Analytical Approach for Performance of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have been noticed and researched in recent years. WSNs have inherent and unique characteristics compared with traditional networks. It consists of light-weight, low power and small size sensor nodes (SNs). They have ability to monitor, calculate and communicate wirelessly. Sensor nodes should send their collected data to a determined node called Sink. The sink processes data and performs appropriate actions. Nodes using routing protocol determine a path for sending data to sink. Sensor nodes have a limited transmission range, and their processing and storage capabilities as well as their energy resources are also limited. Routing protocols for wireless sensor networks have to ensure reliable multi-hop communication under these conditions. In this paper, we provide an accurate simulation model with respect to the specifications of IEEE 802.15.4 standard. We simulated and analyzed two different scenarios, where we examined the topological features and performance of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard using OPNET simulator. We compared the two possible topologies (Mesh and Tree) to each other. The comparative results have been reported for the performance metrics like: Number of hopes, End to End Delay and Load of network.