Enhancing the Performance of 6LoWPAN-Based Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) with IEEE 802.11AH (Wi-Fi HaLow)

6LoWPAN allows IEEE 802.15.4 standard-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to be connected to the Internet through the Internet protocol IPv6; however, its performance decreases as the network grows in size due to complications such as the bottleneck problem; therefore this paper aims to improve the performance of 6LoWPAN-based WSNs by using the IEEE 802.11AH standard as a backbone in these networks, since this emerging new technology is suitable for IoT applications, as it can provide a coverage range up to 1,000 m and data transmission rates up to 78 Mbps. The IEEE 802.11AH standard can be used as a backbone by utilizing its characteristics to improve some of the performance parameters of the 6LoWPAN networks such as end-to-end delay, frames delivery ratio, and the network throughput. This paper proposes a heterogeneous network infrastructure consisting of 6LoWPAN and the IEEE 802.11AH standard to enable bidirectional data transmission between the network components and the Internet via the Internet protocol IPv6 with two types of gateways, the edge gateways to connect the entire network to the Internet and the intermediate gateways to connect the 6LoWPAN clusters to the edge gateways. The simulation results demonstrate that the heterogeneous network approach can provide significant improvement gains compared to the 6LoWPAN homogeneous networks, since it shows clear improvements to the packets delivery ratio, the end-to-end delay mean value and the network throughput, subsequently leading to a distinct enhancement in the network’s overall reliability.