QoS and data relaying for wireless sensor networks

In this paper we study the effects of data relaying in wireless sensor networks (WSNets) under QoS constraints with two different strategies. In the first, data packets originating from the same source are sent to the base station possibly along several different paths, while in the second, exactly one path is used for this purpose. The two strategies correspond to splitting and not splitting relaying traffic, respectively. We model a sensor network architecture based on a three-tier hierarchy of nodes which generalizes to a two-tier WSNet with multiple sinks. Our results apply therefore to both types of networks. Based on the assumptions in our model, we describe several methods for computing relaying paths that are optimal with respect to energy consumption and satisfy QoS requirements expressed by the delay with which data are delivered to the base station(s). We then use our algorithms to perform an empirical analysis that quantifies the performance gains and losses of the splittable and unsplittable traffic allocation strategies for WSNets with delay-constrained traffic. Our experiments show that splitting traffic does not provide a significant advantage in energy consumption, but can afford strategies for relaying data with a lower delay penalty when using a model based on soft-delay constraints. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.