Title

Utility-based Bandwidth Adaptation in Mission-Oriented Wireless Sensor Networks

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

5-2012

Abstract

This paper develops a utility-based optimization framework for resource sharing by multiple competing missions in a mission-oriented wireless sensor network (WSN) environment. Prior work on network utility maximization (NUM) based optimization has focused on unicast flows with sender-based utilities in either wireline or wireless networks. In this work, we develop a generalized NUM model to consider three key new features observed in mission-centric WSN environments: i) the definition of the utility of an individual mission (receiver) as a joint function of data from multiple sensor sources ii) the consumption of each senders (sensor) data by multiple missions and iii) the multicast-tree based dissemination of each sensors data flow, using link-layer broadcasts to exploit the \wireless broadcast advantage" in data forwarding. We show how a price-based, distributed protocol (WSN-NUM) can ensure optimal and proportionally-fair rate allocation across the multiple missions, without requiring any coordination among missions or sensors. We also discuss techniques to improve the speed of convergence of the protocol, which is essential in an environment as dynamic as the WSN. Further, we analyze the impact of various network- and protocol-parameters on the bandwidth utilization of the network using a discrete-event simulation of a stationary wireless network. Finally, we corroborate our simulation-based performance results of the WSN-NUM protocol with an implementation of an 802.11b network.

Keywords

Utility optimization, Bandwidth allocation, Modeling of systems, Network protocols, Congestion control

Discipline

Digital Communications and Networking

Publication

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks

ISSN/ISBN

1550-4859

Identifier

10.1109/SAHCN.2008.42