Queueing Network Models for Performance Evaluation of ZigBee-Based WSNs

ith the advent of the new very powerful sensors, the WSNs have extended their scope from simple isolated networks to multiple networks interconnected through Internet. To model these new complex networks, a level of abstraction higher with respect to the one adopted by the simulation models of the original sensor networks is required. In this paper we describe an alternative approach to the one used in the original simulation models of WSN which is based on Queueing Network (QN) technique. This technique is particularly oriented to the solution of capacity planning problems. We demonstrate through simulations that the results provided by the proposed QN model are reliable by comparing them to the ones obtained by a similar model implemented with the widely adopted network simulator ns-2. The results show a very good agreement between the values provided by the two modeling techniques.