DYMO as routing protocol for IEEE-802.15.
4 Enabled Wireless Sensor Networks
A. S. Raghuvanshi
Indian Institute of Information Technology, IIITA
Deoghat, Jhalwa
Allahabad 211012
India
asr@iiita.ac.in
Abstract- Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is an emerging
field of engineering with various applications. They have
emerged as a new class of large scale networks of embedded
systems with limited communication, computation and energy
resources. Recently adopted IEEE 802.15.4 standards for Low-
rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN) are most
extensively used communication platform for WSNs.
Conventional routing in IEEE 802.15.4 networks is based on
Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) which facilitates
the building of mesh networks for data dissemination. The
Dynamic MANET On-demand (DYMO) routing protocol is a
simple and fast routing protocol which is still in its internet
draft and is in its 21st version. It is designed basically for multi-
hop ad-hoc networks. In this paper we present a performance
evaluation of DYMO routing protocols for IEEE-802.15.4
enabled WSNs. The performance of routing protocols is carried
out base upon average energy consumption, average
throughput, average end to end delay and average battery
consumption and is compared with presently used AODV.
I INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can be defined as a self
configured network formed using a large numbers of small
embedded devices, each with sensing, computation and
communication capabilities. Each device is called sensor
node that are distributed over a geographical area with
either predefined locations or randomly deployed.
Individual sensor nodes posses limited processing,
communicating and energy recourses. These sensor nodes
can sense, measure, and gather information from the
vicinity, based the local pre defined decision process, can
transmit the sensed information (data) to the user or
information sink [1]-[3]. Recent studies [4], [5] shows that
the employment of WSNs for industrial applications is
expected to increase at an exponential pace in coming
years with their intrusion in the fields of logistics,
automation and control. Sensor nodes work on batteries
and most of times it may be impossible to replace or
recharge the batteries once network is deployed. In some
cases it may be possible to scavenge energy from external
environment to recharge the primary energy source [6]. In
any case energy in WSN is a constrained resource and
must be utilized judiciously to improve the lifetime of
Sensor network .Energy consumption for communication
and computational processing is well studied and research
shows that communicating 1 kB of data over 100m
distance consumes roughly the same amount of energy as
computing 3 million instructions [7]. Communication of
sensed data from the sensor nodes happens to be main
cause of energy depletion for sensor nodes. In order to
extend the active life of WSN we need to process data
locally and send the processed information to sink node.
One of possible solution for optimal use of available
energy is by using energy efficient routing protocols for
data dissemination.
978-1-4244-9730-0/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
S. Tiwari
Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, MNNIT
Teliar Ganj
Allahabad 211004
India
stiwari@mnnit.ac.in
Recently adopted IEEE 802.15.4 standards for Low-rate
Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN)[8], which
has been designed to have properties of low cost, low data
rate, short transmission range and most importantly low
power consumption makes it suitable for WSNs. IEEE
802.15.4 standards focuses only on physical (PHY) and
medium access control (MAC) layer upper layer of the
protocol are kept user specific. ZigBee Alliance [9] which
deals with marketing, interoperability, and commonly
accepted specifications for WPAN devices manufactured
by different manufacturers. ZigBee has devices a
specification [10] for higher layer communication protocol
suite based on 802.15.4 PHY and MAC specifications.
Most of the commercially available WSN platforms such
as MICA, MICAZ, Imote2, TeslosB, TI CC243 etc have
adopted IEEE 802.15.4 standard for their PHY and MAC
specifications and ZeegBee for their upper layer
communication protocols specifications. Routing of data in
ZigBee is based on the well-known ‘Ad-Hoc On-demand
Distance Vector’ (AODV) protocol [11]. AODV is a
reactive protocol that was basically designed for highly
dynamic wireless mobile ad hoc networks. AODV is
capable of both unicast and multicast routing in Ad hoc
networks. It is an on demand algorithm, meaning that it
builds routes between nodes only as desired by source
nodes. Dynamic On-demand MANET routing protocol
(DYMO)[12] is the current engineering focus for reactive
routing in the MANET. DYMO, operates very similarly to
AODV, but requires only the most basic route discovery
and maintenance procedures only. In this study we present
a performance analysis of DYMO as compare to AODV
for IEEE 802.14.5 enabled WSNs. Section II presents an
overview of adopted IEEE 802.15.4 standard for their PHY
and MAC. Section III presents a brief description of
AODV and DYMO routing. Section IV presents a brief
description of chosen metric for result comparison by
simulation, section V presents results of our study. Section
VI concludes the study.
IEEE 802.15.4 STANDARD OVERVIEW
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard [8] which defines the physical
(PHY) and medium access layers (MAC) for low cost, low
rate personal area networks (LR-WPAN). The advantages
of an LR-WPAN are ease of installation, reliable data
transfer, short range of operation, extremely low cost,
energy efficient duty cycling for long battery life, while
maintaining a simple and flexible protocol stack for upper
layers. The energy efficient duty cycling makes it most
promising technology for WSNs.
IEEE 802.15.4: The physical layer (PHY)
The physical layer supports three frequency bands: a 2450
MHz band (with 16 channels), a 915 MHz band (with 10
channels) and a 868 MHz band (1 channel), all using the
Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) access mode.
The 2450 MHz band employs Offset Quadrature Phase
Shift Keying (O-QPSK) for modulation while the 868/915
MHz bands rely on Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK).
Table 1 summarizes the main features of the three bands.
Besides activation and deactivation of the radio
transceiver, the physical layer supports functionalities for
channel selection, link quality estimation (LQI) for
received packets, energy detection (ED) measurement for
current channel and clear channel assessment (CCA) for
CSMA-CA Channel frequency selection for data
transmission and reception.
Table 1 Physical Layer Specification for IEEE 802.15.4
Properties 2450 MHz 915 MHz 868 MHz
Gross Data Rate 250kbps 40kbps 20kbps
Number of channels 16 10 1
Modulation O-QPSK BPSK BPSK
Pseudo noise chip 32 15 15
sequence
Bits per symbol 4 1 1 end-devices. Data transfer in the opposite direction is
Symbol period 16µs 24 µs 49 µs
>15ms >15ms >15ms
Latency
Range 10-20m 10-20m 10-20m
IEEE 802.15.4: The MAC layer
The MAC layer of IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines two
types of nodes, Reduced Function Devices (RFDs) and
Full Function Devices (FFDs). FFDs are equipped with a
full set of MAC layer functionalities, which enables them
to act both as a network coordinator or a network end-
device. When acting as a network coordinator, FFDs send
beacons that provide synchronization, communication and
network join services to other devices. RFDs can only act
as end-devices and are equipped with sensors for detection
or measurements. They may only interact with a single
FFD to route the sensed information to the sink using
multi-hop communication. Depending upon the
application, IEEE 802.15.4 may operate either of the two
main types of network topologies, namely, the star
topology and the peer-to-peer topology. In the star
topology, a master–slave network model is adopted where
an FFD takes up the role of PAN coordinator the other
nodes can be either RFDs or FFDs that will only
communicate to the PAN coordinator. In the peer-to-peer
topology, a FFD can talk to other FFDs within its radio
range and can relay messages to other FFDs outside of its
radio coverage through an intermediate FFD, forming a
multi-hop network. One of the PAN coordinator (normally
first one) is selected as network coordinator in order to
administer network operation. The PAN coordinator may
operate its PAN with a Super-frame or without it
depending upon the battery conservation need. In the first
case it starts the Super-frame with a beacon serving for
synchronization and to describe the Super-frame structure
for sending control information to the PAN. As shown in
Figure No. 1, the Super-frame is divided into an active
period called Super-frame Duration (SD) and an inactive
period, where the PAN coordinator may go to sleep for
conserving battery. The active portion is further divided
into fixed size slots containing a Contention Access Period
(CAP), and a Contention Free Period (CFP). During CAP,
nodes compete for channel access using a slotted CSMA-
CA protocol, and during CFP nodes transmit without
contending for the channel, in Guaranteed Time Slots
(GTS) assigned and administered by the PAN coordinator.
When an end-device needs to send data to a coordinator
(non GTS) it must wait for the beacon to synchronize and
then contend for channel access. On the other hand,
communication from a coordinator to an end-device is
indirect. The coordinator stores the message and
announces pending delivery in the beacon. End-devices
usually sleep most of the time and wake up periodically to
see if they have to receive some messages from the
coordinator by waiting for the beacon. When they notice
that a message is available, they request it explicitly during
the CAP. When a coordinator wishes to talk to another
coordinator it must synchronize with beacon similar to an
end-device. The other option for PAN communication is to
do without a Super-frame. The PAN coordinator never
sends beacons and communication happens on the basis of
un-slotted CSMA-CA. But in this case the coordinator has
to be always in active mode, ready to receive data from
based on polling where; the end device periodically wakes
up and polls the coordinator for pending messages. The
coordinator sends either the available messages or the
signal that none is available. In this case coordinator nodes
are active all the time hence communication between
coordinators poses no problems. In addition to data
transfer, the MAC layer offers channel scan and
association/disassociation functionalities.
Figure No.1 Super frame structure for Beacon enabled MAC IEEE
802.15.4
IEEE 802.15.4 LOW-POWER OPERATION
IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer provides a duty-cycle operation
by setting two system parameters, macBeaconOrder(BO)
and macSuperframeOrder(SO), such that low power
consumption is achieved for the deployed networks [8]. In
addition to determining the duty cycle, the BO and SO
parameters collaboratively provide various low-power
attributes under a single duty cycle for diverse
environments [13]. WSN are energy constrained system
hence low power operation of IEEE 802.15.4, needs
special mention. According to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
the super-frame active period is called super-frame
duration (SD) and Beacon Interval (BI) for given BO and
SO are defined as follows
2 (1)
2 (2)
Where

0.960 16
With
0 (3)
For beacon enable operation, 0 14 and 15 ,
for non beacon enable operation.
Low power operation for network is achieved by achieving
low duty-cycle. The duty cycle in IEEE 802.15.4 is defined
as the proportion of time during which a system is active
(SD) with respect to beacon interval (BI) and can be
calculated as.
1 RREQ packets, the source node uses an expanding ring
100% 100%
2
Figure No. 2 Super-frame structure for different (BO, SO) settings for the
duty cycle of 50%
When the duty cycle ≤ 100%, devices can turn off their
transceivers during inactive periods to reduce power
consumption. A large duty cycle results in higher power
consumption as devices remain in active state for longer
periods. Additionally, a specific duty cycle can be
achieved by setting several different combinations of (BO,
SO) pairs. For example, the (BO, SO) pairs, (5, 3), (6, 4),
and (7, 5) have the same duty cycle 1/4 (i.e., 25%).
However, different pairs under the same duty cycle provide
various low power attributes, and have differing impacts
on throughput and energy efficiency. Figure No.2 presents
two examples of a super-frame structure for different (BO,
SO) settings for the duty cycle of 50%. It can be seen if a
large BO is used, inactive periods are extended and
transmission latency will increase. Also, with a long
inactive period, more buffered packets will contend for
channel simultaneously at the start of the next active
period. This will result in throughput degradation due to
increased packet drop rate. Conversely, if BO is small, the
length of the super-frame (BI) decreases, but the beacon
transmission frequency will increase. As number of
beacons increase, available bandwidth for data delivery
will decrease. Furthermore, overall power consumption
increases due to increase in beacon transmissions.
However, a small BO benefits the throughput since the
number of buffered packet will be less due to a shortened
inactive period. If the duty cycle is extremely small, the
throughput could be reduced significantly because of
insufficient bandwidth. Therefore, a trade-off exists for
duty-cycle setting between system throughput and device
energy consumption. For WSN energy consumption is one
of the most important parameter, hence proper selection of
BO and SO is very important. [14] Presents a
comprehensive analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 duty cycle
operation.
AODV
Ad-Hoc On-demand Distance Vector’ (AODV) protocol
[15] is a reactive protocol that was basically designed for
highly dynamic wireless mobile ad hoc networks. It is
adopted as standard routing protocol for ZigBee
specification [10] To find a route to the destination, the
source node that does not have destination route,
broadcast Route request packets (RREQs)to neighboring
nodes, which then forwards the request to their neighbors
and so on. In order to control network-wide broadcasts of
search technique where source node starts searching the
destination using some initial time to live (TTL) value. If
no reply is received within the discovery period, TTL
value incremented by a pre defined increment value. This
process continues until a predefined threshold is reached.
When an intermediate node forwards the RREQ, it records
the address of the neighbor from which first packet of the
broadcast is received, thereby establishing a reverse path.
When the RREQ reaches a node that is either the
destination node or an intermediate node with a fresh
enough route to the destination, replies by uni-casting the
route reply (RREP) towards the source node. As the RREP
is routed back along the reverse path, intermediate nodes
along this path set up forward path entries to the
destination in its route table and when the RREP reaches
the source node, a route from source to the destination
establish. A route established between source and
destination pair is maintained as long as needed by the
source. If the source node moves during an active session,
route discovery is reinitiated to find a new route to
destination. However, if the destination or some
intermediate node moves, the node upstream of the break
remove the routing entry and send route error (RERR)
message to the affected active upstream neighbors. These
nodes in turn propagate the RERR to their precursor nodes,
and so on until the source node is reached. The affected
source node may then choose to either stop sending data or
reinitiate route discovery for that destination by sending
out a new RREQ message. AODV is designed for highly
dynamic mobile networks but the un-predictable topology
change in WSN due to node failure makes them virtual
mobile networks. Hence a reactive routing protocol is a
good choice especially for event driven or periodic data
driven WSN applications.
DYMO
The Dynamic MANET On-demand (DYMO) [12] routing
protocol is a simple and fast routing protocol for multi-hop
networks. It discovers uni-cast routes among DYMO
routers within the network in an on-demand fashion,
offering improved convergence in dynamic topologies.
When a source needs to send a data packet, it sends an
RREQ to discover a route to the destination same as
AODV. After issuing an RREQ, the origin DYMO router
waits for a route to be discovered. If a route is not obtained
within RREQ waiting period, it may again try to discover a
route by issuing another RREQ. To reduce congestion in a
network by repeated attempts for route discovery it utilizes
exponential backoff mechanism. Data packets awaiting to
be routed are buffered in a predefined sized buffer that
discards older packets first.. Buffering of data packets can
have either positive or negative effects on the system
performance. Therefore buffer size and settings should be
administratively configured or intelligently controlled. If a
route discovery has been attempted for a predefined
maximum attempts and a route to the target node is not
discovered, all data packets intended for that node are
dropped from the buffer and a Destination Unreachable
ICMP message is delivered to the source. When a data
packet is to be forwarded and cannot be delivered due to
missing route to the Destination an RERR is issued. An
RERR notifies DYMO routers that a link break has
occurred and certain routes are no longer available. If the
route with the broken link has not been used recently, the
RERR should not be generated. DYMO is applicable to
memory constrained devices, since little routing state is
maintained in each DYMO router. Only routing
information related to active sources and destinations is
maintained. WSN being a resource constrained system
DYMO has the capability to replace the existing AODV
routing from ZigBee stack.
PERFORMANCE METRIC
We have chosen four performance metrics to analyze and
compare the performance of both protocols AODV and
DYMO. These metrics are as follows:
Average Throughput at base station
It measures the average number of bytes received at the
base station for constant load at every node. It is calculated
using the following formula
N
∑ B *8
i=2
i
bits
Throughput at Base station =
(TL − TF )
Where,
Bi = Number of bytes received from ith node
TL = Time last packet received by base station
TF = Time first packet received by base station
A higher value of this metric will indicate higher number
of data packets received by base station for the given
simulation time.
Average end to end delay
It measures the average delay for packet transmission
between node and base station. It is calculated using the
following formula
∑ (t − tsi )
P
ri
Average end − to − end Delay = i =1
P value of BO is varied from 3 through 5 resulting duty cycle
where for each ith packet ,
tri = time when base station received the packet
tsi = time when s ensor node sent the packet
P = total number of packets received
A lower value of this metric will indicate low latency in
system .
Average energy consumption
It indicates the average amount of energy spent in each
node for each individual task. An increased value of
average energy consumption indicates more power
consumption by each node. This metric is computed with
the help of the following equation
∑ (TE + REi + IEi )
N
i
Avr Energy Consumption = 1
N
where for ith node
TEi = Energy Consumed for transmission of packet for node i
REi = Energy Consumed for reception of packet for node i
IEi = Energy Consumed in idle ( active with no data) for node i
N = Number of Nodes
A lower value of this metric indicates energy efficient
system
Total Charge Consumed
This metric specifies the total charge consumed in mAHr
during the simulation. This metric is computed with the
help of following equation
Total Charge Consumed = ∑1 ( IBi − FBi )
N
where for ith node
IBi = Initial Battery Capacity of node i in mAHr
FBi = Initial Battery Capacity of node i in mAHr
This metric measures the current drainage of each node
and will indicate the total battery consumed during session.
Sec
A lower value of this metric will indicate a power efficient
system.
SIMULATION MODEL AND PARAMETERS.
We have used QualNet 5.1 [17] for generating random
scenario of varying number of nodes with different seeds.
We varied the number of nodes starting from 50 numbers
through 250 numbers in steps of 50. For each deployment
we have generated 100 different set of spatial data for 100
X 100m2 area. Position of the sink is assumed to be at the
center of the sensor field. Each node sends 80 packets of
512 bytes each to the base station. Hence at the application
layer we have used CBR where each node sends 80
packets to base station at every a 10 sec interval. Total
simulation time is kept to be 900sec. We have used IEEE
802.15.4 MAC and physical radio. The value of duty cycle
is varied by selecting different values of BO and SO as
explained in section II. The value of SO is taken as 3, and
of 100%, 50%, and 25% respectively. Since in our study
we have considered three different duty cycles and two
different routing protocols, which results in six different
combinations of each. Each combination is given unique
name e.g. AODV with 100% duty cycle is termed it as
AODV 100% or DYMO with 25% duty cycle is termed as
DYMO 25% and so on.
Hence six different scenarios generate are summarized in
table II
Table II Average energy consumption
Scenario Duty Cycle Routing Protocol Scenario Name 1
1 100% AODV AODV 100% AODV 100%
2 50% AODV AODV 50% AODV 50%
0.9
3 25% AODV AODV 25% AODV 25%

Average Energy Consumed in (mJ)

4 100% DYMO DYMO 100% DYMO 100%
0.8
5 50% DYMO DYMO 50% DYMO 50%
6 25% DYMO DYMO 25% DYMO 25%
0.7

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 0.6

0.5
Average Throughput at base station
0.4
3500

0.3
3000
0.2
50 100 150 200 250
2500 Number of Nodes
Throughput (bps)

DYMO with 25% duty cycle consumes the least amount of

2000
AODV 100% energy or we cans say that energy efficiency is best for
AODV 50%
DYMO 25%. Energy consumption increases with number
AODV 25%
DYMO 100% of node.
1500 Total Charge Consumed
DYMO 50%
DYNO 25% 70
AODV 100%
1000
AODV 50%
60 AODV 25%
500 DYMO 100%
50 100 150 200 250 DYMO 50%
50
Number of Nodes DYMO 25%

We plotted the value of average throughput given by 40

equation 1 with respect to number of nodes considered in

the scenario for six different case considered as shown in 30

table 1 From throughput point of view DYMO with 25%

duty cycle outperforms rest. Higher throughput obtained 20
for DYMO with 25% duty cycle is due to the fact that
when the node is in the sleep mode the packets are 10
buffered and hence the loss of packets is minimized
whereas in AODV no such mechanism exists. 0
50 100 150 200 250
Average end to end delay
1100
DYMO 100% Total charge consumption plot shows that DYMO 25% has
1000 DYMO 50% least current drainage from batteries where as AODV
DYMO 25%
AODV 100%
100% has maximum drainage.
Average End to end Delay (ms)

900
AODV 50% CONCLUSION
800 AODV 25%
Average throughput is highest for DYMO when it is used
700
with 25% duty cycle at MAC; also energy consumption is
600 least so we can say that most energy efficient routing of
data will occur when we use DYMO as routing protocol
500
with 25% duty cycle at MAC level. End to End delay is
400 more at low duty cycle DYMO so there exists a trade off
300
between delay and throughput. We can conclude that for
delay tolerant sensor networks DYMO with 25% duty
200 cycle presents more attractive option for energy efficiency
50 100 150 200 250
Number of Nodes as compare to present day AODV routing.
Average end to end delay, is minimum for DYMO with
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