Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
DOI 10.1007/s12083-015-0349-8
OPNET-based modeling and simulation of mobile Zigbee
sensor networks
Xiaolong Li1 · Meiping Peng2 · Jun Cai3 · Changyan Yi3 · Hong Zhang3
Received: 7 January 2015 / Accepted: 23 March 2015
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015
Abstract Modeling and simulation can help to validate
and evaluate the performance of wireless sensor networks
(WSNs) within specific applications. In order to resolve the
issue of the restriction on node mobility in existing Zig-
bee WSN simulation models, this paper proposes a Zigbee
compliant new simulation model using the OPNET simu-
lator. Based on the Zigbee MAC layer model in OPNET
Modeler, we develop a network layer model and propose an
improved AODV routing algorithm to support node mobil-
ity, both of which are compatible with Zigbee protocols.
We further present in details the structure of the network
 Xiaolong Li
xlli@guet.edu.cn
Meiping Peng
meipingp@hotmail.com
Jun Cai
jcai@umanitoba.ca
Changyan Yi
changyan.yi@umanitoba.ca.
Hong Zhang
hzhang@cc.umanitoba.ca
1 Guangxi Key Laboratory of Trusted Software,
Guilin University of Electronic Technology,
Guilin, China
2 School of Computer Science and Engineering,
Guilin University of Electronic Technology,
Guilin, China
3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
layer process model and the implementation procedures of
its kernel functions. Comprehensive performance compar-
isons are performed between the proposed model and the
Zigbee model in OPNET standard libraries. In order to eval-
uate the effectiveness of the proposed model in the aspect
of node mobility support, time intervals between route fail-
ure occurrence and route recovery are measured as well.
The experimental results show that the proposed simulation
model achieves better performance, compared to the orig-
inal one. In addition, when node mobility causes routing
failures, alternative routes can be established quickly by the
proposed model.
Keywords OPNET · Zigbee · IEEE802.15.4 · Mobility ·
Simulation · Network layer
1 Introduction
Wireless sensor networks generally comprise a large num-
ber of sensor nodes deployed in an area of interest to collect
physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature,
humidity, pressure, etc. In wireless sensor networks, per-
formance evaluation is critical to test the practicability of
network architectures and protocol algorithms, and provides
guidelines in performance optimization. Among different
candidates, simulation offers a cost-effective way. Recently,
researchers have developed many simulation models on
different simulation platforms, such as OPNET, NS-2,
TOSSIM, EmStar, OMNeT++, J-Sim, ATEMU, and Avrora
[1]. Compared with other simulators , OPNET is more
suitable to simulate behaviors of networks in the real
world. OPNET Modeler, as a network simulator, provides
an industry-leading network technology development envi-
ronment [2]. It can be used to design and study network

modeling and simulation in applications, equipments, proto-
cols and network communications, and show flexibility and
intuition in designing practical systems.
Recently, Zigbee technology has been widely adopted to
develop wireless sensor network applications [3] by forming
a wireless mesh network with low rate, low power con-
sumption, and secure networking. In Zigbee protocol stack,
the physical layer and the MAC layer protocols have been
defined by IEEE802.15.4 standard [4]. Its network layer
built upon both lower layers should be designed to enable
a mesh networking, support node joining or leaving, assign
network addresses to devices, and perform routing. Zigbee
Alliance is working at providing a standardized base set
of solutions for sensor networks [5]. In this paper, a net-
work layer model is proposed for mobile sensor networks
in order to accomplish all defined functions. The applica-
tion layer aims at providing the services for an application
program, consisting of application support sub-layer, appli-
cation framework, and Zigbee device object. Since this layer
is related to specific applications, and is not the main focus
of this paper,the design of the application layer is omitted
here.
The simulation of Zigbee sensor networks within
OPNET simulator has been attracting interests from
researchers. There are many research works on simula-
tion modelling and evaluation of sensor nodes in OPNET
[6, 7]. For example, Kucuk et al. [6] presented a detailed
implementation methodology for their proposed positioning
algorithm, called M-SSLE. Shrestha et al. [7] proposed a
simulation model for new networking nodes equipped with
multiple radio technologies. However, few works focused
on the simulation model of mobile sensor networks in liter-
ature. Device mobility is inevitable and must be conciliated
[8, 9], where lack of the support for simulation on mobile
Zigbee sensor network is a major limitation in this field of
research, evaluation and development.
In [10], the adequacy of current provisions for deal-
ing with different mobility cases was assessed. Simulation
results demonstrated that the current model in OPNET stan-
dard libraries is ineffective in dealing with nodal mobility.
Since OPNET Modeler provides a comprehensive simu-
lation environment for modeling distributed systems and
communication networks, many simulation studies for Zig-
bee sensor networks were performed in OPNET simulator
[11–16]. According to the performance studies using the
Zigbee model within OPNET Modeler standard libraries
(ZMOMSL), there are several disadvantages on this model.
For example, its address assignment mechanism may waste
address space, the high communication overheads may
reduce network lifetime, and the network joining strategy
may result in significant traffic collisions and jams [17, 18].
Among all these disadvantages, the most critical issue is that
the Zigbee model can not support the mobility of device
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
nodes. This motivated us to develop a new simulation model
based on the OPNET simulator for mobile Zigbee sensor
networks.
The main contributions of this paper are summarized as
follows. 1) We adopt the OPNET simulation development
platform to design a mobile Zigbee sensor network simu-
lation model compatible with Zigbee protocols, where the
physical layer and the MAC layer defined by IEEE 802.15.4
are employed. 2) We provide a node level design of mobile
sensor nodes, present a process level model of its network
layer model and the detailed implementation procedure of
the key functions. 3) In order to further decrease the com-
munication overhead of nodes, an improved AODV routing
algorithm is also proposed, which demonstrates superior
capability in supporting node mobility.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section 2, we discuss the design of network process model
in details. In Section 3, we propose a new simulation
model which enables mobile support for Zigbee devices.
Section 4 presents our simulation results and demonstrates
experimental comparison between our proposed model and
ZMOMSL. Section 5 draws conclusions.
2 The design of simulation system model
2.1 Design of node model
As shown in Fig. 1, a Zigbee node model within OPNET
Modeler typically incorporates the physical layer, the MAC
layer, the network layer and the application layer. The physi-
cal layer comprises a transmitter module, a receiver module,
and a wireless pipeline model. The wireless pipeline model
can be configured to build a real radio environment. In
the MAC layer, Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Col-
lision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol is used. For the
network layer, following services are provided: forming
a network, nodes joining and leaving a network, network
address assignment, neighbor discovery, and route mainte-
nance discovery. The application layer is responsible for
producing and processing sensing data. In the rest of the
paper, we will focus on the design of the network layer
model for mobile Zigbee sensor networks.
2.2 The design of network layer model
Three types of devices are defined in the Zigbee standard
framework: coordinator, router, and end device. Coordina-
tor is responsible for forming a new network, storing the key
parameters of the network and connecting to other networks.
There is always a single coordinator in a Zigbee network.
In Zigbee-based WSNs, sink node typically plays the role
of network coordinator. Router has the routing capability.
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
Fig. 1 The developed node model
Specifically, it could allow other devices to join the net-
work as its child nodes, and route data packets. End device
has no routing capability, which relies only on its parents
(the coordinator or a router) to route data packets. Com-
pared with coordinator and router, end device has simpler
hardware structure.
Each device node has a 16-bit short address for and a
64-bit extended address in a Zigbee network. The 64-bit
extended address is set by manufactures, similar to the MAC
address which is unique for each node. The 16-bit short
address is dynamically assigned to the node by its parent
coordinator or router when the node joins the network and
it is similar to the IP address in the Internet network. Zigbee
standard uses a distributed address allocation mechanism
for assigning address to the node when it joins the network.
Network address is determined by the following network
parameters which is provided by coordinator: *Cm the max-
imum number of children allowed for each router, *Rm the
maximum number of routers as subrouters linked to each
router, and *Lm the maximum depth of the whole network.
The coordinator decides the depth of the whole network.
The size of the address sub-block allocated by each parent
at depth d, Cskip(d) , could be described as:
 to execute function wpan zigbee j oin network(),
1 + Cm (Lm − d − 1) Rm = 1
Cskip(d) = Lm −d−1
1+Cm −Rm −Cm Rm (1)
1−Rm Rm > 1
where Cskip(d) = 0 means that the node has no capability to
accept child nodes, and Cskip(d) > 0 otherwise. If network
address Ar (d + 1, m) is assigned to the m − th router child
and Ae (d+1, m) is assigned to the m−th end device child at
depth d+1, they can be obtained by the following equations:
Ar (d + 1, m) = Aparent + Cskip(d) × Ri (2)
Ae (d + 1, m) = Aparent + Cskip(d) × Rm + i (3)
where Ri ∈ [0, Rm ], and Aparent represents the address of
the parent, i ∈ [0, (Cm − Rm )].
Since the tree address allocation mechanism can provide
a simple and reliable routing method for the entire Zigbee
network, it is employed in our proposed simulation model
to assign a network address to a device node (a router or an
end device) when it joins the network at the first time. In
order to build a model of the IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee proto-
cols supporting node mobility, we propose a network layer
process based on OPNET simulation platform as shown in
Fig. 2. In the network process module, by moving into the
init state and forcedly traversing to state wait, all types of
devices begin executing initialization procedure.
1) If the node is a coordinator, it will first setup
a network. By executing the transition function
wpan execute scan(), the coordinator will scan all
channels to select an unoccupied channel. After that,
it will invoke the setnetwork state’s Enter execs
wpan zigbee setnetwork() to choose a network ID
and configure other network parameters. Then it will
move into the active state to deal with network join-
ing and leaving requests, or routing messages. Among
all functions associated with the active state, func-
tion wpan handle mac pk() will be executed when
receiving data packets from the MAC layer, while
function aodv rte rrep hello message send()
achieves the routing functionality. By periodically
broadcasting hello data packets and receiving hello
packets from neighbors, the nodes (except the end
devices) will update their routing tables and neighbor
tables. For end devices, they will choose one proper
node from candidate routers within its neighborhood
as its parent.
2) If the node is not the coordinator, it will scan all chan-
nels by executing function wpan execute scan(). If it
finds an available channel in which a network is oper-
ating, it will transit to J oin network state and begin
where it will send a J OI NRequest packet to the rel-
evant router or coordinator asking to join the network
and then wait for the response to its request. After
receiving the corresponding J oinResponse packet,
the node will enter the active state.

2.3 Network join
As shown in Fig. 2, all deployed nodes begin at the init
state. Each node is categorized as coordinator, router, or end
device. MAC layer channel scan is immediately called by
the coordinator after the process of network initialization,
and its status would be changed to set network. When the
MAC layer channel scan is completed, coordinator will look
for an appropriate channel for establishing a new Zigbee
network. After the suitable radio channel is found, the coor-
dinator will assign a network identifier to the new network,
which does not conflict with other existing networks. Then
it will assign a network address to itself. Its status would be
switched to the active state. After the coordinator finishes
the above operations, the network is formed. Since then,
other nodes will have the opportunity to join the network.
The details of network join implementation procedure are
described below and are illustrated in Fig. 3.
When a child node A wants to send the join request, A
first carries out the channel scan procedure at the MAC layer
and then broadcasts a beacon request frame. The process
status is then transferred to j oin network. Meanwhile, a
timer of channel sensing duration is started. In our model,
the initial value is chosen in the interval [0.2s, 0.4s], wherein
Fig. 2 Zigbee network layer
model in OPNET
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0.2s is extremely adequate for awaiting and receiving reply
frame from its neighboring nodes, even considering the pro-
cession delay, the transmission delay and the propagation
delay. During this period of time, after receiving beacon
frames, node A stores the neighbor information in its neigh-
bor table. At the end of the timer, the MAC layer schedules
a remote interrupt to notice the network layer. Then, node
A selects one node (coordinator or router) with the smallest
hop count from itself as its potential parent node, denoted
by B, which has both the capability and permit to accept
new child nodes. Then, node A sends a join request frame to
node B, and starts a timer to wait for the corresponding join
response frame. The initial value of the timer is set as 0.2s.
If it receives node B’s joining response frame before time-
out, node A joins the network successfully. Its process status
moves into active state for data communications. Other-
wise, node A selects a new appropriate parent node in its
neighbor table and sends a new join request frame. How-
ever, if there is no appropriate parent node in the neighbor
table, it will call for MAC layer channel scan again. The
process status will stay in j oin network until node A joins
a network successfully.
For a parent node, once it receives the beacon request
frame, it will broadcast a new beacon frame. When it
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
Fig. 3 Procedure for nodes
joining a network
receives a join request frame, it will use the distributed
address allocation mechanism to judge whether it has ability
to adopt a child node. If available, it will assign a network
address and send a join response frame to the child node.
Otherwise, it will discard the join request frame. Comparing
with Zigbee standard network layer protocol, the proposed
protocol has the following differences in network join pro-
cedure. 1) In Zigbee standard network layer protocol, even
if the required parent node has no capacity to adopt the child
node, it is still required to send a feedback message. 2) Once
the node is rejected to join, it will carry out the channel scan
in the next round. However, this action is neither necessary
nor energy-efficient because it is still possible that a proper
node in its neighbor table can be its parent node. In addition,
these actions will increase the traffic load and cause more
transmission conflicts. In Section 4, the experimental results
demonstrate that our proposed protocol can save more than
30% communication overheads for network join procedure.
2.4 Route discovery and maintenance
AODV [19] routing algorithm is an on-demand algorithm,
which builds up routes between source nodes and destina-
tion nodes only when it desires to. It uses sequence numbers
to avoid occurring routing loops.
In this paper, we propose an improved AODV rout-
ing algorithm. Similar to AODV, the proposed algorithm
consists of two parts: route discovery and route mainte-
nance. In route discovery, source node first broadcasts a
route request (RREQ) packet across the network via flood-
ing. Once neighboring nodes receive the packet, each of
them judges whether the destination address of the packet
is its network address. 1) If two addresses match with each
other, the node will add this route to its routing table and
establishes the reversed pointer to the source in its rout-
ing table entries. Next, it sends a route reply (RREP) to the
source node along the reversed direction. 2) If two addresses
are not matched, then the node searches its routing table to
find a possible route to the destination. If the route exists,
the node sends a join response frame to the source node,
and sends a message to the destination. Otherwise, the node
establishes the reversed pointer to the source in its routing
table entries and then continues to flood the RREQ packet.
Note that device nodes employ the destination address
and broadcast serial number of the source node as the
unique identifier to avoid repeatedly broadcasting RREQ
packets.
In route maintenance, every router node needs to main-
tain its own routes to guarantee their validness after they are
established. Thus, every node should periodically broadcast
a hello message to determine whether the current routes are
valid. If a route becomes invalid, it will broadcast a route
error (RERR) message to inform the source that the route is
now unreachable to destination(s).

The routing process of the improved AODV routing algo-
rithm in our proposed model is described as follows. If an
end device intends to send a data packet, it sends the data
packet directly to its parent node. Note that the parent node
must be a router or the coordinator. For a router or a coordi-
nator, it sends the data packet directly to the next hop node if
it has a route to the destination. Otherwise, it initiates a route
discovery. The overall flow chart of the proposed routing
algorithm is given in Fig. 4.
3 Mobility support in the Zigbee-based WSNs
3.1 Mobility support for Zigbee router
In mobile Zigbee-based WSNs, routers (or the coordina-
tor ) do not need to dynamically change network addresses,
because they have the capability to maintain and repair their
route tables. By adopting the improved AODV algorithm,
routers may reduce the negative effects of node mobil-
ity. When a router fails in the network, it is not required
to change the network address of the router after being
assigned an initial network address.
3.2 Mobility support for end devices
For mobile WSNs, when end devices move outside their
parent nodes’ communication range, according to Zig-
bee/IEEE802.15.4 Standard, they are required to find new
parent nodes and change their current network addresses.
In order to solve this drawback of the current Standard, an
Fig. 4 Flow chart of the
improved AODV algorithm
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Fig. 5 A diagram of mobility support for end devices
adaptive routing strategy is proposed for end devices. For
implementing the function of neighbor discovery, a router
is required to periodically broadcast hello packets. Accord-
ing to these received packets, end devices can generate and
maintain their own neighbor tables, and obtain the infor-
mation of routers within its neighborhood. Obviously, all
routers can act as its potential parent node. When the end
device leaves its parent node, it selects one from these
candidates as its parent node to forward its data packets.
Figure 5 illustrates the procedure to support the node
mobility for end devices. In Fig. 5, node D is a child of node
A in area 1 at the beginning. If node D moves to area 2, it
will become out of the communication range of the node A.
In area 2, node D can receive HELLO messages from node
C to update its neighbor table. Therefore, it can select node
C as its parent node. Following this procedure, end device
does not need to search a new parent node in order to get a
new network address.
Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.
Compared to the traditional AODV protocol, our pro-
posed routing protocol is superior in following two aspects.
1), the traditional AODV protocol does not distinguish dif-
ferent types of devices, so as to result in broadcasting
redundant RREQ packets for end devices during route dis-
covery phase and aggravating network congestion. 2), the
conventional AODV protocol can not provide any support
for the mobility of three types of nodes.
4 Simulation and analysis
In this section, we conduct a comparative performance
evaluation between our proposed Zigbee compliant simula-
tion model using the OPNET simulator (ZCNSMOS) and
ZMOMSL, in terms of the number of essential routers,
networking overhead, and network join delay. In order to
assess validity of the proposed model for supporting node
mobility, we conduct experiments to measure the time taken
by nodes they establish new routes after previous ones
fail. All experiments are completed in OPNET Modeler
14.5. In experiments, all device nodes are uniformly scat-
tered over a 100 × 100 m2 square area, and the number of
device nodes varies from 20 to 100. The commonly used
Random Waypoint mobility model is employed and the
maximum velocity is set at 3m/s. Environmental variables
applied to performance evaluation are shown in Table 1. For
each experiment, we randomly generate network topologies,
repeat 20 runs, and calculate the average value.
We first test the number of essential routers of two mod-
els for different network size so that all nodes can join
the network. The results are displayed in Table 2. We can
observe that with the increase of the network size, denoted
by n, the number of essential routers of both ZCNSMOS
and ZMOMSL increases, however, the value of ZCNSMOS
is always lower than that of ZMOMSL. When n=20, ZCNS-
MOS needs less than half essential routers compared to
Table 1 Environmental variables
Deployment area 100 × 100 m2
Network size 20∼ 100
Transmission range 30m
Transmission power 0.05W
Packet size 512bytes
Packet interval Poisson(10)s
Simulation duration 600s
Mobility model Random waypoint
maximum velocity 3m/s
Packet start time 20s
The maximum number of child nodes 7
The maximum number of routers 5
The maximum depth 5
Table 2 The number of essential routers
Network size ZMOMSL ZCNSMOS
20 6.15 2.75
40 13.35 5.65
60 19.50 10.45
80 25.90 16.35
100 33.85 24.05
ZMOMSL. When n increases to 100, this ratio can be fur-
ther reduced to nearly 14 . Since in general router is a full
function device with routing capability and is much more
expensive than end device, our proposed ZCNSMOS has a
clear advantage in terms of networking cost.
In order to evaluate the energy efficiency of two models
in networking, we demonstrate the communication over-
head required for all nodes joining a network. For compar-
ison purpose, we use the number of ACK frames including
receiving joining request packets and joining response pack-
ets as a performance metric, since such number can effec-
tively reflect the total communication overhead. Figure 6
illustrates the relationship between network join overhead
and network size. As expected, ZCNSMOS has lower net-
working overhead than ZMOMSL for all scenarios under
consideration, it is because ZCNSMOS is designated to
make network join procedure more simplified.
Figure 7 illustrates the runtime with respect the number
of nodes attached to the network. The network size n is fixed
at 80. For different values of n, similar conclusions can be
obtained. From this figure, we can see that in ZCNSMOS,
all device nodes can quickly join the network once they
are deployed. While for ZMOMSL, device node attachment
network happens after nearly 6s. It is because in ZMOMSL,
a large number of broadcast packets, which are generated
by all un-joined nodes, lead to traffic congestion and high
Fig. 6 The communication overhead of both ZCNSMOS and
ZMOMSL in networking
 Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.

To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed model

Fig. 7 Comparison of ZMOMSL and ZCNSMOS in terms of network
join delay
packet loss in the network. Then, according to the MAC pro-
tocol, a random waiting time is required for device nodes to
retransmit data packets. For any device node, ZCNSMOS
not only makes it more rapidly to join and leave a net-
work, but also gives mobility support. After the node moves
to a new area and is required to rejoin a network, shorter
network join delay can help device nodes participate in a
network task more timely. As shown in above experimental
results, it is apparent that ZCNSMOS enhances the perfor-
mance significantly compared to ZMOMSL for the function
of network join of the network layer.
ZCNSMOS in terms of node mobility support, we mea-
sure the length of intervals between route failure occurrence
and route recovery. In this experiment, the number of end
devices is fixed at 20, and the number of routers, denoted
by λ, varies from 6 to 21. For different amounts of routers,
the average values of time interval lengthes, the high val-
ues and the low values are presented in Fig. 8. It is obvious
that for any values of λ, all time intervals have lengthes less
than 0.1s. Compared to sensing intervals in conventional
applications, which is 10s in our experiments, such time
lengths are rather trivial and can be neglected. These results
clearly demonstrate that ZCNSMOS can quickly establish
new routes for device nodes when their old routes can not
be maintained due to node mobility. With the increase of
λ, new route discovery time decreases. When λ becomes
16, the average value is close to 0. This is because for end
devices, statistically, the increase of λ means that its neigh-
bor table is large so that there are more routers within its
neighborhood. For routers, the increase of λ means the aris-
ing of the possibility that they have routes to destinations.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, an OPNET-based simulation model, called
Zigbee compliant new simulation model using the OPNET
simulator (ZCNSMOS), is proposed to achieve node mobil-
ity support for Zigbee sensor networks. As the MAC layer
of Zigbee networks has been defined by IEEE 802.15.4

Fig. 8 Time interval of new 1 1

high high
route discovery in different size average average
of sensor networks 0.8 low 0.8 low
time interval (s)
time interval (s)

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
runtime (s) runtime (s)

(a) (b)
1 1
high high
average average
0.8 low 0.8 low
time interval (s)
time interval (s)

0.6 0.6

0.4 0.4

0.2 0.2

0 0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 0 100 200 300 400 500 600
runtime (s) runtime (s)
(c) (d)
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Acknowledgments This work was supported by the National Nat- nology of electronics packages (SIITME 2011). IEEE Computer
ural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61462021, 61262074), Society, Piscataway, pp 249–252
Opening Project of Guangxi Key Laboratory of Trusted Software 17. Lucio GF, Paredes-Farrera M, Jammeh E et al (2003) OPNET
(Grant No. PF130549), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi modeler and NS-2: comparing the accuracy of network simulators
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sweeper-based localization estimation and its implementation in the best paper award at the
a multi-hop wireless sensor networking environment by using ChinaCom conference. He
OPNET. Simulation 89(6):746–761 is currently a Professor. His
7. Shrestha PL, Hempel M, Qian Y et al (2013) Performance research interests include sen-
modeling of a multi-tier multi-hop hybrid sensor network pro- sor networks, M2M networks,
tocol. In: Proceedings of 2013 IEEE wireless communica- and ad hoc networks.
tions and networking conference. IEEE, Piscataway, pp 2345–
2350
8. Ota K, Dong M, Cheng Z et al (2012) ORACLE: Mobility con-
trol in wireless sensor and actor networks. Comput Commun
35(9):1029–1037 Meiping Peng received the
9. Dong M, Kimata T, Sugiura K et al (2014) Quality-of-Experience M.E. degree in gui lin Uni-
(QoE) in emerging mobile social networks. IEICE Trans Inf Syst versity of electronic tech-
97(10):2606–2612 nology, China, Gui lin, in
10. Chen LJ, Sun T, Liang NC (2010) An evaluation study of mobil- 2013. He will pursue a Ph.D.
ity support in Zigbee netowrk. J Sign Proc Syst 59(1):111– at the School of Electronics
122 and Information at the North-
11. Ramyah SR (2012) Load density analysis of mobile Zigbee western Polytechnical Univer-
Coordianator in hexagonal comfiguration. http://www.SciRP.org/ sity, Xi’an, China. His current
journal/wsn. doi:10.4236/wsn.2012.43009 research interests lay in wire-
12. Vlajic N, Stevanovic D, Spanogiannopoulos G (2011) Strategies less sensor network, wireless
for improving performance of IEEE802.15.4/Zigbee WSNs with communication.
path-constrained mobile sink(s). Comput Commun 34(6):743–
757
 Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl.

Jun Cai received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees from Xi’an Jiao-
tong University, Xi’an, China,
in 1996 and 1999, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree
from the University of Water-
loo, Waterloo, ON, Canada,
in 2004, all in electrical engi-
neering. From June 2004 to
April 2006, he was with Mc-
Master University, Hamilton,
On, as a Natural Sciences and
Enginnering Research Council
of Canada Postdoctoral Fel-
low. Since July 206, he has
been with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Win-
nipeg, MB, Canda, where he is an Associate Professor. His current
research interests include multimedia communication systems, mobil-
ity and resource management in beyond-third-generation wireless
communication networks, and ad hoc and mesh networks.
Hong Zhang received B.S.
degree in computer science
from JILIN University, China,
in 2007. And he received
M.S. degree in information
technology and telecommuni-
cations from INHA Univer-
sity, Korea, in 2010. He is
currently a Ph.D. candidate
with the Department of Elec-
trical and Computer Engineer-
ing at University of Manitoba,
Canada. His research interests
include green communication,
heterogeneous networks and
cognitive radio in wireless
networks.

Changyan Yi He is cur-
rently a M.Sc. student in
electrical and computer
enginnering, Univeristy of
Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB,
Canada. He received the B.S.
degree from Guilin University
of Electronic Technology,
Guilin, China, in 2012. His
research interests include
radio resource management,
algorithmic game theory, auc-
tion theory and optimization
in wireless Communication
Networks.