A Broadcast Protocol for IEEE 802.15.4e RIT Based Wi-SUN Systems

In this paper, a novel broadcast protocol is proposed for the receiver initiated transmission (RIT) media access control (MAC) protocol based wireless smart utility network (Wi-SUN) systems. The RIT protocol adopted by IEEE 802.15.4e achieves the low power consumption by switching the short wake-up state and the long sleep state, however, the protocol does not support broadcasting because terminals with the protocol are in the sleep state mostly. In the proposed protocol, terminals follow to adjusted periodical listening instructions that are unicasted, and the broadcasting frame transmitted at the periodical timing. Computer simulations are carried out to evaluate the required time for the layer 2 (L2) address resolution, as a typical case of the proposed broadcast protocol. The evaluation shows broadcasting is achieved by the proposed protocol and it is found that the average required time to finish the L2 address resolution is about 16s when a personal area network coordinator (PANC) performs broadcasting with repeat listen interval of 5.0s and the number of terminals is 100. Also, the evaluation results show that the proposed protocol has the flexibility that achieves broadcasting without setting parameters regardless of the number of terminals. By the proposed RIT based broadcast system, very low-power consumption internet protocol (IP) transmission in the Wi-SUN can be implemented within the permissible delay.