A Sub-1 GHz Wireless Sensor Network Concentrator Using Multicollectors with Load Balancing for Improved Capacity and Performance

The exponential growth of IoT end devices creates the necessity for cost-effective solutions to further increase the capacity of IEEE802.15.4g-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs). For this reason, the authors present a wireless sensor network concentrator (WSNC) that integrates multiple collocated collectors, each of them hosting an independent WSN on a unique frequency channel. A load balancing algorithm is implemented at the WSNC to uniformly distribute the number of aggregated sensor nodes across the available collectors. The WSNC is implemented using a BeagleBone board acting as the Network Concentrator (NC) whereas collectors and sensor nodes realizing the WSNs are built using the TI CC13X0 LaunchPads. The system is assessed using a testbed consisting of one NC with up to four collocated collectors and fifty sensor nodes. The performance evaluation is carried out under race conditions in the WSNs to emulate high dense networks with different network sizes and channel gaps. The experimental results show that the multicollector system with load balancing proportionally scales the capacity of the network, increases the packet delivery ratio, and reduces the energy consumption of the IoT end devices.