Reliable broadcast in ZigBee networks

ZigBee is a new industrial standard for ad hoc networks based on IEEE 802.15.4. It is used for low data rate wireless networks and sensor networks. The data broadcast algorithms for ZigBee networks have been recently studied in [21], where the major task is to reduce the number of rebroadcast nodes. A broadcast algorithm should be robust, which can be achievable by introducing redundant transmissions to some extent. This issue will be studied by this paper. Results presented here extend the forward node selection algorithm in [21] for ZigBee networks. The tree neighbor information is exploited to make sure that every node is covered by at least one of its tree neighbors. A non-random rebroadcast timer is set according to the number of neighbors to be covered, distance and link quality to trigger rebroadcast times. The complexity of the proposed algorithm is polynomial in terms of both computation time and memory space. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the broadcast redundancy, coverage time, and coverage ratio, when the number of nodes varies and there is packet loss.