Analysis of congestion control mechanisms in wireless sensor

network
Gargi Sharma, M.Tech Scholar, Banasthali Vidyapith, Jaipur, India

sharmagargi1010@gmail.com

Neha Mishra, M.Tech Scholar, JECRC University, Jaipur, India

neha.rbt@gmail.com

Ajay Kumar, Assistant Professor, JECRC University, Jaipur, India

ajay.kumar@jecrcu.edu.in

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks have become a
growing area of research and development due to the
tremendous number of applications that can greatly benefit.
Wireless sensor network can be described as a collection of
sensor nodes which coordinate to perform specific actions
In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), congestion occurs,
when nodes are densely distributed, and/or the application
produces high flow rate near the sink due to the convergent
nature of upstream traffic. Congestion may cause packet
loss, which in turn lowers throughput and wastes energy.
Therefore congestion in WSNs needs to be controlled for
high energy-efficiency, to prolong system lifetime, improve
fairness, and improve quality of service (QoS). Different
congestion control techniques have been proposed for
wireless sensor networks. The congestion control
mechanisms all have the same basic objective: they all try to
detect congestion, notify the other nodes of the congestion
status, and reduce the congestion and/or its impact using
rate adjustment algorithms. There are several congestion
control protocols for sensor networks. They differ in the
way that they detect congestion, broadcast congestion
related information, and the way that they adjust traffic rate.
This paper presents an overview on different techniques of
congestion control.
Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network, nodes,
congestion, hop-by-hop, end to end.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor network (WSN) is one of the
emerging research areas that provide designated services
such as disaster prevention, environment monitoring,
medical monitoring, habitat monitoring, military
surveillance, inventory tracking, intelligent logistics, and
health monitoring A wireless sensor Network is an
infrastructure comprised of sensing, computing and
communication elements that gives an administrator the
ability to instrument, observe and react to events and
phenomena in a specified environment. Sensors are
typically deployed in a high-density manner and in large
quantities: A WSN consists of densely distributed nodes that
support sensing, signal processing, embedded computing,
and connectivity; sensors are logically linked by self-
organizing means. WNs typically transmit information to
collecting (monitoring) stations that aggregate some or all
of the information. WSNs have unique characteristics,
such as, but not limited to, power constraints and limited
battery life for the WNs, redundant data acquisition, low
duty cycle, and, many-to-one flows.
II. CONGESTION IN WIRELESS SENSOR
Congestion may lead to indiscriminate dropping of data
(i.e., high-priority (HP) packets may be dropped while low-
priority (LP) packets are delivered). It also results in an
increase in energy consumption to route packets that will be
dropped downstream as links become saturated. As nodes
along optimal routes are depleted of energy, only non
optimal routes remain, further compounding the problem.
To ensure that data with higher priority is received in the
presence of congestion due to LP packets, differentiated
service must be provided. Congestion not only wastes the
scarce energy due to a large number of retransmissions and
packet drops, but also hampers the event detection
reliability.
III. CONGESTION CONTROL IN WSN
 Different congestion control techniques have been
proposed for wireless sensor networks. The congestion
control mechanisms all have the same basic objective: they
all try to detect congestion, notify the other nodes of the
congestion status, and reduce the congestion and/or its
impact using rate adjustment algorithms. There are several
congestion control protocols for sensor networks. They
differ in the way that they detect congestion, broadcast
congestion related information, and the way that they adjust
traffic rate.
The congestion control strategy in traditional internet and
Ad hoc networks is not suitable for WSN, because the
network requirements and design objectives in WSN are
different from that in traditional networks.
Congestion happens mainly in the sensors-to-sink direction
when packets are transported in a many-to-one manner.
Therefore, most of the proposed congestion control
mechanisms are designed to lighten congestion in this
direction.
Congestion control generally follows three steps:
1. Congestion detection,
2. Congestion notification, and
3. Rate adjusting.
After detecting congestion, in order to prevent the negative
aspect of the network, the transport protocol needs to
propagate congestion information from the congested node
to the upstream sensor node or to source nodes that
contribute to congestion. This can be done explicitly or by
sending a special congestion control message to other
sensors or implicitly using piggybacking techniques. When
a node receives a congestion notification message, it should
adjust its transmission rate using a rate control technique.
Almost all proposed techniques uses these steps, the
differences lies in the processing of these steps.
A). Congestion detection
Generally the congestion is detected by considering a
threshold value for buffer size at a node. If the value of
buffer size increase
A. To Calculate Congestion Degree (Cd)
Congestion Degree is the ratio between Local packet inter-
arrival time and local packet inter-service time. The
measured value of congestion Degree indicates the level of
congestion of the network Congestion Degree (Cd) = Ts/Ta
Where Ts = local packet inter-service time
Ta = local packet interval time
One the Congestion Degree (Cd) is calculated, the
measured value is compared with threshold value. Here the
threshold is set as one. When congestion degree value is
greater than or equal to threshold value, then it infers
congestion has occurred. When congestion degree value is
less than threshold value, then it infers there is no
congestion.
Cd < 1; No Congestion
Packet arrival is slower than departure.
Cd ≥ 1; Congestion
Packet arrival is faster than departure
When packet arrival is slower than departure then there is
no backlogged packets, thus there is no congestion. But
when packet arrival is faster than departure then it increases
the backlogged packets which lead to congestion. Some
techniques use a combination of the present and past
channel loading conditions, and the current buffer
occupancy, to infer accurate detection of congestion at each
receiver with low cost. Sensor networks must know the state
of the channel since the transmission medium is shared and
may be congested with traffic between other nodes in the
neighborhood. Listening to the channel to measure local
loading incurs high energy costs if performed all the time.
b). Congestion notification
Implicit and Explicit Congestion Notification
Once the congestion is detected, the notification signal is
sent to intermediate nodes. There are two types of
congestion notification signal. They are Implicit Congestion
Notification (ICN) and Explicit Congestion Notification
(ECN). In ICN, the notification signal is sent along with the
data packet. In ECN, the notification signal is sent as
separate packet. In the proposed work Implicit Congestion
Notification is used to send notification signal to all nodes
in the network. The signal is send along with the data
packets to nearby nodes. On receiving the signal, each node
adjusts its transmission rate. ICN is an effective technique
than ECN, because in ECN the notification is sent as
separate packet. So this makes heavy traffic in the network
which leads to congestion.
Backpressure message
In this technique a node broadcasts backpressure signals as
long as it detects congestion. Backpressure signals are
propagated upstream toward the source. In the case of
impulse data events in dense networks it is very likely that
backpressure will propagate directly to the sources. Nodes
that receive backpressure signals can throttle their sending
rates based on the local congestion policy (e.g., silence for a
random time or AIMD, etc.). When an upstream node (i.e.,
toward the source) receives a backpressure signal it decides
whether or not to further propagate the backpressure
upstream based on its own locally measured network
conditions.

C). Rate Adjustment
Rate adjustment is the most important step in congestion
control. Different techniques use different algorithms or rate
adjustment. When the upstream nodes get the notification
about the congestion occurred then they try to decrease the
rate of transmission so that congestion can be controlled.
Hop-by-Hop Rate control Technique
It is implemented to control congestion. The
sensor/transmission rate of the node is adjusted based on
depth of congestion and overall sensor priority. By adjusting
the sensor rate of the parent node, the overall performance
of the network is improved. The new sensor rate is
piggybacked to the data packet header along with other
parameters. Each node adjust its new sensor rate thus
reduced the depth of congestion.
Fuzzy controller
Fuzzy controller may be used to adjust the transmission rate
of the sensor nodes, so that the performance of the network
is improved. The performance of the network can be
improved by reducing the packet drop and increasing the
network throughput. Thus, the fuzzy rule base has been
turned so as to not only decrease packet drop but also to
increase the network throughput.
Priority-Based Rate Adjustment (PRA)
It is a scheduler with two sub-queues between the
network layer and the MAC layer. If the scheduling
rate ri svc is kept below the MAC forwarding rate rif , the
output rate will approximately equal the output rate ri
out. Therefore, through adjusting the scheduling rate ri
svc, congestion could be avoided or mitigated.
IV. Performance objectives of congestion
control protocol
Congestion control protocol efficiency depends on how
much it can achieve the performance objectives:
1. Energy-efficiency requires to be improved in order to
extend system lifetime. Therefore congestion
control protocols need to avoid or reduce packet loss
due to buffer overflow, and remain lower control
overhead that will consume additional energy more or
less.
2. Fairness needs to be observed so that each node can
achieve fair throughput. Fairness can be achieved
through rate adjustment and packet scheduling
(otherwise referred to as queue management) at each
sensor node.
3. Furthermore, support of traditional quality of service
(QoS) metrics such as packet loss ratio and packet
delay along with throughput may also be necessary.
Basically there are two types of data flows in WSNs
depending on the transmission characteristics
1. Continuous flow: In continuous flow applications
nodes transmit packet periodically to the base
station.
2. Event driven flow: In event driven applications
nodes transmit data only when a particular event
occurs.
Event driven sensor network, operate under an idle or light
load and the suddenly become active in response to a
detected or monitored event. The transport of event
impulses is likely to lead to varying degrees of congestion in
the network depending on the sensing application. It is
during these periods of event impulses that the likelihood of
congestion is greatest and the information in transit is most
importance to users.
V. General approaches to congestion
control
1. End to end
2. Hop by hop
3. Cluster based
In an end-to-end approach such as conventional TCP, it is
the source node’s responsibility to detect congestion in
either the receiver-assisted (ACK-based loss detection)
mode or the network-assisted mode (using explicit
congestion notification). Therefore, rate adjustments occur
only at the source node.
In hop-by-hop congestion control, intermediate nodes
detect congestion and notify the originating link node. Hop-
by-hop control can potentially eliminate congestion faster
than the end-to-end approach, and can reduce packet loss
and energy consumption in sensor nodes. A number of
congestion control protocols have been proposed for WSNs.
The end-to-end and hop-by hop congestion control are two
general for traffic control in Wireless Sensor Networks.
The end-to-end control can impose exact rate adjustment at
each sensor node and simplify the design at intermediate
nodes. However it results in slow response and depends
highly on the round trip time (RTT). In contrast, hop-by-hop
congestion control has faster response.
In cluster based approach, sensor nodes have been grouped
into a cluster. One node of a cluster becomes a cluster-head
(CH) and the others become non-head members. Cluster
members should deliver their data not to the sink node but
to their CH. Then CH aggregates received data and
transmits them to either the sink or a higher-level CH. Since
this method can reduce the number of hops between the sink
and the sender, the latency is less than that of multi-hop
planer model. Only CH performs data aggregation whereas
every intermediate node performs data aggregation in multi-
hop model. This model therefore is more suitable for time
critical applications than multi-hop model. If the distance
between CH and the sink increases, the energy consumption
is proportional to the square of the distance.
VI. OVERVIEW OF VARIOUS
CONGESTION CONTROL TECHNIQUES
IN WSNs
Although TCP and UDP are the popular transport protocols
and deployed widely in the internet, neither may be a good
choice for Wireless Sensor Networks. For the most part,
there is no interaction between TCP or UDP and the lower
layer protocols. In WSNs the lower layers can provide rich
and helpful information to transport layer and enhance the
badly needed system performance
In “Energy efficient COngestion Detection and Avoidance
in sensor networks, CODA, propose it as an energy efficient
congestion control scheme for sensor networks was
proposed. CODA (COngestion Detection and Avoidance)
comprises three mechanisms: (i) receiver-based congestion
detection; (ii) open-loop hop-by-hop backpressure; and (iii)
closed-loop multi-source regulation. CODA detects
congestion based on queue length as well as wireless
channel load at intermediate nodes. Furthermore it uses
explicit congestion notification approach and also an AIMD
rate adjustment technique. CODA jointly uses end-to end
and hop-by-hop controls. To save energy, CODA uses a
sampling scheme to activate local channel monitoring [5].
In “Prioritized Heterogeneous Traffic-oriented Congestion
Control Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks”, proposes a
Prioritized Heterogeneous Traffic-oriented Congestion
Control Protocol (PHTCCP) to control congestion. It uses
packet service ratio to detect congestion. Packet service
ratio is defined as the ratio of average packet service rate
and packet scheduling rate in each sensor node. PHTCCP
uses hop-by-hop rate adjustment for controlling the
congestion. The output rate of a node is controlled by
adjusting the scheduling rate [6].
In hop-by-hop congestion control technique, Congestion
Control and Fairness (CCF), which uses packet service
time to infer the available service rate and therefore detects
congestion in each intermediate sensor node. CCF ensures
simple fairness. However, it lacks efficient utilization of the
available link capacity when some nodes do not have any
traffic to send or nodes remaining in sleep mode or the
nodes whose flows do not pass through the congested area
[7].
PSFQ (Pump Slowly, Fetch Quickly) mechanism is
proposed for reliable retasking/ reprogramming in WSN.
PSFQ is based on slowly injecting packets into the network,
but performing aggressive hop-by-hop recovery in case of
packet loss. The pump operation in PSFQ simply performs
controlled flooding and requires each intermediate node to
create and maintain a data cache to be used for local loss
recovery and in-sequence data delivery [8].
Congestion control for Multiclass traffic (COMUT) is a
distributed cluster-based congestion control mechanism for
supporting multiple classes of traffic in WSNs. COMUT is
based on the self-organization of the networks into clusters.
Each cluster autonomously and proactively monitors
congestion within its localized scope. The clusters then
exchange appropriate information to facilitate system-wide
rate control [10].
VII. CONCLUSION
Existing transport layer protocols for sensor networks are
tailored for certain applications. As a result, their
approaches may not be applicable across many sensor
network deployments. Some techniques use hop-by-hop
control while the others use end-to-end control. In the end-
to-end control, most control tasks are relied upon the sink,
which in general is less restricted by processing resources.
However, as congestion tends to happen in the proximity of
the sink, the control messages issued by the sink may be
throttled. On the other hand, hop-by-hop control needs the
intermediate nodes to participate in the control process,
which may increase the workload and power consumption
on these resource-limited nodes. In this paper proposed
congestion control and reliable data transport protocols
specifically designed for WSNs have been reviewed.
Although some progress has been achieved, more research
efforts are needed to continue to improve data transport in
WSNs
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