Title: A cross-layer approach to timely responsive transmission under collection tree topology in wireless sensor network

Authors: Yu Tang; Changqin Bu; Aihua Fan

Addresses: School of Information and Software Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China ' School of Information and Software Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China ' School of Computer Science, Xi'an Polytechnic University, Xi'an 710048, China

Abstract: Collection tree protocol (CTP) provides a link quality-based routing schema for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with a collection tree topology, under which the link quality is measured by throughput rather than transmission latency. Yet it is not appropriate for the applications that need to transmit packets in a timely manner. Furthermore, implementation of timely responsive service in WSNs demands real-time supports from both routing and transport control layer. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer approach in which the packets with transmission deadlines are routed via an average transmission time (ATT) protocol and the congestion control is imposed through a performance-differentiated packet dropping policy. Simulation experiments on the TinyOS platform show that ATT protocol outperforms CTP by reducing the transmission delay up to 17.7%, while maintains a slightly better transmission reliability measured by the packet loss rate. The proposed cross-layer approach presents a promising core feature of framework in delivering real-time service in WSNs.

Keywords: WSNs; wireless sensor networks; routing protocols; real-time transmission; packet loss control; collection tree topology; cross-layer approach; average transmission time; congestion control; packet dropping policy; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2015.070407

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2015 Vol.18 No.3/4, pp.182 - 192

Received: 15 Oct 2012
Accepted: 18 Sep 2013

Published online: 05 Jul 2015 *

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