Acronyms Related to Wireless Sensor Network

ACK	Acknowledgement	Packet or transmission got through OK
ACL	Access Control List
AM	Amplitude Modulation
AP	Access Point
ARQ	Automatic Repeat reQuest	Sometimes called link level ACK or L2 ACK
ASK	Amplitude Shift Keying	A form of AM communication
BER	Bit Error Rate
CDMA	Code Division Multiple Access
CMOS	Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor	The standard family of processes used to manufacture integrated circuits.
CSMA	Carrier (or Channel) Sense Multiple Access	The channel is sensed before transmission is initiated. If the channel is busy, transmission is delayed. In some cases (e.g. Ethernet) the channel can be sensed during communication as well, in which case collisions can be detected (CSMA-CD). In wireless this is generally not possible, and only a subset of collisions can be avoided (CSMA-CA).
dB	decibel	One tenth of a Bell. 1 Bell = a factor of 10 in power.
dBm	deciBels relative to a milliWatt	1 Bell is an order of magnitude in power, so 10 deciBels relative to a milliWatt is 10mW. -10 dBm = 0.1mW. -90dBm = 1 picoWatt
ESA	Electrically Small Antenna	Any antenna for which 2pa/l < 1, where 2a is the maximum dimension of the antenna.
FEC	Forward Error Correction
FER	Frame Error Rate
FM	Frequency Modulation
FSK	Frequency Shift Keying	A form of FM communication
IETF	Internet Engineering Task Force	The organization that defines all of the internet protocols like IP, TCP, http, ftp, (www.ietf.org)
ITU	International Telecommunications Union	Major standards body
MAC	Medium Access or Medium Access Control	The Medium Access Layer is a sub-layer of the Data Link Layer, layer 2
MAC	Message Authentication Code	In wireless communications this is usually called a MIC to avoid confusion with the Medium Access layer.
MIC	Message Integrity Code
NACK	Negative ACK	Packet or transmission did not get through OK.
NET	Network layer
OOK	On Off Keying	A form of AM communication
OQPSK	Offset QPSK	RF modulation used by 802.15.4 in the 2.4GHz band
OSI	Open System Interconnection	A 7 layer model for representing the hierarchy of communication systems. Generally given as: application, presentation, session, transport, network, data link, physical
PDR	Packet Delivery Rate (or Ratio)	The fraction of packets that make it through a single hop with no errors.
PDU	Protocol Data Units	Data exchanged between layers in an OSI stack.
PER	Packet Error Rate
PHY	Physical layer
PM	Phase Modulation
PSDU	Physical layer Service Data Unit
PSK	Phase Shift Keying	A type of RF modulation, contrast AM and FM
QPSK	Quadrature PSK
RF	Radio Frequency
RSSI	Received Signal Strength Indicator	RSSI is a measure of how much power was received by the radio. Usually this is during reception of a packet, but sometimes just sampling the noise on the channel. RSSI is usually measured in dBm
TDMA	Time Division Multiple Access
TDOA	Time Difference of Arrival	Used in RF location systems
TOF	Time of Flight
TSMP	Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol
WSN	Wireless Sensor Networks