Even though the IEEE 802.15.4 standard defines processes for handling the loss of beacon frames in beacon-enabled low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs), they are not efficient nor detailed. This letter proposes an enhanced process to improve the throughput performance of LR-WPANs under the losses of beacon frames. The key idea of our proposed enhancement is to make devices that have not received a beacon frame, due to packet loss, to transmit their data in the contention period and even in the inactive period instead of holding pending frames during the whole superframe period. The proposed protocol is evaluated using mathematical analysis as well as simulations, and the throughput improvement of LR-WPANs is proved.

The problem of coexistence between IEEE 802.11g based wireless LANs (WLANs) and IEEE 802.15.4 based wireless personal area networks (WPANs) in the 2.4GHz band is an important issue for the operation of a home energy management system (HEMS) for smart grids. This paper proposes a coexistence scheme that is called a Hybrid station aided coexistence (HYSAC) scheme to solve this problem. This scheme employs a hybrid-station (H-STA) that possesses two types of network device functions. The scheme improves the data transmission quality of the WPAN devices which transmit energy management information such as power consumption. The proposed HYSAC scheme employs WLAN control frames, which are used to assign WPAN system traffic resources. Moreover, we propose a coexistence method to achieve excellent WLAN throughput where multiple WPANs coexist with a WLAN. We theoretically derive the performance of the proposed scheme by considering the QoS support in WLAN and show that the results of the simulation and theoretical analysis are in good agreement. The numerical results show that the HYSAC scheme decreases the beacon loss rate of WPAN to less than 1% when the WLAN system consists of 10 STAs under saturated traffic conditions. Furthermore, the WLAN throughput of the proposed synchronization method is shown to be 30.6% higher than that of the HYSAC scheme without synchronization when the WLAN that consists of 10 STAs coexists with four WPANs.

To reduce perforamnce degradations of LR-WPANs due to interference from WLANs, this letter proposes a protocol to allow a piconet to switch an operating channel to an interference-free channel only for transmitting beacon frames. The proposed method does not only increase network performances because of hgh reliability of the beacon frames, but also increase overerall channel utilizations because of using even interfered-channels.

In order to realize millimeter-wave (MMW) 3-D system-in-package (SiP) front-end modules, we propose a 60-GHz band copper ball vertical interconnection structure, which interconnects between vertically stacked substrates. The structure enables ICs to be placed between the vertically stacked substrates. Since the diameter of the copper balls must exceed the thickness of the ICs, the distance between the substrates in the modules is larger than that of the flip-chip interconnection widely used in the MMW-band. Therefore, the conventional flip-chip interconnection does not scale for the interconnection between the substrates in MMW 3-D SiP front-end modules. The layout of grounded copper balls and the patterns of inner ground layers in the upper/lower substrates are designed using 3-D electromagnetic field simulation. The designed structure allows less than 1 dB transmission loss up to 71.1 GHz, compared with a through transmission line. The result is verified with fabrication and measurement and confirms the feasibility of MMW 3-D SiP front-end modules.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is an excellent candidate for supporting wireless personal area networks (WPANs) because of its wide bandwidth, low transmission power, low complexity and multipath immunity. We study density-aware exclusive region (ER)-based scheduling for a nonuniform UWB-WPAN. Using a generalized radius for the ER based on statistical topology, we propose a scheduling scheme that uses a radius for the ER that varies according to the density information around the destination in the nonuniform network. Computer simulations show that (i) our approach to the radius of the generalized ER provides better scheduling performance than the radius solution of the conventional work [3] and (ii) scheduling that is based on an adaptive ER radius can always outperform both the fixed ER-based scheme and the TDMA scheme with respect to network throughput.

This letter considers problems with an efficient link layer multicasting technique in a wireless personal area network environment using a directional antenna. First, we propose an adaptive directional multicast scheme (ADMS) for delay-sensitive applications in mmWave WPAN with directional antenna. Second, the proposed ADMS aims to improve throughput as well as satisfy the application-specific delay requirements. We evaluate the performances of legacy Medium Access Control, Life Centric Approach, and adaptive directional multicast schemes via QualNet 5.0. Our results show that the proposed scheme provides better performance in terms of total network throughput, average transmission time, packet delivery ratio and decodable frame ratio.

In this paper, we introduce an LDPC decoder design for decoding a length-672 multi-rate code adopted in IEEE 802.15.3c standard. The proposed decoder features high performances in both data rate and power efficiency. A macro-layer level fully parallel layered decoding architecture is proposed to support the throughput requirement in the standard. For the proposed decoder, it takes only 4 clock cycles to process one decoding iteration. While parallelism increases, the chip routing congestion problem becomes more severe because a more complicated interconnection network is needed for message passing during the decoding process. This problem is nicely solved by our proposed efficient message permutation scheme utilizing exploited parity check matrix features. The proposed message permutation network features high compatibility and zero-logic-gate VLSI implementation, which contribute to the remarkable improvements in both area utilization ratio and total gate count. Meanwhile, frame-level pipeline decoding is applied in the design to shorten the critical path. To verify the above techniques, the proposed decoder is implemented on a chip fabricated using Fujitsu 65 nm 1P12L LVT CMOS process. The chip occupies a core area of 1.30 mm2 with area utilization ratio 86.3%. According to the measurement results, working at 1.2 V, 400 MHz and 10 iterations the proposed decoder delivers a 6.72 Gb/s data throughput and dissipates a power of 537.6 mW, resulting in an energy efficiency 8.0 pJ/bit/iteration. Moreover, a decoder of the same architecture but with no pipeline stage for low-profile application is also implemented and evaluated at post-layout level.

IEEE 802.15.3c has been standardized for wireless personal area networks (WPANs) to realize high-speed wireless communications with 1 Gbps throughput. In this paper we introduce a 802.15.3c WPAN prototype. The introduced 802.15.3c WPAN prototype applies the enhanced MAC functions of data separation on hybrid multiple access, long frame size, aggregation, block acknowledgment, and timing operation, which can realize Gbps throughput in IEEE 802.15.3c. Moreover, the experiment performance studies on the prototype show that around 1.6 Gbps throughput can be successfully achieved and video streaming applications can be accommodated. Also, our studies provide the useful information of MAC capacity for developing the 802.15.3c devices.

This paper presents a high-throughput low-complexity four-parallel Reed-Solomon (RS) decoder for high-rate WPAN systems. Four-parallel processing is used to achieve 12-Gbps data throughput and low hardware complexity. Also, the proposed pipelined folded Degree-Computationless Modified Euclidean (fDCME) algorithm is used to implement the key equation solver (KES) block, which provides low hardware complexity for the RS decoder. The proposed four-parallel RS decoder is implemented 90-nm CMOS technology optimized for a 1.2 V supply voltage. The implementation result shows that the proposed RS decoder can be operated at a clock frequency of 400 MHz and has a data throughput 12.8-Gbps. The proposed four-parallel RS decoder architecture has high data processing rate and low hardware complexity. Therefore it can be applied in the FEC devices for next-generation high-rate WPAN systems with data rate of 10-Gbps and beyond.

Recently, IEEE 802.15.4 has been standardized for WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks). This paper proposes an enhanced CCA scheme which involves the data transmission device sending a notifyBusyChannel (nBC) signal in the backoff period when the Channel Using Quotient (CUQ) exceeds 0.5. The CUQ stands for the rate of channel utilization in the previous slot duration. In a single CCA operation, the device nodes are made aware of the busy status of the channel by the nBC signal. We implement the ECCA scheme in a hardware chip for a performance evaluation. The results show that the proposed scheme has short queuing times and less energy consumption than IEEE 802.15.4 CCA. And the scheme is compatible with conventional IEEE 802.15.4 devices.

In this work, a time-of-arrival/time-difference-of-arrival (TOA/TDOA) hybrid relative positioning system based on UWB-IR technology is developed. The system reduces both the complexity of system configuration and the number of wireless transmissions in a positioning sequence. The system performance over various distances between access points is verified by computer simulations and experiments under the assumption that the distance between the access points is less than that between the access point and the target node. For the experiments, the proposed system is implemented with in-house developed UWB transceivers. The experiments confirm that the developed TOA/TDOA hybrid system can detect the relative positions of target nodes (under the condition of two access points 4 m apart) with a measured-angle accuracy of 8.6 degrees.

In the contention access period (CAP) of IEEE 802.15.4 beacon-enabled mode, collision probability increases, and network performance decreases as the number of contending devices increases. In this paper, we propose an enhanced contention access mechanism (ECAM) to reduce the collision probability in low rate -- wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs). In ECAM, since the duration of each CAP is divided into multiple sub-CAPs, the number of devices contending for frame transmissions in each sub-CAP can be reduced by approximately one over the number of sub-CAPs. Further, this lowers the probability of collision due to two or more simultaneous frame transmissions. In addition, since ECAM shortens the channel access duration of devices, devices with ECAM have lower power consumption. To compare the performance of ECAM with that of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, we carry out extensive simulations. The results show that ECAM yields better performance than the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, especially for dense networks with a heavy traffic load.

This paper investigates the communication range and interference range of millimeter-wave wireless personal area networks (WPAN) based on realistic system design. Firstly, the effective communication range of the millimeter-wave networks are calculated based on realistic physical (PHY) layer design and 60 GHz channel obtained from actual measurements. Secondly, an interference model is developed to facilitate the analysis of the impact of interferer-to-victim range on the victim link performance. It is found that system with BPSK modulation is able to support use cases with higher number of portable devices within a 3 m range, while system with 16QAM modulation is more suitable for fixed high speed data streaming devices within a shorter range of 1 m. Also, the interferer-to-victim range that causes no interference in all conditions is found to be approximately 40 m, while a 25 m range causes a typical bit error rate (BER) degradation of 1-digit (e.g. BER = 10-6 to 10-5).

This paper proposes a prioritized aggregation method that supports compressed video transmission on millimeter wave wireless personal area network (mmWave WPAN) systems. Frame aggregation is an effective means to improve system efficiency and throughput for wide band systems such as mmWave WPAN. It is required by the applications that the mmWave WPAN systems should provide Gbps or multiGbps transmission capability. The proposed scheme targets not only transmission efficiency but also support of compressed video transmission which currently is very popular. The proposal combines MAC layer aggregation with PHY layer skew modulation to facilitate the video transmission in a way that more important data is better protected. Simulation results show that the average peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) performance is improved by 5 dB compared to conventional method, while the Gbps transmission requirement is fulfilled.

This letter considers power-controlled transmission from directional antennas in mmWave wireless personal area network (WPAN) systems. The attributes of these systems are studied; these include the number of concurrent transmissions and the power consumption with different system parameters, such as the antenna's beamwidth and radiating efficiency. Numerical results are presented to show that the power controlled transmission enables more concurrent transmissions than the non-power controlled transmission. The results also show that the number of concurrent transmissions increases as the beamwidth and the path loss component become smaller and the antenna's radiating efficiency increases. In addition, the power controlled system generally uses less power than the non-power controlled transmission set up; the overall analysis is verified by simulation.

In this study, we construct an analytical model to investigate the system throughput of 802.15.3c WPAN by examining hybrid slotted CSMA/CA-TDMA and slotted CSMA/CA multiple access methods. Our analysis clearly shows the differences between the system throughputs of both multiple access methods. The obtained results show that the hybrid slotted CSMA/CA-TDMA can achieve a considerably higher system throughput compared to the slotted CSMA/CA; the difference between the two access methods is especially pronounced as the increase in the number of devices contending for the network increase. The system throughput comparisons have established why the hybrid slotted CSMA/CA-TDMA is preferred over the slotted CSMA/CA for high-speed wireless communications of the 802.15.3c WPAN.

This study focuses on system throughput by taking into account the channel interference in IEEE 802.15.3c WPAN, which is based on the hybrid multiple access of CSMA/CA and TDMA, namely CSMA/CA-TDMA. To study the system throughput, we construct a novel analytical model by taking into consideration the channel interference caused by the hidden networks in CSMA/CA-TDMA. The obtained results show that the system throughput achieved by TDMA is highly affected by frame transmission in CSMA/CA. Furthermore, we show that channel interference, which causes a degradation in the system throughput, is a very significant problem in the IEEE 802.15.3c WPAN.

In this paper, throughput and error performance analysis is conducted on the proposed space-time resource management (STRM) scheme to realize a multi-Gbps millimeter-wave wireless personal area network (WPAN) system. The proposed STRM allows multiple peer-to-peer communication links to occupy the same time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) time slot, in contrary to the conventional TDMA system that allocates only one time slot to one communication link. Theoretical analysis is performed to investigate the achievable system throughput in the presence of co-channel interference (CCI) generated by communication links co-sharing the same time slot. To increase accuracy, the analysis results are validated by Monte Carlo simulations. Firstly, it is found that the upper bound of the achievable throughput increases linearly with the number of communication links sharing the same time slot. However, optimum throughput exists corresponding to the CCI present in the system. Secondly, by manipulating a parameter that controls the allowable CCI in the network, the system throughput can be optimized. Lastly, it is also found that in a millimeter-wave band system, a victim system with transmitter-receiver separation of 1-meter can achieve bit error rate (BER) of 10-6 provided that the interferer is at least 6-meters away.

IEEE 802.15.4 is a new standard, uniquely designed for low rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs). It targets ultra-low complexity, cost, and power, for low-data-rate wireless connectivity. However, one of the main problems of this new standard is its insufficient, and inefficient, media access control (MAC) for priority data. This paper introduces an extended contention access period (XCAP) concept for priority packets, also an traffic adaptive contention differentiation utilizing the XCAP (TACDX). The TACDX determines appropriate transmission policy alternatively according to the traffic conditions and type of packet. TACDX achieves not only enhanced transmission for priority packets but it also has a high energy efficiency for the overall network. The proposed TACDX is verified with simulations to measure the performances.

To be adaptive to the bursty traffic of the wireless personal area network (WPAN), a superframe structure adjustment algorithm of IEEE 802.15.4 is proposed. According to the channel utilization ratio which is an index of the traffic load, the algorithm adjusts the duty cycle of the superframe automatically. The simulation results show that the algorithm is adaptive to the traffic variations effectively and saves much more energy not only for the end devices but also for the PAN coordinator. Moreover, the algorithm results in better performance on the lower delay and lower packet dropping rate.