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Queueing Model and Optimization of Packet Dropping in

. Real-Time Wireless Sensor Networks

Marc Aoun (Philips Research, The Netherlands) and

Antonios Argyriou (University of Thessaly, Greece)

Globecom 2012
CQ05: Traffic Modeling and Performance Evaluation

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Introduction

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs) real-time data generation and

transmission dominate the majority of application scenarios.
One of the main characteristics of sensor data that they are generated in
real-time is that the measured data may become obsolete when a new one
is generated.
In this paper, we investigate the communication of real-time messages by
developing a simple queueing theory model and we use it for further
optimization.
In particular our goal is to avoid the transmission (by dropping) of a
packet from a sensor if we estimate that the probability that it will be
received on-time (within its prescribed deadline) is very low. We do this
with an analytical model.

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Argyriou and Aoun Modeling Packet Dropping in Real-Time WSNs December 5, 2012 2 / 12
Motivating Example

sink

Figure: Multiple wireless sensors generate real-time data that are delivered to a sink.
With multi-hop communication the wireless nodes closer to the sink may become the
bottleneck since they have to forward higher portion of the traffic.

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Argyriou and Aoun Modeling Packet Dropping in Real-Time WSNs December 5, 2012 3 / 12
Sensor System Model
Packets are generated at each sensor according to a Poisson process with
parameter . The packets have exponentially distributed service times
with parameter that correspond to the wireless MAC protocol.
A packet transmission is considered successful if it is completed within d
time units after the arrival of the packet to the queue, i.e., d is the packet
deadline.
A buffered data packet at the sensor is dropped (removed from the
TX buffer) if the remaining time until its deadline is shorter than a
certain threshold .
Packet delivery ratio (PDR) of the system is the fraction of packets that
are transmitted successfully, i.e. within the deadline requirement.

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Figure: A schematic representation of the model for a sensor node that adopts
proactive packet dropping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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PDR Calculation - Initial Formula

The PDR () is by definition equal to the probability that the transmission of

an arbitrary packet is successful. To compute this probability, we condition on
whether a packet arrives at an empty system or not. Denoting by B the service
time that the arriving packet would experience, We have:

() = P(L = 0)P(B d) + (1 P(L = 0)) et P(B d t)et dt

0

If an arbitrary packet P arrives at an empty system, it is transmitted

successfully only if the required transmission time B is less than d.
If P arrives at a non-empty system (L = 1 or L = 2), we condition on the
length of the remaining (residual) transmission time t of the packet that
is currently being transmitted.
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Argyriou and Aoun Modeling Packet Dropping in Real-Time WSNs December 5, 2012 5 / 12
PDR Calculation - Final Formula

[ ( )
() = P(L = 0)(1 ed ) + (1 P(L = 0)) 1 e(+)(d)
+
ed ( )]
1 e(d) .

Please see the proof in the paper.

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Simulation Results - Normalized Throughput vs.

0.36

0.35

0.34

0.33

0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

Figure: The PDR as a function of , with = = d = 1.

We present () for various values of , with = = d = 1. We clearly see

that the PDR of the system is indeed increased by the threshold , as long as
is chosen appropriately. Here optimal 0.4. ..
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Simulation Results - Throughput Gain and impact of d

Gain H%L

= 3
20
= 4

= 6
15

10

d
0.5 1 1.5 2

Figure: PDR gain for values equal to 3, 4 and 6. The optimal is selected. As the
deadline for the packets is increased, the potential gains with the optimal are
minimized. This is because the packets are more tolerant to packet transmission
delays.

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Argyriou and Aoun Modeling Packet Dropping in Real-Time WSNs December 5, 2012 8 / 12
Simulation Results - Sensor Chain
Each node in a sensor chain generates locally a load and also forwards the
successfully received data packets from the previous node.
d
n=5 nodes
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
0.5 1.23 1.37 2.01 2.10 2.07
1 2.43 2.84 4.2 5.41 5.66
2 4.52 10.20 13.91 15.39 14.75
4 21.47 30.02 32.67 34.78 32.02
d
n=10 nodes
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
0.5 3.42 3.3 2.99 2.80 2.48
1 8.49 7.98 6.34 6.01 5.99
2 10.21 11.27 17.11 16.87 15.31
4 50.78 39.21 34.46 32.66 29.49
Table: PDR improvement (%) for specific values of and d and for sensor chains n.
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Simulation Results - Sensor Chain

Contrary to the case of low and n = 1 where the PDR improvement of

the proposed scheme is not so significant, in the case of n = 5 it is.
The reason is that each node has to forward an increased traffic load and
not only the low that is generated locally.
As the number of nodes becomes even higher, and in our case when n
becomes 10, the PDR improvement becomes even higher. Recall that the
results are relative to the case that does not apply proactive packet
dropping.

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Argyriou and Aoun Modeling Packet Dropping in Real-Time WSNs December 5, 2012 10 / 12
Conclusions

We presented an analytical model that captures the impact of proactive

packet dropping on the transmission of real-time packets from a single
sensor node.
With the use of the analytical model, an optimal dropping policy can be
identified (selection of ), leading to PDR improvement of up to 30% for
a single hop.
In a multi-hop chain network of sensors, the PDR improvement is more
significant. This is predominantly due the ability of our model to predict
the delayed arrival of a packet and subsequently drop it before
transmission.
Future work: Support different service time distribution, and higher
number of buffer positions so that the model is closer to a real WSN.

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Please email question to Antonios Argyriou
(anargyr@uth.gr)

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