This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts

for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings

Adaptive Sleeping Periods in IEEE 802.15.4 for Efficient

Energy Savings: Markov-Based Theoretical Analysis
Mounib Khanafer, Mouhcine Guennoun, Hussein T. Mouftah
School of Information Technology and Engineering
University of Ottawa
800 King Edward Ave., Ottawa, ON, Canada
khanafer@site.uottawa.ca, mguennou@uottawa.ca, mouftah@site.uottawa.ca
AbstractThe strict resource-constrained conditions under
which Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) operate impose
primary restrictions on power consumption. Algorithms
implemented on sensor nodes should refrain from performing
power-hungry, complex computations in order to prolong the
lifetime of the overall WSN. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is the
appropriate suite of specifications that conforms to the
distinguished characteristics of WSNs. This standard is suited
for low data rate, low power, and low radio transmission ranges
that are typical in WSNs. This paper proposes a modification to
the IEEE 802.15.4 standard that achieves efficient power savings
for the sensor nodes, better channel utilization, and improved
reliability. The proposal is based on the addition of a sleeping
state that allows nodes to save more power while reducing the
level of packet collisions. The sleeping periods can be tuned such
that the highest level of channel utilization is achieved. A
theoretical analysis based on Markov chain is performed to
derive a mathematical model for our proposal. Using MATLAB
software, we show that we can achieve high levels of channel
utilization, enhance reliability, and save more power compared
to the performance of the original IEEE 802.15.4 standard.
Index Terms Wireless Sensor Networks; Markov chain;
Beacon-Enabled IEEE 802.15.4; Channel Utilization; Power
Conservation; Reliability.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are constituted by a

large number of sensor nodes, which are usually deployed in
hostile environments to collect data about various
phenomena. These nodes are small-sized, battery-powered,
and memory-constrained. Due to the harsh environment of
deployment, it is impractical to recharge, or even replace, the
nodes that fail due to the depletion of their power resources.
This imposes power conservation as a primary design
requirement for any algorithm or system to be deployed in
the WSN. Complex algorithms that require extended memory
and processing capabilities require rich power resources, and
therefore, reduce the lifetime of the WSN dramatically. A
common strategy for power conservation is to force sensor
nodes to sleep while not involved in any communication
activity (i.e., transmission or reception).
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines the specifications for
wireless devices that use low data rates, low-power, and
short-range radio frequency transmissions in a wireless
personal area network (WPAN) [1]. This standard is quite

suitable for implementation in WSNs as it conforms to their

requirements and constraints. In this paper, we propose an
extension to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard by incorporating
adaptive sleeping periods. These periods can be adapted with
respect to the network size such that efficient power savings
as well as high channel utilizations are achieved. Our
proposal is theoretically modeled using Markov chain and
compared to the performance of the original IEEE 802.15.4
standard. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In
Section II we review related research efforts that provided
mathematical modeling for IEEE 802.15.4. In Section III we
describe our extension to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard and
explain how to mathematically model it using Markov chain.
Section IV studies the theoretical performance of the
proposed extension. Finally, Section V concludes the paper.
II.

RELATED WORK

In this section we review the mathematical models

proposed to study the performance of the IEEE 802.15.4
MAC sub-layer (for simplicity, we sometimes refer to it as
the MAC sub-layer). Considerable research efforts
concentrated on proposing Markov-based models for the
MAC sub-layer in WSNs. In [2] the authors propose an
adaptive MAC sub-layer to minimize power consumptions,
while achieving reliable and timely communications. They
formulate an optimization problem with an objective function
to minimize the total power consumption, subject to
constraints on reliability and packet delivery delay. The
decision variables are chosen to be the MAC parameters,
namely,
macMinBE,
macMaxCSMABackoffs,
and
macMaxFrameRetries. After presenting a generalized
Markov chain model for the slotted CSMA-CA mechanism,
under saturated traffic conditions, the authors provide
numerical results that show how to properly tune the decision
variables in order to prolong the lifetime of the network. The
overall outcome is an adaptive MAC sub-layer protocol that
conforms to the constraints of WSNs. In [3] the authors
provide an analytical evaluation for the slotted CSMA-CA in
the presence of uplink and acknowledged uplink traffic,
under both saturated and unsaturated conditions. A Markovbased model is developed and the performance of the
standard in terms of power consumption and throughput is
analyzed. They describe guidelines to tune the MAC

978-1-61284-233-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings

parameters to increase throughput and power savings. In [4]

the authors use Markov chain and M/G/1 queues to study the
uplink performance of unsaturated slotted CSMA-CA. They
mainly focus on the effect of retransmissions, due to
collisions, on power consumption and latency. These
retransmissions have direct impact on the analytical model as
a whole. They also address the impact of the delay line on
their modelling. The delay line refers to the case when a node
holds its CCAs to the next superframe as the current one is
not sufficient to finish the CCAs and send the packet. In [5]
the authors propose a Markov-based analytical model for two
types of WSN architectures working under slotted CSMACA. In the first architecture, nodes communicate directly
with the final sink. In the second architecture, nodes are
organized in a cluster-tree in which data are relayed from
source nodes to the final sink through a series of intermediate
nodes. Traffic is unacknowledged and sensor nodes have
finite buffers. The performance is evaluated in terms of
throughput and packet delivery delay. In [6] the authors study
the performance in terms of throughput and energy
consumption. In their Markov-based model, they concentrate
on the effect of shutting nodes down while no packets are
available for transmission. Also, a modification to the
specification of IEEE 802.15.4, in terms of the initialization
of the contention window, is proposed to improve the
performance of the WSN. In [7] the authors develop a slotbased model (that is, each backoff slot is modelled as a single
state in the Markov chain) for the MAC sub-layer with sleep
mechanism. The performance evaluation focused on power
consumption and throughput. Finally, in [8] the authors
model the slotted CSMA-CA taking into account
acknowledged unsaturated traffic and retransmissions (with
and without limit). In their study, only throughput is used as a
metric to evaluate the performance. These models provide
deep insight in the performance of IEEE 802.15.4. Based on
these models, we can discover more opportunities to conserve
power without degrading the original performance as we
show in the next section.
III.

EXTENSIONS TO IEEE 802.15.4

In this section we describe our proposed extensions to the

IEEE 802.15.4 MAC sub-layer.
Our main objective is to achieve more power savings such
that the lifetime of the overall WSN is prolonged. Of course,
conserving more power should not be on the account of other
important performance parameters like channel utilization
and reliability. The known strategy of conserving power is to
force nodes to sleep whenever possible. Therefore, we
propose that a node enters the sleep mode after each
successful transmission. That is, as the nodes compete to
access the communication medium, once a node captures the
medium and starts transmitting its packet, the node, after
ending its transmission, should sleep for some duration of
time. This behaviour reduces the level of contention among
the nodes to access the medium. That is, the probability of
collision (which is usually associated with wasted power as
the node needs to retransmit the collided packet again) is

reduced. The usefulness of this new sleep state can be better

observed if we notice that many nodes can be in the sleep
mode at the same time, which reflects into a significant
reduction in the probability of collisions. In the following
subsections we describe our Markov-based model for the
extended MAC sub-layer.

A. System Model and Analysis

To simplify our work of extending the IEEE 802.15.4
MAC sub-layer, we depend on incorporating our
modifications in the Markov model proposed by Park et al. in
[2] (we refer to it as Parks model in the rest of the paper).
We choose this model due to its accuracy in capturing the
main characteristics of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC sub-layer.
We firstly describe Parks system model and analysis and
then we discuss our extensions to it.
Park et al. use Markov chain to model the slotted CSMACA mechanism of the MAC sub-layer, with acknowledged,
unsaturated traffic and retry limits. A star topology, with a
PAN coordinator, is assumed with N nodes. The PAN
coordinator is the data sink. Similar to Bianchis known
model [9], the developed Markov model is per node. Three
stochastic processes are defined, namely, the backoff stage at
time t (denoted as s(t)), the state of the backoff counter at
time t (denoted as c(t)), and the state of the retransmission
counter at time t (denoted as r(t)). These processes describe
the states experienced by a node to transmit a packet. An
essential assumption for the Markov chain to be applicable
here is that the probability that any node starts sensing the
medium is independent. As a result, the stationary probability
that a node attempts the first clear channel assessment
(CCA1) at a random time slot is constant and independent of
other nodes. Therefore, we end up with a 3-dimentional
Markov chain described by the tuple (s(t), c(t), r(t)). In Fig. 1
we show a simplified version of Parks Markov chain model
in which only the first backoff stage is shown (refer to [2] for
the complete model). Next, we describe each and every state
of the Markov chain shown. The states (i,W0-1,j) to (i,Wm-1,
j) are the backoff states. W0 is the smallest contention
window size and is equal to 2macMinBE. The parameters m and
n are set to the values macMaxCSMABackoffs and
macMaxFrameRetries, respectively. The states Q0 to QL0-1 are
the idle states in which the node has no packets to send.
These states model the unsaturated traffic condition, since the
node remains in them as long as no packet arrival occurs.
States (i, 0, j) and (i, -1, j) represent CCA1 and CCA2,
respectively. States (-1, k, j) and (-2, k, j) represent the
successful transmission and packet collision, respectively.
The probabilities , , p, and Pc represent the probability of
finding CCA1 busy, the probability of finding CCA2 busy,
the probability of having no packet arrivals, and the
probability of collision, respectively. The parameters L0, Ls,
and Lc are the idle state length, the duration of successful
transmission, and the duration of packet collision,
respectively. Assuming the stationary distribution of the
lim
,
,
Markov chain to be b , ,

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings

, where i (-2, m), k (-1, max(Wi 1, Ls 1, Lc

1)), and j (0, n), the closed form expressions for the
distribution chain are derived. The details of the derivations
are tedious and the interested reader can refer to [2].

where, L is the length of the packet and Lack is the length of

the ACK packet (all measured in terms of
aUnitBackoffPeriod).

Figure 1. A simplified version of Park's Markov chain model.

Also, the authors approximate the formulas they derived

in order to reduce their complexity and thus make them
implementable on sensor nodes. In the following we provide
the approximated formulas that are of interest to our work:

, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

=1
, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

(1)
1

1
, ,

(2)

1
, ,

(3)
1

(4)
(5)
(6)

, ,

where,

(7)

(8)
1

(9)
(10)

From equations (2)-(5) we can derive a closed form

However, some additional
expression for
, , .
approximations are applied (like approximating the term
1
as 1
) and an approximation for , , , denoted
as , , , is formulated as follows:

(11)

, ,

(12)
1

where,
1

2 1
, and

,
1

1
.

B. Extensions to the Markov-based model of the

MAC sub-layer
We abide by the assumptions of Parks model stated in
the previous section. Our extension to Parks model is
attained by introducing a new state to model the fact that a
node will sleep after each successful packet transmission. The
new state is referred to as the standby state (SB state). The SB
state will be included in the dashed box that is shown directly
following the state (-1, Ls-1, n) in Fig. 1. The dashed box is
better illustrated in the snapshot in Fig. 2. LSB is the total
period of time the node spends in the SB state. We denote the
to
by
.
probability of being in any of the states
Note that
. Therefore,
. From Fig. 2, by applying the chain
regularities, we can find the formula of
:

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings

, ,

(13)

parameters, namely, power consumption, reliability, and

channel utilization. We use MATLAB 7.9.0 in plotting all the
graphs in the subsequent sections.

Figure 2. Introducing the SB state into Park's Markov chain model.

Using equation (12) and by approximating

as

1
(because y << 1), equation (13) can be further
approximated as:
1

, ,

(14)

Therefore, the normalization condition in equation (1)

should be updated to include the probability of being in the
SB state, that is,
.
From equation (11) we can see that the probability of
packet collision takes into account the fact that all nodes
except the sensing node itself (i.e., N-1 nodes) should refrain
from sending packets for the collision to be avoided.
Introducing the SB state means we will have lesser number of
nodes that are sensing the medium (because some nodes may
be in the SB state and thus should not be counted) to send
their packets. Therefore, equation (11) should consider the
nodes that are in the SB state. We denote the expected
number of nodes that are in the SB state at any time by
E(nSB). The formula for E(nSB) is:
1

(15)

As a result, equations (9) and (10) should be updated such

that N is replaced by N-E(nSB).
Also, equation (11) becomes:
1

(16)

Equation (16) indicates, when compared to (11), that a

reduction in the packet collision is anticipated due to the
inclusion of the SB state. Equations (6), (9), (10), (12) and
(13) form a system of 5 nonlinear equations with 5 variables,
, and
namely, , , ,
, , . Therefore, we can solve this
system using numerical methods.

C. Systems Performance
In studying the performance of the MAC sub-layer under
the extensions we proposed, we concentrate on three main

Figure 3. Average power consumed (for idle and sleep backoff

cases) with respect to the number of nodes in the cluster. Etot_i_origin
and Etot_s_origin represent the total average power consumed without
applying the SB state. Etot_i_new and Etot_s_new consider the SB state
(with LSB = 10 slots). These parameters are assumed: L = 50 slots, Ls
= Lc = 55 slots, Lack = 2 slots, L0 = 1, p = 0.1, m = 4, n = 3, and
macMinBE = 3.

a) Power Consumption
In [2], the authors distinguish between the cases when
the nodes radio is set in the idle mode or sleep mode during
the backoff period. In both cases, the total average power
consumed in the network (Etot) is the sum of the average
power consumed during backoff state (Eb), channel sensing
state (Esc), packet transmission state (Et), idle state (Eq), and
wake-up (Ew) state:
(17)
In computing the average power consumed at a state, the
value of the power wasted at that state is multiplied by the
probability of being at that state. For example, if the amount
, and we
of power consumed during the backoff state is
know from (2) that the probability of being in the backoff

state is
, , , then the average power
1
consumed during backoff is 0 0 0 , , . It should
in
be noticed that the inclusion of the term
equation (1) results in reducing the value of each of the other
state probabilities in the same equation. This is directly
reflected on the average power consumed at each of these
states, since the value of the state probability is included in
the power computation as stated above. Therefore, we
anticipate that the inclusion of the SB state will reduce the
total average power consumed in the WSN, compared to
Parks model. In Fig. 3 we compare the performance of our
model with that of Parks model in terms of the total average
power consumption (recall that a star topology is assumed.

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings

Therefore, N refers to the number of nodes constituting a

single cluster in the WSN). Both the idle backoff and sleep
backoff cases are considered. In this figure, we can see a
significant reduction in the total average power consumed
when the SB state is applied. For LSB = 10 slots and N = 10,
we can achieve a reduction of 28% in the power consumed
for the idle backoff case. For the sleep backoff mode, the
reduction is by 24.3%. This result shows the benefit of
introducing the SB state, as the lifetime of the WSN can be
extended significantly.

The latter factor should be included in the computation of the

total delay (DT). Thus, the formula for U will be given by:

where,

(19)

is the indicator function.

b) Reliability
In [2], reliability (R) is defined as the probability of
successful packet reception, and is approximated as:
1

(18)

where,
1
1

1
,
and

1
1
, , . As stated earlier, considering the SB
state requires replacing N by N-E(nSB) whenever applicable.
In Fig. 4, we plot the reliability against the number of nodes
in the cluster for both our model and Parks model. From this
figure we can see a significant improvement for the reliability
as we apply the SB state. In fact, the improvement can reach
an increase of almost 50% at N = 3. This is due to the fact
that the SB reduces the number of nodes contending to access
the medium, and thus, the probability of packet collision is
reduced. Therefore, the probability of packet reception (i.e.,
the reliability) is increased.
c) Channel Utilization
The last parameter we study to evaluate our models
performance is the channel utilization (U). This parameter is
important because we need to see whether forcing nodes to
sleep, after each successful packet transmission, is
underutilizing the communication channel or not. We define
the channel utilization by the ratio of the packet length (L) to
the total time (D) spent starting from sensing the channel, to
send the packet, till the ACK packet is received back. That is,
. In [2], D is defined taking into account the time spent
to successfully transmit the packet (Ls), the time wasted due
to j packet collisions (jLc), and the time spent during the
backoff stage (DBO). By introducing the SB state, we also
need to consider the time spent in this new state. In other
words, once all nodes succeed to successfully transmit their
packets, assuming that LSB is much longer than Ls+jLc+DBO,
we will reach a stage where all nodes are in the SB state and
the communication medium becomes idle. At that point, the
medium is not being used and thus the SB state will
contribute to the underutilization of the medium. The time
spent while all nodes are in the SB state is
1 .

Figure 4. Reliability with respect to the number of nodes in the

cluster. R_origin represents the reliability without applying the SB
state, while R_new consider the SB state (with LSB = 10 slots). These
parameters are assumed: L = 50 slots, Ls = Lc = 55 slots, Lack = 2
slots, L0 = 1, p = 0.1, m = 4, n = 3, and macMinBE = 3.

Figure 5. Channel Utilization (U) with respect to LSB at different

cluster sizes.

We now study the behavior of U as we increase LSB.

This behavior is depicted in Fig. 5 with different number of
nodes in the cluster. In this figure, we can see that at different
values for N, U keeps increasing to reach high values (as high
as 81.38% for N = 10 nodes). That is, the SB state is
providing better utilization for the channel compared to the
case where SB is absent (that is, when LSB is zero). However,
as we keep increasing LSB, we can see from the graphs that U
eventually decreases after reaching its highest value. This is
due to that as we incease LSB, nodes will spend more time
with no activities. Thereofe, when all of the nodes finish
transmissting their packets successfully, the medium will

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE ICC 2011 proceedings

keep idle for an extended period of time before one node

resumes the channel sensing again. This behavior is
anticipated. However, the interesting conslusion we gain
from Fig. 5 is that we are able to tune the LSB, once we know
N, in order to achieve the highest U desired. For example, a
cluster of 5 nodes can achieve its hieghst U by setting LSB to
almost 250 slots. From this conclusion, we can use Fig. 5 to
draw the relation between N and the LSB that corresponds to
the highest (i.e., optimal) U. This is shown in Fig. 6. This
figure is very helpful as it guides us to how to tune the LSB by
just knowing the size of the cluster under study.

utilization and the corresponding LSB. This relation provides a

guidline for network designers to tune their nodes to the
appropriate LSB, once they know their clusters sizes, to
achieve the desirable optimal channel utilization.
V.
[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]
Figure 6. LSB corresponding to the optimal U as a function of N.

IV.

CONCLUSION

In this paper we studied the effect of introducing a new

standby state in the mechanism of the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC
sub-layer. With this extension, nodes are forced to sleep after
each susseccful transmission of a packet. The main
motivation behind this extension is to conserve more power
such that the lifetime of the WSN is prolonged. We provided
a theoritical analysis based on Marckov chain. Our
mathematical model modified the model proposed by Park et
al. in [2]. In evaluating the performance of our model, we
studied the performance in terms of power consumption,
reliability, and channel utilization. We showed that our
extension, compared to Parks model, is able to achieve
significant improvements in these parameters. The main
contribution we achieved is that we showed that the
introduction of the SB state could significantly imrpove the
channel utilization, compared to the original IEEE 802.15.4.
However, we also found that increasing the LSB indefinitely
keeps the communication medium idle for longer periods,
which contributes to high channel underutilization. From that
we could plot a relation between the optimal channel

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

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