Improving Broadcast Performance of Radio Duty-Cycled Internet-of-Things Devices

Abstract

Asynchronous Radio Duty Cycling (ARDC) protocols can make embedded networked devices more energy efficient by keeping their radio off most of the time without a need for synchronization between devices. Some ARDC protocols can operate under 6LoWPAN adaptation layer in order to enable the vision of Internet-of-Things for battery operated devices. In this paper, we propose three different protocols which are modifications of the widely accepted ARDC protocol, ContikiMAC. The proposed solutions drastically improve energy efficiency and link layer delay for broadcast packets. Moreover, the proposed solutions are backward compatible with ContikiMAC and provide high reliability against frame reception errors. We present a detailed comparison with the legacy ContikiMAC and a standardized ARDC protocol, IEEE 802.15.4e Coordinated Sampled Listening (CSL), as well as the case of no duty cycling.