Battery powered Xbee end device packet loss periodically

Question

Hi,
I've done a small network of sensor nodes using 4 xbees s2c. I have configured 1 xbee as coordinator, 1 as router and 2 xbees as end devices with pin sleep enable. Sensor nodes where xbees are connected, measures temp,hum etc and throught arduino's serial transfer data packet to xbee and from there to router, and router to coordinator. One of sensor node is battery powered with a 3.7 li-ion. Then i connected a 5v booster and then a timer ciruit powers all needed circuits and arduino. Xbee is powered from arduino's 3.3v. Timer circuit is programmed to start every 5 minutes, values are collected and transmitted to router. Then with a pin triger of that power circuit, system goes off and again on after 5 min. i've also set SP=64, SN=FFF to end device, router and coord. I saw that i have 1 or more packet loss on coord once in 2 hours or less.
Is there any configuration that i forgot or it is power issue?
Thanks in advance..

Answer 1

Are you using the flow control likes between the Arduino and the XBee? Are you powering off the XBee or using pin sleep?

Did you set your timers on the parent router and coordinator to account for this 5 min sleep time?

Answer 2

Did you save SP and SN value on Router/Coordinator parent node to match with highest sleeping time possible among its child End Devices?

In absence of this, parent node will abandon child End Device if no data is received in 3xSPxSN time from it.

Comments

Yes i have..

Answer 3

I have almost the exact same set up and problem. However, mine can get much worse. Sometimes the end device will lose its connection to the network and not rejoin until I do a NR 1 to reset the network. Additionally, this sometime doesn't work and a manual power removal must be done to get it working again.

I actually put a router near the end device (about a meter away) and reset the network. The end device still chose the old parent that is much farther away.

Setting all the routers on the network doesn't sound like a good solution because the period is three minutes on the end device, and I can't guarantee which router it will choose to use.

I am using the flow control lines and also checking to see that messages went out. However when the end device leaves the network, it's just gone and nothing seems to get it back reliably.

Answer 4

As i wrote before when the circuit is on and so xbee is on, after a couple of seconds xbee goes to sleep and after 1 minute circuit goes completely off, so xbee goes off.

Comments

For a Zigbee mesh network with a sleeping end device, you should not be powering off the end device. Let the SM, SP and SN commands control when the radio is awake and able to communicate.   Also make sure that these same values are on your parent routers.