ARTICLE IN PRESS JID: ADHOC [m3Gdc;September 14, 2015;11:56] Ad Hoc Networks xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ad Hoc Networks journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc A dual IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.15–4 network architecture for energy-efficient communications with low-demanding applications ✩ Ignacio Foche-Pérez a , Javier Simó-Reigadas a , Ignacio Prieto-Egido b,∗ , Q1 Eduardo Morgado a , Andrés Martínez-Fernández a a Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Rey Juan Carlos University, Camino del Molino s/n, 28943 Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain b EHAS Foundation, Ciudad Universitaria s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain article info Article history: Received 6 February 2015 Revised 2 August 2015 Accepted 20 August 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Multi-hop wireless networks IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.15–4 Energy efficiency abstract Energy efficiency has become a regular hot topic in the research on wireless communications networks. However, existing proposals leave room for improvement when multi-hop wire- less broadband networks are used to provide on-demand connectivity under low traffic load conditions. For this kind of networks, the capability of bringing the network up and down on demand wirelessly would help significantly to design energy-efficient, compact and low-cost network nodes. This paper presents a new approach for multi-hop energy-efficient networks based on a dual network architecture called dualWireless. Each node belongs to two parallel wireless multi-hop networks, an on-demand IEEE 802.11n network for data communications and a permanent IEEE 802.15–4 network for control purposes. The paper explains the pro- posal, the development of prototypes and the empirical validation with a testbed. In addition, a power consumption analytical model is used to measure the energy savings achieved by dualWireless and for comparison with other authors proposals. The dualWireless approach is shown to be more energy efficient than other alternatives as long as the occupation time of the network is under 40%, which is the case for many particular applications. © 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. Introduction 1 Urban areas around the world tend to have full cover- Q2 2 age of high speed networks through both wired and wireless 3 access networks, and acceptable levels of connectivity are 4 usually available in medium-size towns as well as along the 5 roads. However, large rural areas that are not densely popu- 6 lated remain unconnected to terrestrial telecommunication 7 ✩ This work has been supported by Research Project TUCAN3G IST-601102 STP, supported by the European Comission’s FP7 Programme. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34914888741. E-mail addresses: ignacio.foche@urjc.es (I. Foche-Pérez), javier.simo@ urjc.es (J. Simó-Reigadas), ignacio.prieto@ehas.org, ignacio.prieto@urjc.es (I. Prieto-Egido), eduardo.morgado@urjc.es (E. Morgado), andres.martinez@urjc.es (A. Martínez-Fernández). networks in most countries. Multi-hop wireless networks 8 have been proven as a suitable solution to cover the in- 9 creasing demand of ubiquitous broadband communications 10 in these scenarios. These rural networks have a wide variety 11 of applications that go from tele-educational or e-health ser- 12 vices to environmental monitoring or remote video surveil- 13 lance. Some of these applications only generate intermittent 14 traffic with low-intensity, while others show long inactiv- 15 ity periods, for example at night. In these cases, the net- 16 work wastes a significant amount of energy staying alive and 17 idle just because it is not obvious how to bring it up on de- 18 mand remotely. This fact is especially relevant when we take 19 into account the figures from the International Communica- 20 tions Union, who indicates that 50% of the operating costs 21 (OPEX) in rural networks are related to power consump- 22 tion [1]. 23 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2015.08.028 1570-8705/© 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. Please cite this article as: I. Foche-Pérez et al., A dual IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.15–4 network architecture for energy-efficient communications with low-demanding applications, Ad Hoc Networks (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2015.08.028