TRANSPORT PROTOCOL DESIGN FOR

WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

OUTLINE
Transport protocol
Performance metrics
Congestion control
Congestion Detection
Congestion Notification
Congestion Mitigation & Avoidance

Loss Recovery
Loss Detection & Notification
Retransmission Recovery

Transport protocol
Runs over the network layer
End-to-end messsage transmisson
Provide functions:Orderely transmission
Flow & Congestion Control
Loss recovery
QOS

Performance Metrics
1. Energy Efficiency:
Factors affecting energy efficiency:Packet loss
Retransmission distance
Control messages

2. Reliability:
For different applications , different levels of reliability
may be required. According to packet loss 2 types of
reliabilty can be classified:Packet reliability: Application is loss sensitive & require
successful transmission of each packet.Eg:- downstream
code distribution or queries.
Event reliability: Requirement of loss-tolerant applications
that allow certain packet loss. Eg:-sensor nodes with digital
camera can be used to send images to the sink

3. QOS: For some delay-sensitive applications a network

must guarantee real - time data transmission. some

applications are loss sensitive and cannot stand
packet loss or require a very small packet - loss ratio.
Therefore, a transport protocol may need to support
traditional QoS in terms of throughput, packet
delivery latency, and packet - loss ratio.
4. Fairness: Sensor nodes are usually scattered in a

geographical area to collect information.In order to let

the sink have full information on the entire sensed
area, a transport protocol should provide fair
bandwidth allocation among all sensor nodes so that
the sink can get the same number of packets from
each sensor node during a period of time.

Congestion Control
Mainly two reasons that result in congestion in a WSN:
packet arrival rate exceeding the packet service rate
contention, interference, and the bit error rate on a link
In a WSN, congestion has a direct impact on energy efficiency
and application QoS.
Congestion can cause:
buffer overflow
queuing delay and higher packet loss

degrade reliability and application QoS

Three mechanisms that can deal with this problem:1. congestion detection
2. congestion notification and
3. congestion mitigation and avoidance

Congestion Detection
In TCP, congestion is observed or inferred at the end
nodes based on a timeout or redundant
acknowledgment.
In a WSN, however, it is preferred to use proactive
mechanisms.
A common mechanism for congestion detection is to
use
queue length,
packet service time, or
the ratio of packet service time over packet
interarrival time at the intermediate nodes

Congestion Notification

Propagate the congestion information from the congested node

to its upstream nodes or the source nodes that contribute to
congestion.
The information can be transmitted using, for example, a single
binary bit, called congestion notification (CN) bit.
2 approaches used to disseminate congestion information :Explicit congestion notification:-uses special control messages
to notify the involved sensor nodes of congestion information
an intermediate sensor node will broadcast a suppression
message upstream toward the source when it perceives
congestion.
Implicit congestion notification:-does not need any additional
control message to propagate congestion information.
This approach usually piggybacks congestion information on
normal data packets

Congestion Mitigation and Avoidance

2 general approaches to mitigate and avoid congestion:
Network resource management:Tries to increase network resources (e.g., bandwidth)
In a WSN, power control and multiple radio interfaces can be
used to increase bandwidth and mitigate congestion

Traffic control :Controlling congestion through adjusting the traffic rate at

source nodes or intermediates nodes
Approach is helpful to saving network resources, and is more
feasible and efficient when exact adjustment of network
resources becomes difficult
According to the control behavior ,there are two general
approaches for traffic control in WSNs:
end - to - end
hop - by - hop.

Loss Recovery
Loss recovery is more active and energy efficient, and
can be performed at both the link layer and the
transport layer.
At the link layer, loss recovery is performed on a hopby-hop basis, while at the transport it is usually done
on an end - to - end basis.
Loss recovery approach consist of 2 phases:
Loss detection and notification, and
Retransmission recovery

Loss Detection and Notification.

Packet loss can be far more common in WSNs than in
wired networks
Common mechanism is to include a sequence
number in each packet header. The continuity of
sequence numbers can be used to detect packet loss.
Loss detection and notification can be performed at:end - to end:- end points (destination or source)
are responsible for loss detection and notification as
in TCP.
hop - by hop:- intermediate nodes detect and
notify packet loss.

end - to - end approach is not very effective for WSNs

because
1. the control messages that are used for end - to end loss detection requires a return path consisting
of several hops, which is not energy efficient
2. control messages travel through multiple hops and
could be lost with a high probability due to either
link errors or congestion
3. the end - to - end loss detection approach
inevitably leads to end - to - end retransmissions
for loss recovery & that consumes more energy
than hop - by - hop retransmission

hop - by - hop approach, can further be categorized

into Receiver based packet loss detection: a receiver infers
packet loss when it observes out - of - sequence packet
arrivals.

Sender based packet loss detection: the sender detects

packet loss either on a timer - based or overhearing
mechanism.

Retransmission Recovery
Retransmission of lost or damaged packets can also be
performed by
End - to - end: Source performs the retransmission & an
intermediate node that intercepts loss notification searches its local
buffer.
If it finds a copy of the lost packet in the buffer, it retransmits it.
Otherwise, it relays the loss information upstream to other
intermediate nodes.
The hop number between cache point & loss point can be referred
to as retransmission distance . The retransmission distance is an
indication of retransmission efficiency in terms of energy consumed
in the process of retransmission.
Used to preferred if 100% packet reliability is required

Hop - by hop: more energy efficient

Allows application - dependent variable reliability levels
Cannot assure message delivery in the presence of a node
failure.

THANKS