After the requirement changes
at time 26 s, the MAC parameters (m
0
, m, n) of S-mode adapt
from (8, 5, 0) to (5, 2, 0). We observe that the convergence
of the MAC parameters of proposed scheme is very fast
since our algorithm is based on analytical model instead of
heuristic considerations as in link-based adaptation, where the
algorithms adapt the contention window size by the ACK
transmission [22][26]. In addition, recall that our adaptive
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4

Smode,
Imode,
*100
*100

Imode,
Smode,
Imode,
Smode,
time (sec)
e
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

(a) , , behavior
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9


Imode, m0
Imode, m
Imode, n
Smode, m0
Smode, m
Smode, n
time (sec)
M
A
C
p
a
r
a
m
e
t
e
r
(b) MAC parameter (m
0
, m, n) behavior
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0.8
0.82
0.84
0.86
0.88
0.9
0.92
0.94
0.96
0.98
1


Imode
Smode
time (sec)
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
(c) Reliability behavior
20 40 60 80 100 120 140
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160


Imode
Smode
number of received packet
p
a
c
k
e
t
d
e
l
a
y
(
m
s
)
(d) Packet delay behavior
Fig. 8. Transient condition: busy channel probabilities, channel access
probability, MAC parameters, reliability and delay of I-mode and S-mode for
the trafc load q = 0.6, length of the packet L = 3 and N = 10 nodes when
the delay requirement changes from Dmax = 100 ms to Dmax = 10 ms at
26 s.
IEEE 802.15.4 is based on the physical sensing information
before transmitting packets.
Fig. 8(c) shows the cumulative packet reception rate of I-
mode and S-mode. Note that the oscillation of reliability is
due to packet loss. In Fig. 8(c), the reliability of S-mode is
larger than I-mode since the MAC parameters m
0
and m are
larger than the ones of I-mode before the requirement changes.
By the same argument, we observe that the packet delay of
S-mode is about six times the one measured of I-mode in
Fig. 8(d). In addition, the packet delay is much more variable
in S-mode than the one in I-mode. Specically, with I-mode,
we have a reduction in the average MAC delay and a shorter
12
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4


Imode, , n1
, n1 Imode,
*100, n1 Imode,
Imode, , n11
, n11 Imode,
*100, n11 Imode,
time (sec)
e
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

(a) , , behavior
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9


Imode, m0, n1
Imode, m, n1
Imode, n, n1
Imode, m0, n11
Imode, m, n11
Imode, n, n11
time (sec)
M
A
C
p
a
r
a
m
e
t
e
r
(b) MAC parameter (m
0
, m, n) behavior
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0.8
0.82
0.84
0.86
0.88
0.9
0.92
0.94
0.96
0.98
1


Imode, n
1
Imode, n
11
time (sec)
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
(c) Reliability behavior
Fig. 9. Robustness when the number of nodes changes: busy channel
probabilities, channel access probability, MAC parameters and reliability
behavior of I-mode when the number of nodes changes sharply from N = 10
to N = 20 at time 17.6 s. Note that n
1
and n
11
represent the behavior
of one of N = 10 nodes plus new nodes after time 17.6 s. Trafc load is
q = 0.6, length of the packet is L = 3, the reliability and delay constraint
are R
min
= 0.95 and Dmax = 100 ms, respectively.
tail for the MAC delay distribution with respect to the S-mode.
After the requirement changes, the packet delay converges to
around 10 ms. In addition, the reliability decreases due to the
decreasing of the parameters m
0
and m in Fig. 8(c).
C. Robustness and Sensitivity Analysis
The performance analysis carried out so far assumed that
the number of nodes and trafc conguration are xed. This
assumption has allowed us to verify the effectiveness of
our adaptive algorithm for IEEE 802.15.4 in steady state
conditions. However, one of the critical issues in the design of
wireless networks is time varying condition. Therefore, in the
following analysis, we will investigate our algorithm to react
to changes in the number of nodes and trafc load when each
node has an erroneous estimation of these parameters.
Figs. 9 show the dynamical behavior of the I-mode node
when the number of nodes changes from N = 10 to N = 20
with an erroneous estimation of the number of nodes. At
time 17.6 s, the number of nodes sharply increases to 20,
when it was estimated to be 10. We assume that the wrong
estimation happens due to some errors in the estimation phase
or a biasing induced by the hidden-node phenomenon. This
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4


Imode, *100 Imode, Imode,
Smode,
*100
Smode,
Smode,
time (sec)
e
s
t
i
m
a
t
e
d

(a) , , behavior
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9


Imode, m0
Imode, m
Imode, n
Smode, m0
Smode, m
Smode, n
time (sec)
M
A
C
p
a
r
a
m
e
t
e
r
(b) MAC parameter (m
0
, m, n) behavior
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0.8
0.82
0.84
0.86
0.88
0.9
0.92
0.94
0.96
0.98
1


Imode
Smode
time (sec)
r
e
l
i
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
(c) Reliability behavior
Fig. 10. Robustness when the trafc load changes: busy channel probabilities,
channel access probability, MAC parameters, reliability and delay behavior of
I-mode and S-mode when the trafc load changes sharply from q = 0.8 to
q = 0.5 at time 25.6 s. The length of the packet is L = 3, the reliability and
delay constraint are R
min
= 0.95 and Dmax = 100 ms, respectively.
causes a signicant increase of the contention level. Note
that n
1
is one of existing nodes before the network change
and n
11
is one of the new nodes that enters the network at
time 17.6 s using its initial MAC parameters. In Fig 9(a), we
observe that the busy channel and channel access probabilities
of node n
11
become stable after the network changes by
updating the MAC parameters. Fig. 9(b) shows that the MAC
parameters (m
0
, m, n) converge to (3, 2, 0) of node n
1
and
n
11
. The gures indicate that the system reacts correctly to
the erroneous estimation of the number of nodes after a few
seconds. In Fig 9(c), the reliability fullls the requirement
R
min
= 0.95 for both the existing and new nodes. Similar
behaviors are observed for S-mode, see further details in [29].
Figs. 10 present the behavior of the node when the trafc
load changes sharply from q = 0.8 to q = 0.5 at time 25.6 s.
Nodes use a wrong estimation of the trafc load, which is
estimated to be q = 0.8, after the trafc load changes. The
results indicate that our algorithm is quite effective for the
trafc conguration change. In Fig. 10(a), the busy channel
and channel access probability increase as a result of higher
trafc regime q = 0.5 for both I-mode and S-mode. Fig. 10(b)
shows that the parameter m of S-mode updates from 2 to
13
10 15 20 25 30 35
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25


Imode, m
0
Imode, m
Imode, n
Smode, m
0
Smode, m
Smode, n
percentage of error
N
R
M
S
D
Fig. 11. Sensitivity: NRMSD of I-mode and S-mode when the trafc load
q = 0.6, length of the packet L = 3, reliability requirement R
min
= 0.95
and delay requirement Dmax = 100 ms, and N = 10 nodes with different
percentage error in busy channel probabilities and and channel access
probability .
5 due to the increasing busy channel probability after the
trafc load changes at time 28 s. The gure indicates that the
system reacts correctly to the erroneous estimation of trafc
conguration and, in few seconds, the estimation of , and
allow to reach the optimal MAC parameters. In Fig. 10(c),
the reliability requirement R
min
= 0.95 is fullled for both
I-mode and S-mode. The reliability of I-mode is greater than
0.95 with some uctuations after trafc load increases.
Fig. 11 illustrates the sensitivity of adaptive IEEE 802.15.4
with respect to the estimation errors to the busy channel
probabilities and and the channel access probability . The
normalized root mean squared deviation (NRMSD) between
the optimal MAC parameters with exact estimation and the
ones with erroneous estimation is used as the indicator of
sensitivity. The normalization is taken over the range of MAC
parameters (m
0
, m, n). The NRMSD is approximately below
10% if the percentage of error is smaller than 20% for , , .
It is interesting to observe that m
0
of I-mode is very robust
to errors. This is due to the power consumption model, i.e.,
to the dominant factor m
0
of power consumption in I-mode.
The robustness of MAC parameter is m
0
> n > m and
n > m > m
0
for I-mode and S-mode, respectively. We can
show that errors below 20% in the estimation of , , give
a performance degradation below 3% in terms of reliability,
packet delay and energy gain for low trafc load.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we developed an analysis based on a gen-
eralized Markov chain model of IEEE 802.15.4, including
retry limits, acknowledgements and unsaturated trafc regime.
Then, we presented an adaptive MAC algorithm for mini-
mizing the power consumption while guaranteeing reliabil-
ity and delay constraints of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol.
The algorithm does not require any modications of the
standard. The adaptive algorithm is grounded on an opti-
mization problem where the objective function is the to-
tal power consumption, subject to constraints of reliability
and delay of the packet delivery and the decision variables
are the MAC parameters (macMinBE, macMaxCSMABackoffs,
macMaxFrameRetries) of the standard. The proposed adaptive
MAC algorithm is easily implementable on sensor nodes by
estimating the busy channel and channel access probability.
We investigated the performance of our algorithm under
both stationary and transient conditions. Numerical results
showed that the proposed scheme is efcient and ensures a
longer lifetime of the network. In addition, we showed that,
even if the number of active nodes, trafc conguration and
application constrains change sharply, our algorithm allow
the system to recover quickly and operate at its optimal
parameter by estimating just the busy channel and channel
access probabilities. We also studied the robustness of the
protocol to possible errors during the estimation process on
number of nodes and trafc load. Results indicated that the
protocol reacts promptly to erroneous estimations.
We plan to extend our study to the IEEE 802.11 standard.
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APPENDIX
A. Proof of Lemma 1
The proof has two steps. First, we derive the state transi-
tion probability of Markov chain. Second, the normalization
condition is applied to compute the probability b
0,0,0
.
The state transition probabilities associated with the Markov
chain of Fig. 1 are
P(i, k, j|i, k + 1, j) = 1, for k 0 , (36)
P(i, k, j|i 1, 0, j) =
+ (1 )
W
i
, for i m, (37)
P(0, k, j|i, 0, j 1) =
(1 )(1 )P
c
W
0
, for j n, (38)
P(Q
0
|m, 0, j) = q ( + (1 )), for j < n, (39)
P(Q
0
|i, 0, n) = q (1 )(1 ), for i < m, (40)
P(Q
0
|m, 0, n) = q, (41)
P(0, k, 0|Q
0
) =
1 q
W
0
, for k W
0
1 . (42)
Eq. (36) is the decrement of backoff counter, which happens
with probability 1. Eq. (37) represents the probability of
nding busy channel in CCA
1
or CCA
2
and a node selects
uniformly a state in the next backoff stage. Eq. (38) gives
the unsuccessful transmission probability after nding an idle
channel in both CCA
1
and CCA
2
, and a node picks uniformly
a state in the next retransmission stage. Eq. (39) and (40)
represent the probability of going back to the idle-queue stage
due to the channel access failure and retry limits, respectively.
Eq. (41) accounts for the trafc regime and is the probability
of going back to the idle-queue stage at backoff counter m
and retransmission stage n, which is given by q. Eq. (42)
models the probability of going back to the rst backoff stage
from the idle-queue stage. Owing to the chain regularities and
Eqs. (36)(42), we have Eqs. (6)(5).
By the normalization condition, we know that
m

i=0
Wi1

k=0
n

j=0
b
i,k,j
+
m

i=0
n

j=0
b
i,1,j
+
n

j=0
_
Ls1

k=0
b
1,k,j
+
Lc1

k=0
b
2,k,j
_
+
L01

l=0
Q
l
= 1 . (43)
We next derive the expressions of each term in Eq. (43).
From Eqs. (4) and (5), we have
m

i=0
Wi1

k=0
n

j=0
b
i,k,j
(44)
=
m

i=0
n

j=0
W
i
+ 1
2
( + (1 ))
i
b
0,0,j
=
_

_
b0,0,0
2
_
1(2x)
m+1
12x
W
0
+
1x
m+1
1x
_
1y
n+1
1y
if m m
b
m
0
b0,0,0
2
_
1(2x)
m
b
m
0
+1
12x
W
0
+
1x
m
b
m
0
+1
1x
+
(2
m
b
+ 1)x
m
b
m0+1 1x
mm
b
+m
0
1x
_
1y
n+1
1y
otherwise,
where x = + (1 ) and y = P
c
(1 x
m+1
). Similarly,
m

i=0
n

j=0
b
i,1,j
=
m

i=0
n

j=0
(1 )( + (1 ))
i
b
0,0,j
= (1 )
1 x
m+1
1 x
1 y
n+1
1 y
b
0,0,0
, (45)
and
n

j=0
_
Ls1

k=0
b
1,k,j
+
Lc1

k=0
b
2,k,j
_
(46)
= (L
s
(1 P
c
) + L
c
P
c
)(1 x
m+1
)
1 y
n+1
1 y
b
0,0,0
.
By considering that the successful transmission and the failure
events are due to the limited number of backoff stages m and
the retry limit n, the idle state probability is
Q
0
=q Q
L01
+ q
_
_
n

j=0
( + (1 )) b
m,0,j
+
m

i=0
P
c
(1 ) b
i,1,n
+
m

i=0
n

j=0
(1 P
c
) (1 ) b
i,1,j
_
_
=
q
1 q
_
x
m+1
(1 y
n+1
)
1 y
+ P
c
(1 x
m+1
)y
n
+(1 P
c
)
(1 x
m+1
)(1 y
n+1
)
1 y
_
b
0,0,0
, (47)
where L
0
is the idle state length without generating packets
and

L01
l=0
Q
l
= L
0
Q
0
. Note that Eqs. (44)(47) give
the state values b
i,k,j
as a function of b
0,0,0
. By replac-
ing Eqs. (44)(47) in the normalization condition given by
Eq. (43), we obtain the expression for b
0,0,0
.