IEEE 802.11 ( or WiFi) interfaces described as high power consumers, while, IEEE 802.15.4 modules described as ultra low power consumers.
But at the same time, Its known that WiFi has much higher transmission data rate than IEEE 802.15.4, which may justifies the high power consumption of WiFi, because we can't send more bits without additional cost.
Is there any other reasons make WiFi consume more power?
Edit: suppose that I want to send successive small size packets (100 bytes packets)
and suppose that both networks have the same max coverage area.
for this specific case, which network seems to be more efficient?
what criteria may I use to compare?
Of course it depends on use case, but recent research shows that IEEE 802.11 protocol is more energy-efficient than IEEE 802.15.4, for example, in image transmittion. The energy consumption is decreasing with the increment of bit rate.
The energy consumption is related to the transmission technique: in case of IEEE 802.11 it is (DSSS, FHSS or OFDM), wihle in case of IEEE 802.15.4 it is UBW. it is a shorter transmission dwell time in case of IEEE 802.15.4. UWB transmission permits higher transmission data rates too.
Anther point o view is the transmission range: in case of IEEE 802.11 could be tens of km, while in case of sensor networks the range is tens of meters. Therefore a low energy consumption in case of WSN.
Regards,
You may also want to consider the justification for 802.15.4 existence. This is where application becomes the deciding factor, coupled with the required transmission distance.
The application of 802.15.4 is clear i.e. low data rate and short-range wireless networking. The 802.15.4 actually simplifies communication protocols and also reduces the data rate when compared to the 802.11.
Once your application deviates from this, it becomes a challenge to convince yourself why you should use this protocol. Of course, it's a new ball game trying to tweak the protocol layer(s) to achieve similar performance under similar conditions - academic research(?)
I am not certain whether an absolute comparison between the two in terms of transmission distance/energy consumption would be fair.
For instance how would do compare 802.15.4 and Bluetooth, Bluetooth and RFID? It's just the matter of what they do best.
If there's anything about the modulation technique that creates higher power demands at a transmitter, for any given range and data rate, I would have to think that it's caused by the use of active carriers (pilots) in the modulation. For example, in OFDM compared with UWB, or even in DSSS or CDMA.
On the other hand, techniques that do not make use of active pilots may possibly require more power in the receiver, processing required to sync up with the transmitter.
But to the specific question of 802.11 compared with 802.15.4, my guess is that the dominant difference there would be the range requirement.
Normally, 802.11 (around 20dBm) devices transmit using higher power compared to 802.15.4 devices (around 0 dBm). However transmitting at the same power does not mean the same power consumption. To add something to the previous answers, it would be interesting to look at the power saving mechanism standardized for both technologies. An important metric is the idle mode power consumption which is, for the best of my knowledge, higher in 802.11 devices. We have to consider the MAC protocols, essentially the medium access mechanisms used by the both technologies.
The high power consumption of Wi-Fi devices is also related to its high transmission power and high processing level. The Lp-Wi-Fi consumes less energy than Wi-Fi, but still has higher energy consumption than IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6.
All answered correct based on context, but In IOT concepts IEEE 802.15.4(Zigbee) is designed for light weight device which are not capable of interacting with internet or other device previous.it reduce high infrastructure requirements and cost...
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