The Impact of Network Topology on Collection Performance

The network topology has a significant impact on the performance of collection protocols in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we introduce an unobtrusive methodology to quantify the impact of the topology on the performance of collection protocols. Specifically, we propose a protocol-independent metric, the Expected Network Delivery, that quantifies the delivery performance that a collection protocol can be expected to achieve given the network topology. Experimental evidence obtained with two collection protocols on numerous topologies on testbeds shows that our approach enables a systematic evaluation of protocol performance.