2012 IEEE International Conference on Green Computing and Communications, Conference on Internet of Things, and Conference
on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing
IMPROVEMENT OF ZIGBEE ROUTING
PROTOCOL
Mohamed KASRAOUI, Adnane CABANI, Joseph MOUZNA
Instrumentation, IT and Systems department
IRSEEM / ESIGELEC
Rouen, FRANCE
{mo.kasraoui, Adnane.cabani, Mouzna} @esigelec.fr
AbstractZigBee is a standard based on the IEEE 802.15.4
standard for wireless personal networks. Its use in Wireless
Sensor Networks (WSNs) has aroused a great interest in the
research community in the last years. In this paper, a synthetic
study to analyze the performances and improve the routing
protocols in WSNs is given and we were interested in routing
mechanisms defined by the ZigBee standard. Multiple routing
protocols have been developed to find optimized routes from a
source to destination. ZigBee routing protocol uses a modified
AODV by default and Hierarchical Tree Routing as last resort.
The scope of this work is to improve the existing protocol to take
the scalability into account and use it in tree topology in a
variable network sizes up to hundreds of nodes. This paper
describes the different routing protocols, our proposed solution
ZBR-M and finally it presents and discusses the obtained results.
Keywords: ZigBee, IEEE 802.15.4, Hierarchical Tree
Routing protocol, NS2, end to end delay.
I. INTRODUCTION:
The sensors have become essential elements in any system
where information from the external environment is needed
to assess and to act. The potential applications of sensor
networks cover several areas. Historically, these networks
have been proposed in a military environment to exchange
information by soldiers on a battlefield or for the
coordination of rescue teams at a place of natural disaster
[1]. Although the military issues are particularly important,
the interest of these networks in the civilian world has
grown considerably since then. Many researchers have
focused on this field. Some are interested in normalizing
sensor networks that gave rise to the ZigBee standard, others
have targeted energy deficiency problems or routing issues.
This has given rise to a variety of protocols each one seeks
to solve the above locks.
This paper summarizes the research to improve routing in
a sensor network. Our algorithm follows the ZigBee tree
routing algorithm, but if the path via the neighbor node
toward destination is shorter than the path when using tree
routing protocol we choose the neighbor nodes.
We chose to organize this paper into three sections. We
begin in the first section by an overview of routing protocols
in WS and ZigBee networks. We reserve the second section
for a comparative study of routing protocols proposed in the
literature. Finally we come to the realization that consists of
improving ZigBee routing protocol illustrated by simulation
results.
978-0-7695-4865-4/12 $26.00 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/GreenCom.2012.150
II. OVERVIEW
In this section, we present a state of the art of routing
protocols proposed in the literature to carry routing in sensor
networks. We noticed that most of these protocols are being
evaluated. The transmission of information in a sensor
network can be done in two ways: i) The direct sending is
possible when nodes are close to each other since the
received signal is not too attenuated; ii) The sending by
routing takes place between distant nodes, subject to the
weakening of the signals. The nodes act both as a client and
server, relaying the packets to ensure their final destination.
A. Classification of Routing Protocols According to the
Network Structure
Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks are
classied into three types depending on their network
structure as flat routing protocols, hierarchical routing
protocol and geographic routing protocols.
1) Flat routing protocols
In many applications of sensor networks, given the large
number of nodes deployed, it is not possible to assign global
identifiers to each node. This absence of a global addressing
scheme with the random deployment of sensor nodes makes
it hard to select a specific set of sensor nodes that to be
queried. Therefore, the data is generally transmitted from
each sensor node deployed in the region with significant
redundancy. [2] This redundancy penalizes in terms of
energy consumption. Thus, this thinking leads to the use of a
routing for the selection of a set of nodes and data
aggregation. The recipient requests by its target regions and
waits to receive data from sensors located in selected region.
2) Hierarchical routing protocols
These protocols are adopted to allow the system to cover a
wider area of interest without degradation of service. The
main aim of hierarchical routing is to maintain efficient
energy consumption of sensor nodes by involving them in
multi-hop communication within a cluster in order to
perform aggregation and data fusion and reduce the number
of messages transmitted to the base station. [2] This routing
is based primarily on the gateway nodes. In fact, ordinary
nodes know that if the recipient is not in their immediate
vicinity, they just send the request to the gateway. In turn, it
will forward the request to the target node.
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 3) Geographic routing protocols
Routing protocols use location-based information service
for discovery of routing and data transmission. They allow
the directional transmission of information by avoiding the
flood of information across the network. Therefore, the cost
is reduced and the algorithm is an optimized routing. With
the network topology based on location information of
nodes, network management becomes simple. The
disadvantage of these routing protocols is that each node
must know the locations of other nodes.
B. Resistance scaling factor
In this section, we introduce some routing protocols for
sensor networks and we examine the scaling of the network
protocol with increasing number of nodes. In the case of
SPIN (Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation)
[7], the negotiation introduces the network overhead and
each node disseminates its message descriptor to all other
nodes. Similarly for the directed broadcast, many control
messages are exchanged. Whatever these two routing
protocols have proven their performance for small networks,
have adopted for large networks, they induce an overload
penalizing. Rumor Routing based on the detection of
specific events can only work when the number of events is
low. However, if we want to expand the network, the
number of events will increase significantly which is
disabling. For the TTDD (Two Tier Data Dissemination)
[5], the construction and the permanent maintenance of the
grid structure for each base station import a considerable
excess of traffic which increases with network size. In
addition, the protocol supports that nodes know their exact
location which requires a reliable tracking system which is
not always the case. The problem of reliability of the
tracking system persists not only for the algorithm TTDD
but also for any protocol requiring geographic information
relevant. This type of protocols allows a directional
transmission which broadens the area used by the data and
this requires that each node has knowledge of the position of
other nodes. This knowledge only remains valid for
networks containing a large number of sensors due to the
limited capacity of the nodes.
In conclusion, hierarchical protocols are the best suited to
cover a wider area of interest; in particular we found
LEACH [3], TEEN [4] and HEED [5]. This is due to the
fact that these protocols are based on principles of dynamic
clustering. This technique maintains an equitable
distribution of energy consumption in the network by
sharing the role of cluster-head between the different nodes.
In addition, the adoption of data aggregation solution
significantly reduces the traffic flowing.
TABLE I. ROUTING PROTOCOLS FOR SENSOR NETWORKS
Routing
Type QoS data aggregation
protocols
SPIN FLAT - 9
Directed
FLAT - 9
Diffusion
EAR FLAT - -
CADR FLAT - -
COUGAR FLAT - 9
LEACH Hierarchical - 9
PEGAGIS Hierarchical - 9
AQUIRE FLAT - -
TEEN Hierarchical - 9
MCF FLAT - -
HEED Hierarchical - -
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MECN Geographic - -
GAF Geographic - -
TTDD Hierarchical - -
GEAR Geographic - -
Rumor FLAT - 9
SPEED Geographic 9 -
GBR FLAT - 9
SAR Geographic 9 -
III.ZIGBEE NETWORK ROUTING
Our aim in long term is to improve the routing protocol in
ZigBee Networks. However, before simulate and compare
the existing routing protocols, we present our study of
routing protocols proposed in the literature.
A. AODV(Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector)[10]
AODV is a reactive protocol. The network is silent until a
connection is required. At that moment, the node which
needs the connection broadcasts a request to its neighbors
who re-route the message and safeguard the node from
which they received the message. When a node receives a
message and it has an entry corresponding to the destination
in its routing table, it returns a RREP through the reverse-
path to the requesting node. So, the source sends its data
through this path to the destination with the minimum
number of hops.
B. ZBR(ZigBee Routing Protocol)
In a tree topology, the ZigBee coordinator is responsible
for starting the network and for choosing key network
parameters. During the establishment of the network, the
ZigBee coordinator determines the maximum number of
nodes, which are (Cm) and (Rm). Whereas Cm is the
maximum number of children and Rm is the maximum
number of routers a parent may have as children. In
addition, each node has an attribute called "depth" which is
the minimum number of hops to reach the coordinator using
only parent-child link. The ZigBee coordinator itself has a
depth of zero and it determines the maximum tree depth of
the network (Lm).
The path is constructed as follows: the source node checks
if the recipient is one of its descendants because it knows the
network address in the block of its child node. Otherwise,
the source sends the data to its parent. The parent node also
sends the data to its parent until we get to a parent node of
the destination node. The downlink of information is
provided through a technique for determining the successor
based on the ZigBee router address, depth and address of the
node.
IV. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF ZIGBEE SENSOR
NETWORKS
A. Routing protocol comparison
In this section, a full scan of hierarchical routing protocols
was performed and compared with AODV. So, this
comparative study will provide at the same time the
performance of all routing mechanisms of the standard
Zigbee. The largest network considered is described in this
Section. It is formed by one ZigBee coordinator (ZC) and
200 ZigBee routers (ZR). Since simple nodes don't
participate in routing, they arent considered in the
simulation. The network is fully connected and each node
hears only its direct neighbors. The maximum depth (Lm) is
equal to 6 and the maximum number of children by parent
(Cm) is 7. In the beginning of simulation, the idea was to
extend the network and increasing the depth of the tree.
Then, we studied the send data to the node "0". This allowed
discerning evolutionary of end-to-end delay.
Figure 1. Network layout
1) performance study of end-to-end delay:
In terms of the average "end to end delay", the behavior of
AODV routing protocol is similar to the Hierarchical routing
in the first depth. The process of route discovery doesnt use
time to establish the path. Only a RREQ and a RREP are
exchanged before forwarding packets of data.
However, all the more so with increasing the number of
nodes, the difference between end to end delays estimated
for both protocols is growing. If the depth of the transmitter
increases, the number of control messages exchanged during
the search path to the destination will be amplified.
This could introduce an additional burden that leads
collisions in the network and additional delays.
Figure 2 shows the simulation results of the ZBR in
comparison to the AODV protocol in terms of average end
to end delay.
Figure 2. End-to-end delay as a function of nodes depth
In conclusion, to get a long-range network (a great depth
of the tree), the basic hierarchical routing is more efficient
because the shortest path to the root is generally that which
follows the Parent-Child Relationship in a Tree Network.
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On the other side, AODV must discover the route before
sending data. Thus, the time delay is the most important
factor to performance degradation of a network using the
AODV routing protocol.
2) Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR)
In this section we analyze the performance of two
protocols (ZBR and AODV) according to Packet Delivery
Ratio.
Figure 3. Packet Delivery Ratio as a function of nodes depth
Figure 3 shows that Packet Delivery Ratio decreases when
increasing network size. Increasing the duration of
simulation, from a certain threshold (the death of the first
node), the delivery rate drops down. This is due to the death
of nodes near the destination stretched by other nodes.
3) Network life-span (lifetime)
The evaluation metric in this section is the network life-
span [6]. All nodes have a limited energy. The Traffic
circulates between two randomly chosen nodes. For both
protocols, we followed the evolution of the network until the
time of the rst node failure. Table 2 shows that the network
using hierarchical routing base is less durable. The path is
pre-established; it can exchange more traffic in a shorter
time.
TABLE II. THE TIME OF THE RST NODE FAILURE.
Protocol ZBR AODV
Death time (sec) 84.3946 sec 89.4024 sec
The traffic flow is interrupted by the failure of the first
node. In fact, the excess energy caused by the self-
organization phase remains negligible.
The important factor in the energy depletion caused by the
static nature of hierarchical routing protocol that route only
through parent-child relationship. So, one path is used by all
traffic which rapidly depletes the residual energy of some
nodes compared to others. It's that after a while, the routing
to the destination is no longer possible. All descendant
nodes of the death node become isolated from the rest of the
network. This is a real handicap of hierarchical routing core.
B. Synthesis
The simulation results should be taken as a relevant
indication of the behavior of these two routing protocols and
not as an accurate representation of its behavior in real
environments, given several constraints simulation namely
the size of the field nodes, distribution the number of nodes,
If D is a descendant of node R
the type of traffic, the simulation time, etc.

We have analyzed the delay and delivery packet ratio of then Use rule given by this equation to find
two routing protocol in Zigbee network. It has been shown the Next Hop
that ZBR provides shorter average of end to end delay and
performs better in terms of delivery packet ratio. The good
delay performance of ZBR led us to think about improving 
it to support real time applications. In fact, the worst case
and energy consumption analysis showed that ZBR has a  

great potential of improvements. So, the next work
presented in this paper is to ameliorate the ZBR routing.

V. IMPROVEMENT OF THE ZBR ALGORITHM

A. Modied Algorithm Else send a "Request" to N in V(S) such as
In this section, we introduce the modified algorithm
applied to the ZigBee routing. Let us consider a source node Depth(N) <=
"S" with an identifier "SourceNodeID" which wants to Depth(S).
transmit a packet "P" to a destination node "D" with an
identifier "FinalDstNodeID". Let Depth (x) the depth of the
node "x" in the tree and V(x) denotes the neighbor list of
node "x". In the case of hierarchical routing, arriving at a If no "Reply" is received then
router node "R" with an identifier myNodeID, R computes
the Cskip using Equation (1) and "P" will be treated as 
follows:

If D is a descendant of node R The principle of modified routing algorithm is: The

transmitting node checks if the destination is one of its
then Use rule given by this equation to find descendants. If so, it sends it according to the basic
the Next Hop hierarchical routing. If this is not the case, it sends requests
to all of its one-hop neighbors of the same depth in the tree
after estimate the round-trip delay of the message and
 initiates the timestamp. Each neighbor receiving the
message verifies even if the recipient is one of its
  descendants. If so, the neighbor sends an acknowledgment

to the sender and takes care of routing the message.
Otherwise, the neighbor drops the message. At the sending
node, if the timer expires without receiving anything, the
Else message is transmitted to the parent.

B. Example
 As an example, let us consider the network illustrated in
 (1) gure 4 where node 8 sends data to node 10


If we restrict ourselves to the ZigBee routing, and a node

belonging to the path that goes down, all its descendants can
no longer send their data to the base station. In addition,
after analyzing the behavior of the protocol for some
simulated cases, we found that the packet must travel to the
first common parent between the transmitter and receiver in
order to descend into the tree and reach its target and even
though the nodes are close to each other in depth. So we
thought of a horizontal exploration of the tree which
increases the probability of finding an alternative route to
the destination with the shortest jumps without necessarily
Figure. 4. Illustration example of the modied ZBR.
need to borrow parent-child relationship while keeping the
profit from the simplicity of the routing hierarchy. The
modied ZBR algorithm is as follows:

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10 is not descendant of 8 then it sends Request to Every node in network layout generates one data packet
Neighbors (8) = {4, 7, 3}. every 1 minute, starting at a randomly picked initial packet
10 is not a descendant of 3 and 3 is not the parent of 8 generation time.
then Reject Request. The important simulations parameters, that were included,
10 is not a descendant of 7 and 7 is not the parent of 8 are summarized in the following table.
then Reject Request.
10 is not a descendant of 4 and 4 is the parent of 8 then TABLE III. PARAMETER VALUES.
send the message P from 8 to 4, Technology Zigbee
send a Request to Neighbors (4) = {1,2,5}. Protocol ZBR / ZBR-M
10 is a descendant of 2 then Send Reply from 2 to 4, MAC/PHY 802_15_4
Send the message P from 4 Chanel Wireless channel
Propagation TwoRayGround
to 2, Topology 100*100
Send the message P from 2 Number of nodes 7-100-200
to 10,
10 is a descendant of 5 then Send Reply from 5 to 4,
Send the message P from 4 D. Simulation results
to 5, We have developed the ZBR-M under OPNET simulator
Send the message P from 5 [9] using the same network and parameters as in last section.
to 10, 50 simulations are run and in each randomly chosen node,
trac goes between this node and the coordinator.
The message P is duplicated. The node 10 receives twice.
So, to solve this problem, the node 4 should respond just to We realized different simulation scenarios, among of them
the first "Reply" arrived before the expiration of the timer. we used a network composed of 7 nodes and another one
composed of 200 nodes.
The queries are sent hop by hop to prevent the spread of
traffic (of control) in areas not concerned of the network and The average results of the comparison between the basic
therefore the network limitations of collisions due to the ZBR and ZBR-M are shown in tables 2 and 3.
establishment of the path from source to destination. So the
impact of collisions will be negligible and the establishment Table 3 Experimental results for 7 nodes
of the path from source to destination. The flooding is
directed and local: we don't participate in the research of ZBR ZBR-M
route and in routing if no path to the destination is reachable Delivery ratio (%) 99, 87 99,88
from a neighboring node, so the next hop is the parent node. End-to-End Delay 0.008 0,005
Energy consumption
In the worst case the route taken is the tree. (mJ)
0,449095 1,00325

C. Performance analysis
In this section, we present an empirical investigation on Table 4 Experimental results for 200 nodes
the performance of ZBR-M in ZigBee wireless
communication. Before physical implementation, we started ZBR ZBR-M
by the simulation to validate our proposed algorithm ZBR- Delivery ratio (%) 48,93 51,22
End-to-End Delay 0.0685 0,0647
M. Our simulation study had looked at the performance of
Energy consumption
ZigBee based WSNs of two sizes: 1,2075665 2,1776277
(mJ)

In first time, we started with one Coordinator, 6 Rotors

and 6 End-Devices and all traffic has been routed from end
devices to the network coordinator. In second time, we
increased the number of nodes to 200 and we analyzed the
worst cases.
As it is expected, ZBR-M performance is better in terms of
end to end delay and delivery packet ratio. It succeeds to
eliminate the worst cases and to achieve a low end to end
delay. Moreover, ZBR-M improves the basic algorithm but
never degrade it.

Due to the important number of packets used to discover

routes, ZBR-M provides an additional cost in energy
consumption. So, we have to maximize the battery life in
our next work.

VI. CONCLUSION
In this work, after a literature review on the different
concepts related to the communication of sensor networks,
we had an in-depth acknowledge on this type of network.
We also studied a variety of routing protocols and presented
several approaches such as flat routing, clustering,
geographical position of the nodes. We were interested
specifically in routing mechanism defined by the ZigBee
standard. We conducted simulations to evaluate the
Figure 5. Network layout

792
performance of routing protocol proposed by ZigBee
Alliance [8] while comparing it to On-Demand Routing
protocol to identify the characteristics of hierarchical routing
as well as its defects.

The simulation results showed that the hierarchical routing

core of this delay and delivery rate allowing for availability
of service regardless of the size of the network did not stand
for long because of its static nature.

Similarly, taking into account the overhead, the hierarchical

routing introduces less overhead than the AODV routing.

However, in some cases, AODV has less delay than routing

offered by ZigBee. These cases correspond to an exchange
of data between nodes in the tree topology. The modified
algorithm provides a solution for this problem. It allows an
horizontal exploration of the tree and more vertical
exploration of the links between parent and child. It
increases the likelihood of finding an alternate path from the
destination without the need to achieve a common parent
node. However, it introduces an additional delays compared
to the basic hierarchical routing but these delays are less
important than the time of establishment of AODV routing
protocol.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT(S)

This work is funded by European Regional Development

Fund (ERDF) and by Haute-Normandie Region.

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