A new multicast routing algorithm for Zigbee networks

In recent years, wireless sensor networks have become widely spread in many areas including medical applications. Some of these applications outgrow the traditional communication model applied to wireless sensor networks according to which data is flowing towards a single receiver (sink). In the case of medical data acquisition systems more then one receiver is a viable model. In this paper we discuss details on data broadcast algorithms for the 802.15.4 based ZigBee network standard and their applicability to creating sensor networks for medical data applications, focusing especially on transmitting data to multiple receivers (multicast concept). The multicast concept is not currently supported by ZigBee. So we have focused on introducing a multicast communication model and suggested a new algorithm based on ZigBee which is specifically optimized to support multiple sinks. Further on the paper describes our experiences with developing M-Bee, a multicast routing algorithm platform, using the open Microchip's ZigBee software stack.