1. Introduction to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard

1.1 Initial standard (IEEE 802.15.4-2003)

At the end of the 1990s, as several short-range wireless telecommunications technologies were being standardized and used worldwide – including WiFi (IEEE 802.11) and Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1) – the scientific community highlighted a number of weaknesses. These mainly concern energy autonomy and the ability to scale up to an infrastructure-free network, while Bluetooth's scatternet option, which enables a network to be extended beyond seven entities, is still not available...