Performance comparison bet

ween slotted IEEE 802.15.4

and IEEE 802.11ah in IoT ba
sed applications
Speaker: Po-Hung Chen
Advisor: Dr. Ho-Ting Wu
2016/01/21

Outline
Introduction
IEEE 802.15.4
IEEE 802.11ah
Simulation Setting
Simulation Result
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction
In this paper, we present a performance comparison between
IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11ah standards by evaluating the n
etwork throughput and energy consumption.
IoT requirements, such as lower complexity, reduced impleme
ntation and operation costs, broader coverage range and highe
r energy efficiency.

Introduction(Cont.)
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is presently being used for wireless
sensor networks and ZigBee applications.
IEEE 802.11ah is a new global WLAN standard using sub-1 GHz
frequency band.

Transmission
range
Bit rate

IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.11ah

10-100 m

1000 m

20 kbps
40 kbps
250 kbps
868 MHz
(Europe)
915 MHz

least 100 kbps

IEEE 802.15.4
IEEE 802.15.4 is a standard which specifies the physical layer a
nd mac layer for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LRWPANs).
Its defined in 2003.
The ZigBee technology is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard.

IEEE 802.15.4(Cont.)
IEEE 802.15.4 standard has two types of devices a Full-Function
device (FFD) and a Reduced-Function device (RFD).
The FFD is capable of all network functionalities and can operat
e in three different modes: it can operate as a PAN coordinator
, a coordinator or it can serve simply as a device.
An RFD device is low on resources and memory capacity and is
capable only of very simple applications such as a node which
senses light or temperature.

IEEE 802.15.4(Cont.)

IEEE 802.15.4(Cont.)
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines two different channel acces
s modalities:
Beacon-enabled slotted CSMA/CA
Beacon-less unslotted CSMA/CA

IEEE 802.15.4(Cont.)
Communication to a coordinator in a beacon-enabled network

IEEE 802.15.4(Cont.)
Communication to a coordinator in a beacon-less network

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IEEE 802.15.4(Cont.)
Slotted CSMA/CA

Wcontention window
Bnumber of backoffs
Ebackoff exponent
Tnumber of retransmissions
CAclear channel assessment

11

IEEE 802.15.4(Cont.)
Unslotted CSMA/CA

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IEEE 802.11ah
The IEEE 802.11ah standard is one of the candidate standards f
or IoT and Machine to Machine (M2M) applications which is stil
l in its preliminary stage of development.
IEEE 802.11ah draft 1.0 was conducted in September 2013.
The standardization should be completed approximately by Ma
rch 2016.

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IEEE 802.11ah(Cont.)
IEEE 802.11ah using sub 1-GHz frequency to transfer data.
Its a new standard for IoT, because it can transfer a long range
more than 1000 meter, least 100 kbps data rate, and compatibl
e with 802.11 WLAN legacies.
The common standards we use everyday:
IEEE 802.11n 2.4GHz
IEEE 802.11ac 5GHz

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IEEE 802.11ah(Cont.)
IEEE 802.11ah advantages:
Low power consumption
Long battery life
Burst data transmission
Easy Setup
High Transmission range
On-Hop reach
Reliability

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IEEE 802.11ah(Cont.)
Free space path loss equation

= Received signal strength

[dBm]
= Transmitter output signal
strength [dBm]
= frequency [Hz]
= speed of light

16

IEEE 802.11ah(Cont.)

17

IEEE 802.11ah(Cont.)
The basic access to the medium in IEEE 802.11ah is using the D
CF based on CSMA/CA scheme.
IEEE 802.11 MAC defined two Coordination Function :
Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)
Point Coordination Function (PCF)

18

IEEE 802.11ah(Cont.)
The DCF scheme can use two different mechanisms:
two-way handshaking technique known as basic access mecha
nism.
four-way handshaking technique known as RTS/CTS method.

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IEEE 802.11ah(Cont.)
IEEE 802.11ah use cases
, backhaul networks for
sensor and meter

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Simulation Setting
Using OMNeT++ to simulate.
OMNeT++ is an open-source simulator.
C++
Its useful for simulating the communication networks, and oth
er distributed and parallel systems.

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Simulation Setting(Cont.)
Simulation Topology
The AP is located in the middle of the playgro
und.
Other nodes are located in a uniformly distrib
uted manner.
To increase the simulation accuracy, each sim
ulation scenario is randomly repeated 100 ti
mes and average of results is calculated by us
ing the Monte Carlo method.

22

Simulation Setting(Cont.)
Common setting for both standards.

23

Simulation Setting(Cont.)
Setting for IEEE 802.15.4

Setting for IEEE 802.11ah

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Simulation Setting(Cont.)
For instance, the size of payload is chosen 256 Bytes in both st
andards, even though the maximum payload in IEEE 802.15.4 i
s 127 Bytes.
In simulate IEEE 802.15.4 standard, its removed the CFP perio
d.
In simulate IEEE 802.11ah standard, its using 2-way handshaki
ng.

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Simulation Setting(Cont.)
2 type for simulate
Ideal channel
Non-ideal channel
path loss [dB]

where d is the distance between transmitter and receiver in meter.

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Simulation Setting(Cont.)
2 different traffic to simulate
Saturated traffic
Each nodes always have a packet to send.
Low traffic
Each node generates a packet with the inter arrival time of
100 ms with random starting time.

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Simulation Setting(Cont.)
Its using a fairness measure, because of in non-ideal channel t
he signal is loss in the path, the closer nodes have higher prob
ability to send their packet.
Fairness measure is calculated by Raj Jain's equation:

i
i
where n stands for the number of nodes and Xi is the
throughput of the ith node.

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Simulation Result

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Simulation Result(Cont.)

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Simulation Result(Cont.)

31

Simulation Result(Cont.)

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Conclusion
The IEEE 802.11ah is better in term of throughput but in the ca
se of the energy consumption, the IEEE 802.15.4 still outperfor
ms the IEEE 802.11ah specially in a dense network and non-sat
urated traffic.

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Reference
Behnam Badihi Olyaei; Juho Pirskanen; Orod Raeesi, Performance comparison between slotted IE
EE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.1 lah in IoT based applications in Wireless and Mobile Computing, Netw
orking and Communications (WiMob), 2013 IEEE 9th International Conference, pp.332-337
N. Salman; I. Rasool; A.H. Kemp, Overview of the IEEE 802.15.4 standards family for Low Rate Wir
eless Personal Area Networks in Wireless Communication Systems (ISWCS), 2010 7th Internation
al Symposium, pp.701-705
Weiping Sun; Munhwan Choi; Sunghyun Choi, IEEE 802.11ah: A Long Range 802.11 WLAN at Sub 1
GHz in Journal of ICT Standardization, Vol. 1, pp.83-108, doi: 10.13052/jicts2245-800X .125, July 2
013
IEEE Std 802.15.4-2003
Ozkan Katircioglu; Hasan Isel; Osman Ceylan, Comparing ray tracing, free space path loss and log
arithmic distance path loss models in success of indoor localization with RSSI in Telecommunicati
ons Forum (TELFOR), 2011 19th, pp.313-316
(Just for the free space path loss equation)

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Thank you for listening.

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