Predictive Congestion Control MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Available congestion control schemes, for example transport control protocol (TCP), when applied to wireless networks results in a large number of packet drops, unfairness with a significant amount of wasted energy due to retransmissions. To fully utilize the hop by hop feedback information, a suite of novel, decentralized, predictive congestion control schemes are proposed for wireless sensor networks in concert with distributed power control (DPC). Besides providing energy efficient solution, embedded channel estimator in DPC predicts the channel quality. By using the channel quality and node queue utilizations, the onset of network congestion is predicted and congestion control is initiated. Stability of the hop by hop congestion control is demonstrated by using a Lyapunov-based approach. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes result in fewer dropped packets than a network without the hop-by-hop congestion control, better fairness index and network efficiency, higher aggregate throughput, and smaller end-to-end delays over the other available schemes like IEEE 802.11 protocol

Congestion and medium access control in 6LoWPAN WSN

In computer networks, congestion is a condition in which one or more egressinterfaces are offered more packets than are forwarded at any given instant [1]. In wireless sensor networks, congestion can cause a number of problems including packet loss, lower throughput and poor energy efficiency. These problems can potentially result in a reduced deployment lifetime and underperforming applications. Moreover, idle radio listening is a major source of energy consumption therefore low-power wireless devices must keep their radio transceivers off to maximise their battery lifetime. In order to minimise energy consumption and thus maximise the lifetime of wireless sensor networks, the research community has made significant efforts towards power saving medium access control protocols with Radio Duty Cycling. However, careful study of previous work reveals that radio duty cycle schemes are often neglected during the design and evaluation of congestion control algorithms. This thesis argues that the presence (or lack) of radio duty cycle can drastically influence the performance of congestion control mechanisms. To investigate if previous findings regarding congestion control are still applicable in IPv6 over low power wireless personal area and duty cycling networks; some of the most commonly used congestion detection algorithms are evaluated through simulations. The research aims to develop duty cycle aware congestion control schemes for IPv6 over low power wireless personal area networks. The proposed schemes must be able to maximise the networks goodput, while minimising packet loss, energy consumption and packet delay. Two congestion control schemes, namely DCCC6 (Duty Cycle-Aware Congestion Control for 6LoWPAN Networks) and CADC (Congestion Aware Duty Cycle MAC) are proposed to realise this claim. DCCC6 performs congestion detection based on a dynamic buffer. When congestion occurs, parent nodes will inform the nodes contributing to congestion and rates will be readjusted based on a new rate adaptation scheme aiming for local fairness. The child notification procedure is decided by DCCC6 and will be different when the network is duty cycling. When the network is duty cycling the child notification will be made through unicast frames. On the contrary broadcast frames will be used for congestion notification when the network is not duty cycling. Simulation and test-bed experiments have shown that DCCC6 achieved higher goodput and lower packet loss than previous works. Moreover, simulations show that DCCC6 maintained low energy consumption, with average delay times while it achieved a high degree of fairness. CADC, uses a new mechanism for duty cycle adaptation that reacts quickly to changing traffic loads and patterns. CADC is the first dynamic duty cycle pro- tocol implemented in Contiki Operating system (OS) as well as one of the first schemes designed based on the arbitrary traffic characteristics of IPv6 wireless sensor networks. Furthermore, CADC is designed as a stand alone medium access control scheme and thus it can easily be transfered to any wireless sensor network architecture. Additionally, CADC does not require any time synchronisation algorithms to operate at the nodes and does not use any additional packets for the exchange of information between the nodes (For example no overhead). In this research, 10000 simulation experiments and 700 test-bed experiments have been conducted for the evaluation of CADC. These experiments demonstrate that CADC can successfully adapt its cycle based on traffic patterns in every traffic scenario. Moreover, CADC consistently achieved the lowest energy consumption, very low packet delay times and packet loss, while its goodput performance was better than other dynamic duty cycle protocols and similar to the highest goodput observed among static duty cycle configurations

Predictive Congestion Control Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Available congestion control schemes, for example transport control protocol (TCP), when applied to wireless networks, result in a large number of packet drops, unfair scenarios and low throughputs with a significant amount of wasted energy due to retransmissions. To fully utilize the hop by hop feedback information, this paper presents a novel, decentralized, predictive congestion control (DPCC) for wireless sensor networks (WSN). The DPCC consists of an adaptive flow and adaptive back-off interval selection schemes that work in concert with energy efficient, distributed power control (DPC). The DPCC detects the onset of congestion using queue utilization and the embedded channel estimator algorithm in DPC that predicts the channel quality. Then, an adaptive flow control scheme selects suitable rate which is enforced by the newly proposed adaptive backoff interval selection scheme. An optional adaptive scheduling scheme updates weights associated with each packet to guarantee the weighted fairness during congestion. Closed-loop stability of the proposed hop-by-hop congestion control is demonstrated by using the Lyapunov-based approach. Simulation results show that the DPCC reduces congestion and improves performance over congestion detection and avoidance (CODA) [3] and IEEE 802.11 protocols

Cross-Layer Active Predictive Congestion Control Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), there are numerous factors that may cause network congestion problems, such as the many-to-one communication modes, mutual interference of wireless links, dynamic changes of network topology and the memory-restrained characteristics of nodes. All these factors result in a network being more vulnerable to congestion. In this paper, a cross-layer active predictive congestion control scheme (CL-APCC) for improving the performance of networks is proposed. Queuing theory is applied in the CL-APCC to analyze data flows of a single-node according to its memory status, combined with the analysis of the average occupied memory size of local networks. It also analyzes the current data change trends of local networks to forecast and actively adjust the sending rate of the node in the next period. In order to ensure the fairness and timeliness of the network, the IEEE 802.11 protocol is revised based on waiting time, the number of the node's neighbors and the original priority of data packets, which dynamically adjusts the sending priority of the node. The performance of CL-APCC, which is evaluated by extensive simulation experiments. is more efficient in solving the congestion in WSNs. Furthermore, it is clear that the proposed scheme has an outstanding advantage in terms of improving the fairness and lifetime of networks

Breaking the Legend: Maxmin Fairness notion is no longer effective

In this paper we analytically propose an alternative approach to achieve better fairness in scheduling mechanisms which could provide better quality of service particularly for real time application. Our proposal oppose the allocation of the bandwidth which adopted by all previous scheduling mechanism. It rather adopt the opposition approach be proposing the notion of Maxmin-charge which fairly distribute the congestion. Furthermore, analytical proposition of novel mechanism named as Just Queueing is been demonstrated.Comment: 8 Page

Reducing Congestion Effects by Multipath Routing in Wireless Networks

We propose a solution to improve fairness and increasethroughput in wireless networks with location information.Our approach consists of a multipath routing protocol, BiasedGeographical Routing (BGR), and two congestion controlalgorithms, In-Network Packet Scatter (IPS) and End-to-EndPacket Scatter (EPS), which leverage BGR to avoid the congestedareas of the network. BGR achieves good performancewhile incurring a communication overhead of just 1 byte perdata packet, and has a computational complexity similar togreedy geographic routing. IPS alleviates transient congestion bysplitting traffic immediately before the congested areas. In contrast,EPS alleviates long term congestion by splitting the flow atthe source, and performing rate control. EPS selects the pathsdynamically, and uses a less aggressive congestion controlmechanism on non-greedy paths to improve energy efficiency.Simulation and experimental results show that our solutionachieves its objectives. Extensive ns-2 simulations show that oursolution improves both fairness and throughput as compared tosingle path greedy routing. Our solution reduces the variance ofthroughput across all flows by 35%, reduction which is mainlyachieved by increasing throughput of long-range flows witharound 70%. Furthermore, overall network throughput increasesby approximately 10%. Experimental results on a 50-node testbed are consistent with our simulation results, suggestingthat BGR is effective in practice

CoAP congestion control for the Internet of Things

“© © 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.” August Betzler, Javier Isern, Carles Gomez, Ilker Demirkol, Josep Paradells, "Experimental evaluation of congestion control for CoAP communications without end-to-end reliability", Ad Hoc Networks, pp. , 2016, ISSN 15708705. DOI: 10.1109/MCOM.2016.7509394CoAP is a lightweight RESTful application layer protocol devised for the IoT. Operating on top of UDP, CoAP must handle congestion control by itself. The core CoAP specification defines a basic congestion control mechanism, but it is not capable of adapting to network conditions. However, IoT scenarios exhibit significant resource constraints, which pose new challenges on the design of congestion control mechanisms. In this article we present CoCoA, an advanced congestion control mechanism for CoAP being standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force CoRE working group. CoCoA introduces a novel round-trip time estimation technique, together with a variable backoff factor and aging mechanisms in order to provide dynamic and controlled retransmission timeout adaptation suitable for the peculiarities of IoT communications. We conduct a comparative performance analysis of CoCoA and a variety of alternative algorithms including state-of-the-art mechanisms developed for TCP. The study is based on experiments carried out in real testbeds. Results show that, in contrast to the alternative methods considered, CoCoA consistently outperforms the default CoAP congestion control mechanism in all evaluated scenarios.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft