Lossy links, low power, high throughput

ABSTRACT

As sensor networks move towards general-purpose low-power wireless networks, there is a need to support both traditional low-data rate traffic and high-throughput transfer. To attain high throughput, existing protocols monopolize the network resources and keep the radio on for all nodes involved in the transfer, leading to poor energy efficiency. This becomes progressively problematic in networks with packet loss, which inevitably occur in any real-world deployment. We present burst forwarding, a generic packet forwarding technique that combines low power consumption with high throughput for multi-purpose wireless networks. Burst forwarding uses radio duty cycling to maintain a low power consumption, recovers efficiently from interference, and inherently supports both single streams and cross-traffic. We experimentally evaluate our mechanism under heavy interference and compare it to PIP, a state-of-the-art sensornet bulk transfer protocol. Burst forwarding gracefully adapts radio duty cycle both to the level of interference and to traffic load, keeping a low and nearly constant energy cost per byte when carrying TCP traffic.

References

1. M. Alizai, O. Landsiedel, J. Link, S. Götz, and K. Wehrle. Bursty traffic over bursty links. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Berkeley, California, Nov. 2009.
2. H. Balakrishnan, S. Seshan, E. Amir, and R. Katz. Improving TCP/IP performance over wireless networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (ACM MobiCom), Berkeley, California, Nov. 1995.
3. C. Boano, T. Voigt, C. Noda, K. Römer, and M. Zúñiga. JamLab: Augmenting Sensornet Testbeds with Realistic and Controlled Interference Generation. In Proceedings of the 10th international conference on information processing in sensor networks (IPSN), 2011.
4. K. Chebrolu, B. Raman, N. Mishra, P. K. Valiveti, and R. Kumar. Brimon: a sensor network system for railway bridge monitoring. In Proceeding of the 6th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services, Proceedings of The International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), Breckenridge, CO, USA, 2008.
5. A. Dunkels, J. Eriksson, N. Finne, and N. Tsiftes. Powertrace: Network-level power profiling for low-power wireless networks. Technical Report T2011:05, Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Mar. 2011.
6. A. Dunkels, L. Mottola, N. Tsiftes, F. Österlind, J. Eriksson, and N. Finne. The announcement layer: Beacon coordination for the sensornet stack. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN), 2011.
7. A. Dunkels, F. Österlind, N. Tsiftes, and Z. He. Software-based online energy estimation for sensor nodes. In Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (IEEE Emnets), Cork, Ireland, June 2007.
8. S. Duquennoy, N. Wirström, N. Tsiftes, and A. Dunkels. Leveraging IP for Sensor Network Deployment. In Proceedings of the workshop on Extending the Internet to Low power and Lossy Networks (IP+SN 2011), Chicago, IL, USA, Apr. 2011.
9. P. Dutta, S. Dawson-Haggerty, Y. Chen, C.-J. M. Liang, and A. Terzis. Design and Evaluation of a Versatile and Efficient Receiver-Initiated Link Layer for Low-Power Wireless. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Zurich, Switzerland, Nov. 2010.
10. O. Gnawali, R. Fonseca, K. Jamieson, D. Moss, and P. Levis. Collection tree protocol. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Berkeley, CA, USA, 2009.
11. Y. Gu and T. He. Dynamic Switching-Based Data Forwarding for Low-Duty-Cycle Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, pages 272--285, 2010.
12. J. Hui and D. Culler. IP is Dead, Long Live IP for Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, Nov. 2008.
13. P. Karn. Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers. RFC 3819, July 2004.
14. S. Kim, R. Fonseca, P. Dutta, A. Tavakoli, D. Culler, P. Levis, S. Shenker, and I. Stoica. Flush: A reliable bulk transport protocol for multihop wireless networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Sydney, Australia, Nov. 2007.
15. S. Kim, S. Pakzad, D. Culler, J. Demmel, G. Fenves, S. Glaser, and M. Turon. Health monitoring of civil infrastructures using wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (ACM/IEEE IPSN), pages 254--263, 2007.
16. J. Ko, J. Eriksson, N. Tsiftes, S. Dawson-Haggerty, M. Durvy, J. Vasseur, A. Terzis, A. Dunkels, and D. Culler. Beyond Interoperability: Pushing the Performance of Sensornet IP Stacks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Seattle, WA, USA, Nov. 2011.
17. M. Li, D. Agrawal, D. Ganesan, and A. Venkataramani. Block-switched networks: a new paradigm for wireless transport. In Proceedings of the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation (NSDI), Boston, Massachusetts, Apr. 2009.
18. C. Liang, N. Priyantha, J. Liu, and A. Terzis. Surviving wi-fi interference in low power zigbee networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Zurich, Switzerland, Nov. 2010.
19. C.-J. M. Liang and A. Terzis. Rethinking Multi-Channel Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Hot Topics in Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (HotEmnets), Killarney, United Kingdom, June 2010.
20. P. Mishra, H. Kanakia, and S. Tripathi. On hop-by-hop rate-based congestion control. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw., 4:224--239, April 1996.
21. G. Montenegro, N. Kushalnagar, J. Hui, and D. Culler. Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4 Networks. Internet proposed standard RFC 4944, Sept. 2007.
22. D. Moss and P. Levis. BoX-MACs: Exploiting Physical and Link Layer Boundaries in Low-Power Networking. Technical Report SING-08-00, Stanford University, 2008.
23. R. Musaloiu-E., C.-J. M. Liang, and A. Terzis. Koala: Ultra-Low Power Data Retrieval in Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (ACM/IEEE IPSN), St. Louis, Missouri, USA, 2008.
24. F. Österlind and A. Dunkels. Approaching the maximum 802.15.4 multi-hop throughput. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Hot Topics in Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (HotEmnets), June 2008.
25. F. Österlind, J. Eriksson, and A. Dunkels. Cooja timeline: a power visualizer for sensor network simulation. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Zurich, Switzerland, 2010.
26. J. Paek and R. Govindan. RCRT: Rate-Controlled Reliable Transport Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), 7(3), September 2010.
27. B. Raman, K. Chebrolu, S. Bijwe, and V. Gabale. PIP: A Connection-Oriented, Multi-Hop, Multi-Channel TDMA-based MAC for High Throughput Bulk Transfer. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Zürich, Switzerland, 2010.
28. A. Sridharan and B. Krishnamachari. Explicit and precise rate control for wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Berkeley, California, Nov. 2009.
29. K. Srinivasan, M. Jain, J. Choi, T. Azim, E. Kim, P. Levis, and B. Krishnamachari. The kappa factor: inferring protocol performance using inter-link reception correlation. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (ACM MobiCom), pages 317--328, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2010.
30. K. Srinivasan, M. Kazandjieva, S. Agarwal, and P. Levis. The β-factor: measuring wireless link burstiness. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Raleigh, NC, USA, 2008.
31. Y. Sun, O. Gurewitz, and D. Johnson. RI-MAC: A Receiver-Initiated Asynchronous Duty Cycle MAC Protocol for Dynamic Traffic Loads in Wireless Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys), Raleigh, NC, USA, 2008.
32. J. Vasseur and A. Dunkels. Interconnecting Smart Objects with IP: The Next Internet. Morgan Kaufmann, 2010.
33. G. Werner-Allen, K. Lorincz, J. Johnson, J. Lees, and M. Welsh. Fidelity and yield in a volcano monitoring sensor network. In Proceedings of the Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), Seattle, USA, November 2006.

Index Terms

• Networks

  • Network types

    • Mobile networks

    • Wireless access networks