Overhearing for Congestion Avoidance in Wireless Sensor Networks

Damien ROTH, Julien MONTAVONT, Thomas NOEL

AdHoc-NOW 2011, Paderborn, Allemagne, 18 - 20 juillet 2011

Abstract

Convergecast traffic pattern is predominant in current wireless sensor networks. Few packets are periodically sent toward the sink, but interesting events may generate a burst of packets for a limited period of time. Such burst may create congestion in the surrounding of the event and thus may result in packet loss. Several congestion avoidance solutions exist in the literature but they either involve a lot of control messages or complicate the deployment of sensor networks. We therefore propose a new approach, named CLOMAC, which can be integrated to existing preamble-based MAC protocols.CLOMAC reduces congestion by overhearing and passively creating alternative paths toward the destination. An evaluation by simulation will demonstrate the benefits of our contribution integrated with the B-MAC protocol.