Study, Evaluation and Implementation of a Datalink/MAC Layer Protocol for Low Bandwidth Ad Hoc ...

26.03.2004

Abstract
Wireless networks are rapidly gaining popularity. And while most of the focus and research is targeted at increasing the bandwidth, which is great for surfing the web, streaming multimedia, and transferring large files, not all applications are in need of high throughput.

Wireless sensor networks are a new breed of networks which focus on low power, low complexity, low latency, low bandwidth and low cost. Such networks are ideal for control and monitoring applications and could be used to network-enable temperature sensors, inventory, kitchen appliances and even sheep. Due to its low cost, wireless sensor networks can be introduced into fields which previously were unheard of.

The Electronic Shepherd system provides sheep and reindeer farmers with information regarding the state and location of their flocks during the grazing season. This system uses low cost off-the-shelf wireless equipment in combination with a proprietary networking protocol. Although this architecture has been proven to work, the proprietary Datalink/MAC protocol puts severe constraints on the project, and for this project to go further a new wireless protocol is needed.

In this thesis we have analyzed and evaluated several wireless networking technologies which could be applicable to the Electronic Shepherd project.
The very recent IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, also named ZigBee, is a wireless sensor networking protocol which meets all of the ESP's requirements.
Consequently, we have made the first publicly available reference implementation of this protocol.