An Improved Markov Model for IEEE 802.15.4 Slotted CSMA/CA Mechanism

IEEE 802.15.4 protocol is proposed to meet the low latency and energy consumption needs in low-rate wireless applications, however, few analytical models are tractable enough for comprehensive evaluation of the protocol. To evaluate the IEEE 802.15.4 slotted CSMA/CA channel access mechanism in this paper, we propose a practical and accurate discrete Markov chain model, which can dynamically represent different network loads. By computing the steady-state distribution probability of the Markov chain, we obtain an evaluation formula for throughput, energy consumption, and access latency. Then we further analyze the parameters that influence performance including packet arrival rate, initial backoff exponent and maximum backoff number. Finally, NS2 simulator has been used to evaluate the performance of the 802.15.4 CSMA/CA mechanism under different scenarios and to validate the accuracy of the proposed model. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi: ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Supported by the National Basic Research 973 Program of China under Grant No. 2006CB303000 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 60673187, 60702009, and 60872055.