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Congestion avoidance, detection and alleviation in wireless sensor networks

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Abstract

Congestion in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) not only causes severe information loss but also leads to excessive energy consumption. To address this problem, a novel scheme for congestion avoidance, detection and alleviation (CADA) in WSNs is proposed in this paper. By exploiting data characteristics, a small number of representative nodes are chosen from those in the event area as data sources, so that the source traffic can be suppressed proactively to avoid potential congestion. Once congestion occurs inevitably due to traffic mergence, it will be detected in a timely way by the hotspot node based on a combination of buffer occupancy and channel utilization. Congestion is then alleviated reactively by either dynamic traffic multiplexing or source rate regulation in accordance with the specific hotspot scenarios. Extensive simulation results under typical congestion scenarios are presented to illuminate the distinguished performance of the proposed scheme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sino-German Joint Software Institute, School of Computer Science, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Wei-wei Fang, Tian-shu Chu & De-pei Qian

  2. State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Ji-ming Chen

  3. Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

    Lei Shu

Authors
  1. Wei-wei Fang
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  2. Ji-ming Chen
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  3. Lei Shu
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  4. Tian-shu Chu
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  5. De-pei Qian
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wei-wei Fang.

Additional information

Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 60673180, 90412011 and 90612004), the International Science and Technology Cooperative Program of China (No. 2006DFA11080), the Research Program of Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (No. 01BU0680), and the Lion Project of Science Foundation of Ireland to Lei Shu (No. SFI/08/CE/I1380)

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Fang, Ww., Chen, Jm., Shu, L. et al. Congestion avoidance, detection and alleviation in wireless sensor networks. J. Zhejiang Univ. - Sci. C 11, 63–73 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.C0910204

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/jzus.C0910204

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