Enabling validation of IEEE 802.15.4 performance through a new dual-radio Omnet++ model

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) presents a promising technology concept for a wide range of applications due to the possibility of interconnecting any device with connection to Internet in order to improve the daily life of human beings. This fact, along with the increasing use of devices with wireless capabilities has created a saturation problem in the use of the radio-electric spectrum, which decreases the performance of wireless communications. A way to solve this problem is to develop policies for communicating nodes in different spectrum channels by means of the use of a dual radio scheme, which permits the communication in the same network using several channels. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a dual-radio scheme in IEEE 802.15.4 networks for the Ad-Hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing protocol (AODV). The evaluation of our proposal has been done by developing a new IEEE 802.15.4 dual-radio module for OMNeT++ Network Simulator. Our simulation results show up to 36 % increase of network throughput when dual-radio schemes are used in the nodes, reaching a maximum of 20 % increase in the energy consumption.