Citation :

Varsha Kiran Bhosale, Varsha Degaonkar, Rolly Gupta, Binaya Patnaik, Vikas Nandgaonkar, Pranoti Prashant Mane, Smita Mahajan, Aarav Anand Bhanushali, "A Higher Order Throughput Model for 802.15.4 MAC," International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT), vol. 74, no. 6, pp. 120-130, 2026. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/22315381/IJETT-V74I6P108

Abstract

IEEE 802.15.4 is one of the most popular protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) because of its low power consumption and flexible superframe structure, but throughput performance is affected by a considerable number of interrelated MAC layer parameters with high sensitivity. The current investigations are dominated by single-parameter tuning as well as heuristic reconfigurations, with little understanding of how the key configuration variables interact. In this paper, a general semi-analytical model to estimate the throughput is proposed for the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC in beacon-enabled mode with star topology. The joint effect of beacon order, superframe order, packet size, rate, and number of nodes, including guaranteed time slots, is analysed through a fractional factorial design-of-experiments approach to reduce experimentation complexity. Main and interaction effects found to be statistically significant are determined through the analysis method of variance, with the interpretable throughput model being established as a function of SO–BO ratio, aggregated traffic load, packet size, and GTS allocation. The results show that the throughput performance is predominantly through multiple parameter interactions rather than through its individual settings and that an informed configuration in a based IEEE 802.15.4 framework can achieve noticeable throughput enhancements with no change to the protocol stack. The proposed method offers a feasible criterion to determine the MAC parameter setting for throughput-oriented WBANs and WSNs in constrained environments.

Keywords

Throughput, Fractional Factorial Design, IEEE 802.15.4 MAC, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Wireless Body-Area Networks (WBANs).

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