Experimental Evaluation on the Performance of Zigbee Protocol

Abstract

ZigBee protocol is one of the most common protocols in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) of low bandwidth, low cost, high level of security, and low power consumption. This protocol supports mesh, tree, cluster tree and peer-to-peer topologies. In multi-hop mesh topology, ZigBee defines three types of devices which are coordinator, router and end devices. Routers consume much more power than end device nodes. This research will conduct Received Signal Strength Indicator and throughput measurements to measure the performance of the XBee-Pro S2B module which supports ZigBee protocol. Additionally, the coverage range of XBee-Pro S2B in indoor and outdoor scenarios in real world conditions plays an important role in this project. Therefore, measurements will be conducted to investigate the coverage of the XBee-Pro S2B at different scenarios. Besides that, it uses development kits such as XBee Explorer USB and Arduino XBee Shield for range test and some supported tools for XBee modules such as X-CTU to design the wireless sensor network and carry out the measurements. Arduino Uno will be implemented in this project to utilize with XBeePro S2B module. This research involves the study of architecture of WSN and device types with signal outage in real life conditions. Based on the results obtained for RSSI, the indoor environment limits the coverage of the network compared to outdoor (line of sight). Although multi-hop can significantly extend the coverage the throughput of network degrade significantly as function of packet length.