Modeling of Duty-Cycled MAC Protocols for Heterogeneous WSN with Priorities

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have experienced an important revitalization, particularly with the arrival of Internet of Things applications. In a general sense, a WSN can be composed of different classes of nodes, having different characteristics or requirements (heterogeneity). Duty-cycling is a popular technique used in WSN, that allows nodes to sleep and wake up periodically in order to save energy. We believe that the modeling and performance evaluation of heterogeneous WSN with priorities operating in duty-cycling, being of capital importance for their correct design and successful deployment, have not been sufficiently explored. The present work presents a performance evaluation study of a WSN with these features. For a scenario with two classes of nodes composing the network, each with a different channel access priority, an approximate analytical model is developed with a pair of two-dimensional discrete-time Markov chains. Note that the same modeling approach can be used to analyze networks with a larger number of classes. Performance parameters such as average packet delay, throughput and average energy consumption are obtained. Analytical results are validated by simulation, showing accurate results. Furthermore, a new procedure to determine the energy consumption of nodes is proposed that significantly improves the accuracy of previous proposals. We provide quantitative evidence showing that the energy consumption accuracy improvement can be up to two orders of magnitude.

Energy Consumption Modeling for Heterogeneous IoT-WSN Devices: Entire Modes and Operation Cycles Considerations

“…Furthermore, although the energy analysis considers different node operation cycles and operation modes, the present study is more direct with the resulting stationary probability distribution, which is used in the expressions to determine energy consumption. In [21], with the introduction of the Priority Sink Access MAC Protocol(PSA-MAC) model, we have proven this new approach to the determination of energy that allows for more accurate results with a more systematic method of calculation. Additionally, the performance of a heterogeneous network using a DC MAC protocol has been evaluated.…”

“…In [22] we have enhanced the model in order to support the APT scheme, including the energy approach used in [21]; nevertheless, in all these models, only the energy consumption during the data transmission period of the transmission cycle is considered.…”

A roadmap to developing energy-efficient MAC protocol in wireless sensor networks: a case of ADP-MAC development and implementation

“…In addition to the implementation-based approach we have taken to evaluate our proposal of switching polling interval distribution, researchers may also opt for performing analytical modelling and evaluation. A number of authors have recently conducted statistical analysis of their protocols prior to implementing their ideas, such as [75][76][77].…”

Energy-Aware QoS MAC Protocol Based on Prioritized-Data and Multi-Hop Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks

“…Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed of tiny, low-powered sensors capable of detecting many types of urgent information from their surroundings, and have the primary features of robustness, scalability, and large-scale deployment capability [ 1 , 2 ]. These miniature devices can sense and extract information from the environment and are often referred to as sensor nodes.…”