Predicting Communication Delay and Energy Consumption for IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee Wireless Sensor Networks

The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) particularly for real time applications raise fundamental problemsfor the scientific community. These problems are related to the limit of energy resource and the real timeconstraints on the communication delay. The well functioning of such networks depends mainly on thenetwork lifetime result of nodes energies and the communication delay which should meet the requireddeadlines. Thus, the well design of Real-Time Wireless Sensor Networks must be with the prediction ofthe energy consumption and the communication delay. Therefore, this paper propose an analytical modelto predict the lifetime and the delay in IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee WSN. Our proposed model is based onrealistic assumptions. It considers the most important network features such as idle times from theBackoff, overhearing and interferences by collisions and transmission errors. Compared to simulationresults and other analytical approaches, our model gives a reliable lifetime and delay prediction.