Reliability evaluation of point-to-point links based on IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer for IWSAN applications

The reliability of point-to-point links for Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSN) based on the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer (PHY) and operating in the unlicensed 2.45 GHz radio band is studied in this paper. An in‐lab methodology based on channel emulation is used. The IEEE 802.15.4 PHY is tested under different wireless channels: additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), Rician, Rayleigh, and the IEEE 802.15.4a non‐line of sight (NLoS) industrial channel. The metrics used to evaluate the reliability are the packet error rate (PER) and the distribution of packet error burst (PEB). Reliability results are presented and compared with the reliability requirements of typical industrial use cases. Two mathematical expressions are also obtained to predict PER and distribution of PEB as a function of the RMS Delay Spread (RDS).