Heterogeneous traffic performance comparison for 6LoWPAN enabled low-power transceivers

We study the suitability of IPv6/6LowPan protocols under heterogeneous traffic loads in environmental sensor networks: microclimate nodes generating periodic but low-bandwidth data, while multimedia nodes generating high-bandwidth data streams on demand, for example. We further study the performance tradeoffs we can achieve by varying the radio frequency or data rate of radio transceivers in both indoor and outdoor environments. We use one legacy and two new IEEE 802.15.4 compliant transceivers, in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz bands. We show that, surprisingly, the 2.4 GHz radio outperforms the 900 MHz radio outdoors in terms of the maximum range, but performs worse indoors at higher data rates. We show, however, that irrespective of the radio band used, the Berkeley low-power IP network stack supports high-bandwidth data transmissions (up to 120 kbps), while handling heterogeneous traffic well --- at 99.9% reliability.