On the performance comparison of the agent-based rate adaptivity scheme for IEEE 802.11n and ZigBee

This work examines the IEEE 802.11, used in WLANs (Wireless Local Area Network), and IEEE 802.15.4, for WPANs (Wireless Personal Area Network), along with the Agent-based Rate Adaptive Scheme. The paper presents the Agent-based Rate Adaptive Scheme, which allows each channel to adaptively set the rate for serving a specific transfer. To this, end Agents are being utilized on each node in order to enable efficient monitoring of the requirements of each transfer and adjust the rate accordingly. Results were extracted by conducting simulation experimentation, and comparing the behavior and performance of a WLAN and a ZigBee network, in a short distance environment such as an office or a house, in order to determine the optimal protocol to be used in applications such as home/building automation. The experiment showed that while the 802.11 protocol performs better when it comes to delay, ZigBee has the upper hand in reliability, as more packets were successfully delivered in the WPAN, rather than the WLAN. Furthermore, this paper takes into consideration parameters such as queuing delay and transmission rate adaptivity, investigates them in a more calculative manner, and presents the findings of our evaluations.