A Sensor Link Control Protocol for Providing End-to-End Reliability in Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are mainly used for environmental monitoring applications. The characteristics of the applications and the restrictions of sensor nodes (processing power, energy consumption, and so on) have so far pulled WSNs away from supporting reliability, such as error control and congestion control. Nowadays, new attempts using WSNs, like smart sensor applications, programmable sensor networks, and sharing sensor networks as a common infra, need reliability support. However, legacy protocols related to supporting reliability, including TCP and LLC, are unsuitable for WSN, due to the restrictions of sensor nodes. This paper proposes a protocol, referred to as Sensor Link Control (SLC), which is located in the link layer, and between MAC (Medium Access Control) and the network (upper) layer, to support end-toend error control and congestion control. SLC guarantees e2e reliability, through simultaneously recovering packet errors caused by link problems and network congestion. This paper estimates the performance of SLC through simulation experiments. The simulation results show that SLC effectively makes WSN a general infrastructure that guarantees e2e reliability.