查看文章

The IEEE 802.15.4 medium access control (MAC) protocol is an enabling technology for time sensitive wireless sensor networks thanks to its guaranteed-time slot (GTS) mechanism in the beacon-enabled mode. However, the protocol only supports explicit GTS allocation, i.e. a node allocates a number of time slots in each superframe for exclusive use. The limitation of this explicit GTS allocation is that GTS resources may quickly disappear, since a maximum of seven GTSs can be allocated in each superframe, preventing other nodes to benefit from guaranteed service. Moreover, the GTSs may be only partially used, resulting in wasted bandwidth. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes i-GAME, an implicit GTS allocation mechanism in beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 networks. The allocation is based on implicit GTS allocation requests, taking into account the traffic specifications and the delay …