In this paper, the world's first experimental evaluation of the Wi-SUN Japan Utility Telemetering Association (JUTA) profile-compliant feathery receiver-initiated transmission (JUTA F-RIT) protocol is conducted. Firstly, the transmission success rate in an interference environment is evaluated by theoretical analysis and computer simulations. The analysis is derived from the interference model focusing on the carrier sense. The analysis and simulation results agree as regards the transmission success rate of the JUTA F-RIT protocol. Secondly, we develop the dongle-type prototype that hosts the JUTA F-RIT protocol. Measurement results in a cochannel interference environment show that the transmission success rate at the lower MAC layer is around 94% when the number of terminals is 20. When the waiting time for the establishment of the communication link can be extended to exceed 10 s, the JUTA F-RIT protocol can achieve the transmission success rate of over 90% without the re-establishment of the communication link and re-transmission of data frames. Moreover, the experimental results are examined from two viewpoints of the performance of the frame transmissions and the timeout incident, and the feature of the JUTA F-RIT protocol are discussed.

In this paper, an enhanced feathery receiver initiated transmission (eF-RIT) protocol is proposed for wireless smart utility network (Wi-SUN) systems with high traffic bi-directional communications such as emergency gas automatic meter infrastructure (AMI) cases. Firstly, we evaluate the conventional F-RIT protocol by simulation and experiment. The measurement results show that the IEEE 802.15.4e compliant conventional F-RIT protocol can achieve over 90% transmission success rates under the practical AMI specified conditions. However, the transmission success rates decline in high traffic environments. Detailed analyses indicate the degradation of the performance is caused by the timeout problem which occurs when the destination terminal is in the wait duration of the data transmission, and so does not transmit an RIT data request frame. To overcome this problem, we propose the eF-RIT protocol that suppresses the frequency of timeout occurrence. The proposed eF-RIT protocol is also evaluated by simulation and experiment. The evaluation results indicate that the proposed eF-RIT protocol reduces the incident of timeout by up to 31%, and achieves transmission success rates as high as 90% when the data generation rate is 1.0×10-2s-1.

This paper summarizes Wi-SUN communication systems and their physical (PHY) layer and media access control (MAC) specifications. Firstly, the Wi-SUN communication systems are categorized into three. The key PHY and MAC standards, IEEE 802.15.4g and .4e, that configure the systems are explained, and fundamental transmission performances of the systems in the PHY layer and MAC layer are evaluated by computer simulations. Then, the Wi-SUN alliance and the Wi-SUN profiles that include IEEE 802.15.4g and .4e are explained. Finally, to understand the transmission performance of actual IEEE 802.15.4g Wi-SUN radio devices, PER performances under AWGN and multipath fading environments are measured by using IEEE 802.15.4g compliant and Wi-SUN alliance certified radio modules. This paper is an instruction paper for the beginners of the Wi-SUN based communications systems.

In this paper, we propose two schemes that improve the delay and the current consumption for efficient polling communications in multi-hop networks based on the receiver-initiated media access control (MAC) protocol. Polling communications can offer reliable data collection by avoiding communication collisions, but the larger delay and current consumption for the round-trip operation should be improved. The first proposal is an enhanced source routing scheme for downlink communications. In the proposed scheme, multiple candidates of relay terminals can be loaded in the routing information, so the route is not specified uniquely. The improvement of the delay and the current consumption is achieved by shortening the waiting time for communication timings based on the flexible routing. The second proposal is a round-trip delay reduction scheme which focuses on the bi-directionality of polling communications. The proposed scheme reduces the round-trip delay by offering frequent communication timings for uplink communications. Also, this paper proposes the joint application of the enhanced source routing scheme and the round-trip delay reduction scheme in polling communications. Computer simulations that suppose a multi-hop network based on the feathery receiver-initiated transmission (F-RIT) protocol in stable channel conditions are carried out. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes in improving the delay and the current consumption. When the polling interval is 900s, the combination of the two proposed schemes improves the round-trip delay by up to 44.1% and the current consumption by up to 38.7% in average.