Publication

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard was designed to support the specification of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs), which the utilization is emerging within environments with real-time requirements such as industrial and aerospace. The network simulator NS-2 supports the test, simulation and evaluation of such type of networks, although the real-time support offered by the standard is not yet available in the NS-2 release. This paper presents improvements in the IEEE 802.15.4 NS-2 module to provide a better support for the emulation of networks with real-time requirements, through the incorporation of the contention free period (CFP) and of guaranteed time slot (GTS) defined within the IEEE 802.15.4 module present in the NS-2. Additionally, we also complement this module with IEEE 802.15.4 standard management operations not  implemented in the official NS-2 release.