Feasibility Study of IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN to the Real-time Voice Application

IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN의 실시간 음성 데이터 응용에 대한 적용 가능성 연구

Wireless sensor networking technology is one of the basic infrastructures for ubiquitous environment. It enables us to gather various sensory data such as temperature, humidity, gas leakage, and speed from the remote sensor devices. To support these networking functions, IEEE WPAN working group makes standards for PHY and MAC, while ZigBee Alliance defines the standards for the network, security, and applications. The low-rate WPAN was emerged to have the characteristics of network resilience, low cost, and low power consumption. It has a broad range of applications including, but not limit to industrial control and monitoring, home automation, disaster forecast and monitoring, health care. In order to provide more intelligent and robust services, users want voice-based solutions to accommodate to low-rate WPAN. In this paper, we have evaluated voice quality of an IEEE 802.15.4 standard compliant voice node. Specifically, it includes the design of a voice node and experiments based on the prediction of voice quality using the E-model suggested by ITU-T G.107, and the network communication mechanisms considering beacon-enabled and nonbeacon-enabled networks for real-time voice communications.