Research on Routing Protocols Based on ZigBee Network

jing sun1,2, Zhongxiao Wang 2, hong wang1, Xiaofen Zhang 1 1 Shenyang Normal University, Shenyang China, 2 JiLin Normal University, Siping China Sunjing431@tom.com
In mesh topology, there is also one PAN coordinator. In contrast to star topology, any device can communicate with any other device as long as they are in range of one another. A mesh network can be ad hoc, self-organizing and self-healing. Applications such as industrial control and monitoring, wireless sensor networks, asset and inventory tracking would benefit from such a topology. It also allows multiple hops to route messages from any device to any other device in the network. It can provide reliability by multipath routing. The mesh network uses the integrated routing method combined with AODV and Hierarchical/Tree routing. Cluster-tree network is a special case of mesh network in which most devices are FFDs (Full Function Device) and an RFD (Reduced Function Device) may connect to a cluster-tree network as a leave node at the end of a branch. Any of the FFD can act as a coordinator and provide synchronization services to other devices and coordinators. Only one of these coordinators however is the PAN coordinator. The tree network uses a Hierarchical/Tree Routing mechanism.

Abstract
ZigBee is the new standard that has been developed for low cost, low data rate and low power consumption wireless network. This paper provides a brief description of ZigBee network topologies including star, mesh, and cluster tree and introduces ZigBee routing protocols such as AODV, AODVjr, Clustertree and integrated routing algorithm. The mesh network uses the integrated routing method combined with AODV and Hierarchical/Tree routing. The tree network uses a Hierarchical/Tree Routing mechanism. Protocol analysis focuses on several issues: routing mechanism, cost and maintenance, and so on. Routing mechanism includes the configuration of tree addresses and tree addressing routing. And route cost gives how to compute cost metric during route discovery and maintenance.

1. Introduction
The IEEE 802.15.4 [1] is released for low power and low cost wireless networking for residential and industrial environments in December 2003. The ZigBee Alliance released its first specification [2, 3] in December 2004, based upon the physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer of IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. ZigBee defines three types of devices: ZigBee coordinator, ZigBee router and ZigBee end device. And three network topologies are defined: star, tree and mesh (peer-to-peer) topology, illustrated in Figure 1. In the star topology, the communication is established between devices and a single central controller, called the PAN coordinator. The PAN coordinator may be mains powered while the devices will most likely be battery powered. The star topology may not be adequate for traditional wireless sensor networks. The star topology of ZigBee is mainly designed for the simple communication from one node to several nodes.

Figure 1. ZigBee network topologies

2. Routing algorithm description

ZigBee routing algorithm can be thought of an hierarchical routing strategy with table-driven optimizations applied where possible. The routing layer is said to start with the well-studied public

domain algorithm Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV)[ 4,5] and Motorolas Cluster-Tree algorithm.

2.1 AODV and AODVjr algorithm

AODV[6,7,8,9] is a pure on-demand route acquisition algorithm. The source node broadcasts a route request (RREQ) packet to its neighbors and then intermediate nodes receiving the RREQ rebroadcast it to their neighbors until it arrives at the destination node. During the process of rebroadcasting the RREQ, intermediate nodes record the address of the sender from which the first copy of the broadcast packet is received in their route discovery tables, hence establishing a reverse path. The path cost comparison of packets with the same RREQ allows choosing best path at the moment and discarding anything worse. Once the destination node receives the RREQ, it responds by unicasting a route reply (RREP) packet back to its neighbor from which it received the RREQ. As the RREP is routed back along the reverse path, nodes along this path set up forward route entries in their routing tables which point to the node from which the RREP came. These forward route entries indicate that the link between the node and the destination is established as the active status. Finally, when the RREP reaches to the originator, it sends the data packets buffered during the route discovery procedure. AODVjr[10,13,14] is one of the earliest AODV simplified versions. AODVjr removes the following item form the AODV specification, such as sequence numbers, gratuitous RREP, hop count, Hello message, RREP, precursor lists. In AODVjr, If communications are unidirectional, the destination sends Connect messages to the source. If data traffic is bidirectional, no additional messages are used. In any case, a source detects a link break in a route when it receives no messages from the destination.

that indicates the cluster head. The nodes that receive this message send a CONNECTION REQUEST message to the CH. When the CH receives it, it responds to the node with a CONNECTION RESPONSE message that contains a node ID for the node (node ID corresponds to the short address at the MAC layer). The node that is assigned a node ID replies with an ACK message to the cluster head. If all nodes are located in the range of the cluster head, the topology of connection becomes a star and every member nodes are connected to the cluster head with one hop. A cluster can expand into a multi-hop structure when each node supports multiple connections. 2.2.2. Multi-cluster network. To form a network, a Designated Device (DD) is needed. If a member has received the HELLO message from the DD, it adds CID 0 in its neighbor list and reports to its CH. The reported CH selects the member node as a border node to its parent cluster and sends a NETWORK CONNECTION REQUEST message to the member node to set up a connection with the DD. The border node requests a connection and joins the cluster 0 as its member node. Then it sends a CID REQUEST message to the DD. After the CID RESPONSE message arrival, the border node sends NETWORK CONNECTION RESPONSE message that contains a new CID to the CH. When the CH gets a new CID, it informs to its member nodes by the HELLO message. The process is shown in Figure 2.

2.2 Cluster-tree algorithm

The cluster-tree protocol [11,12] is a protocol of the logical link and network layers that uses link-state packets to form either a single cluster network or a potentially larger cluster tree network. The network is basically self-organized and supports network redundancy to attain a degree of fault resistance and self-repair. Nodes select a cluster head and form a cluster according to the self-organized manner. Then self-developed clusters connect to each other using the Designated Device (DD). 2.2.1. Single cluster network. The cluster head (CH) broadcasts a periodic HELLO message that contains a part of the cluster head MAC address and node ID 0

Figure 2.CID assignment

2.3 Integrated routing algorithm

In the integrated routing [11], a node falls into one of the following two classes: routing node plus (RN+), which has enough memory to perform AODVjr routing; routing node minus (RN-), which has limited memory and only performs cluster-tree routing. While an RNnode always follows the cluster-tree, an RN+ node can either follow the cluster-tree or dynamically discover

an AODV route, depending on various factors such as session duration and tolerable route discovery delay. Cluster-tree routing favors memory-constrained devices and is very suitable for short communication sessions. Most cluster tree routes [12] are not optimal in terms of hop count. AODV and AODVjr are capable of finding optimal or near-optimal routes, and thus help reduce the message delivery latency. And in general, AODV and AODVjr are suitable for devices with sufficient memories, and favor long communication sessions. The integrated routing combines these two routings and makes tradeoff between them according to the network conditions and requirements.

Where pl is defined as the probability of packet delivery on the link l.

3.3 Routing tables

If a ZigBee router or ZigBee coordinator maintains a routing table containing the information shown in Table 1. The routing algorithm the term routing table capacity is used to describe the situation in which a device has the ability to use its routing table to establish a route to a particular destination device. A device is said to have routing table capacity if: It is a ZigBee coordinator or ZigBee router. It maintains a routing tables. It has a free table entry or it already has a routing table entry corresponding to the destinations. ZigBee router or ZigBee coordinator shall also maintain a route discovery table containing the information shown in Table 2. A device is said to have route discovery table capacity if: It maintains a route discovery table. It has a free entry in its route discovery table. If a device has both routing table capacity and route discovery table capacity, then it may be said they have routing capacity.
Table 1.Routing table

3. Analysis on routing protocol[3]

3.1 Cluster tree routing mechanism
The tree routing mechanism[3,15] includes the configuration of tree addresses and tree addressing routing. ZigBee coordinator determines maximum depth of network (Lm), maximum number of children of any potential parent (Cm), maximum number of children which can be routers (Rm). Assign an address sub-block to each potential parent

Destination D is a descendant of router with address A and depth d, if A<D<A+Cskip(d-1) is true, then the destination node with address D is its child node, the address of the next hop node is

Table 2.Route discovery table Otherwise, the next hop node is the father node of this router.

3.2 Routing cost

The ZigBee routing algorithm uses a path cost metric for route comparison during route discovery and maintenance. It is supposed that the length of path P is L as an ordered set of devices[D1,D2,DL] and a link, [Di,Di+1], as a sub-path of length 2,then the path cost

3.4. Route maintenance

A device network (NWK) layer shall maintain a failure counter to each neighbor. If the value of the outgoing link failure counter ever exceeds nwkcRepairThreshold that Maximum number of allowed communication errors after which the route repair mechanism is initiated, then the device shall

Where each of the values C{[Di,Di+1]} is referred to as a link cost. The link cost C{l} for a link l is a function with values in the interval[07] defined as:

initiate route repair. Implementers may choose a simple failure-counting scheme to generate this failure counter value or they may use a more accurate timewindowed scheme. Note that it is important not to initiate repair too frequently since repair operations may flood the network and cause other traffic disruptions. 3.4.1. Mesh network repair. When a link or a device fails in mesh network topology, the upstream device shall initiate route repair. If the upstream device is unable to initiate route repair due to a lack of routing capacity or some other limitation, the device shall issue a route error command frame back to the source device with the error code indicating the reason for the failure. If an end device that is also an RFD is unable to transmit messages to its parent, the end device shall initiate the orphaning procedure which permits the device to re-associate with the same ZigBee coordinator or ZigBee router if network communication is lost. If the orphaning procedure is successful and the end device re-establishes communications with its parent, the end device shall resume operation on the network as before. If the orphaning procedure fails, the end device shall attempt to re-join the network through a new parent. 3.4.2. Tree network repair. When a downstream device loses synchronization with its parent beacon, or is unable to transmit a message to its parent, the device may either initiate the orphaning procedure to search for its parent or the association procedure to find a new parent. If a disassociated child has its own children, it shall disassociate them from the network before attempting re-association.

4. Conclusion
ZigBee is a recent standard and is more appropriate in sensor network. This paper reviews three network topologies and introduces routing protocols of the Zigbee standard: AODV, AODVjr, Cluster-tree, and integrated routing, and then describes the formulas to analyze the routing mechanisms and the corresponding costs. Finally we introduce the approaches to repair the network while some devices fail. With the consequent develop of a series of products based on ZigBee protocol, more attention and development will be dedicated to the fields of application design and realization, interoperability test and market promotion.

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Reference
[1] IEEE-TG15.4, Part 15.4 Wireless Medium Access Control(MAC) and Physical Layer(PHY) Specification for