COCM: Class Based Optimized Congestion Management Protocol for Healthcare Wireless Sensor Networks

Abbas Ali Rezaee, Mohammad Hossein Yaghmaee, Amir Masoud Rahmani

Department of Computer Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
Department of Computer Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

DOI: 10.4236/wsn.2013.57017                

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of numerous sensor nodes which can be used in many new emerging applications like healthcare. One of the major challenges in healthcare environments is to manage congestion, because in applications, such as medical emergencies or patients remote monitoring, transmitted data is important and critical. So it is essential in the first place to avoid congestion as much as possible and in cases when congestion avoidance is not possible, to control the congestion. In this paper, a class based congestion management protocol has been proposed for healthcare applications. We distinguish between sensitive, non-sensitive and control traffics, and service the input traffics based on their priority and quality of service requirements (QoS). The proposed protocol which is called COCM avoids congestion in the first step using multipath routing. The proposed AQM algorithm uses separate virtual queue's condition on a single physical queue to accept or drop the incoming packets. In cases where input traffic rate increases and congestion cannot be avoided, it mitigates congestion by using an optimized congestion control algorithm. This paper deals with parameters like end to end delay, packet loss, energy consumption, lifetime and fairness which are important in healthcare applications. The performance of COCM was evaluated using the OPNET simulator. Simulation results indicated that COCM achieves its goals.

Keywords

Wireless Sensor Networks; Active Queue Management; Congestion Control; Healthcare; Multi Path Routing

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	I. F. Akyildiz, W. S. Sankarasubramaniam and E. Cayirci, “Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey,” Computer Networks, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2002. pp. 393-422. doi:10.1016/S1389-1286(01)00302-4
[2]	A. A. Ahmed, H. Shi and Y. Shang, “A Survey on Network Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks,” International Conference on Information Technology: Research and Education, 11-13 August 2003, pp. 301-305.
[3]	A. Darwish and A. E. Hassanien, “Correction: Darwish, A. and Hassanien, A.E. Wearable and Implantable Wireless Sensor Network Solutions for Healthcare Monitoring,” Sensors, Vol. 12, No. 9, 2012, pp. 12375-12376. doi:10.3390/s120912375
[4]	H. Alemdar and C. Ersoy, “Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare: A Survey,” Computer Networks, Vol. 54, No. 15, 2010, pp. 2688-2710. doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2010.05.003
[5]	K. Sha, J. Gehlot and R. Greve, “Multipath Routing Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey,” Wireless Personal Communications, Vol. 70, No. 2, 2013, pp. 807-829. doi:10.1007/s11277-012-0723-2
[6]	A. J. D. Rathnayaka and V. M. Potdar, “Wireless Sensor Network Transport Protocol: A Critical Review,” Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2013, pp. 134-146. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2011.10.001
[7]	T. J. Dishongh and M. E. McGrath, “Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare Applications,” Artech House, 2010.
[8]	C.-Y. Wan, S. B. Eisenman and A. T. Campbell, “CODA: Congestion Detection and Avoidance in Sensor Networks,” In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, ACM, Los Angeles, California, 2003, pp. 266-279. doi:10.1145/958491.958523
[9]	B. Hull, K. Jamieson and H. Balakrishnan, “Mitigating Congestion in Wireless Sensor Networks,” In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, ACM, Baltimore, 2004, pp. 134-147. doi:10.1145/1031495.1031512
[10]	M. H. Yaghmaee and D. Adjeroh, “A New Priority Based Congestion Control Protocol for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks,” International Symposium on World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, Newport Beach, 23-26 June 2008, pp. 1-8.
[11]	O. B. Akan and I. F. Akyildiz, “Event-to-Sink Reliable Transport in Wireless Sensor Networks,” IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 13, No. 5, 2005, pp. 1003-1016. doi:10.1109/TNET.2005.857076
[12]	Y. G. Iyer, S. Gandham and S. Venkatesan, “STCP: A Generic Transport Layer Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks,” 14th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, 2005.
[13]	C. T. Ee and R. Bajcsy, “Congestion Control and Fairness for Many-to-One Routing in Sensor Networks,” In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, ACM, Baltimore, 2004, pp. 148-161.
[14]	C. Wang, et al., “Upstream Congestion Control in Wireless Sensor Networks through Cross-Layer Optimization,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2007, pp. 786-795. doi:10.1109/JSAC.2007.070514
[15]	M. M. Monowar, et al., “Congestion Control Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Handling Prioritized Heterogeneous Traffic,” In: Proceedings of the 5th Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, Dublin, 2008, pp. 1-8.
[16]	L. Q. Tao and F. Q. Yu, “ECODA: Enhanced Congestion Detection and Avoidance for Multiple Class of Traffic in Sensor Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2010, pp.1387-1394. doi:10.1109/TCE.2010.5606274
[17]	A. A. Rezaee, M. Samimi and M. H. Yaghmaee, “Design a New Fuzzy Congestion Controller in Wireless Sensor Networks,” International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2012, pp. 395-399.
[18]	Y. Xiaoyan, et al., “A Fairness-Aware Congestion Control Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 58, No. 9, 2009, pp. 5225-5234. doi:10.1109/TVT.2009.2027022
[19]	F. K. Shaikh, et al., “TRCCIT: Tunable Reliability with Congestion Control for Information Transport in Wireless Sensor Networks,” The 5th Annual ICST Wireless Internet Conference (WICON), Singapore, 1-3 March 2010, pp. 1-9.
[20]	F. Zabin, et al., “REEP: Data-Centric, Energy-Efficient and Reliable Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks,” IET Communications, Vol. 2, No. 8, 2008, pp. 995-1008. doi:10.1049/iet-com:20070424
[21]	C. Intanagonwiwat, R. Govindan and D. Estrin, “Directed Diffusion: A Scalable and Robust Communication Paradigm for Sensor Networks,” In: Proceedings of the 6th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, ACM, Boston, 2000, pp. 56-67.
[22]	B. Esmailpour, A. Rezaee and J. Abad, “Congestion Avoidance and Energy Efficient Routing Protocol for WSN Healthcare Applications,” In: T.-H. Kim, et al., Eds., Communication and Networking, 2010, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 1-10. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-17604-3_1
[23]	H. Sabbineni and K. Chakrabarty, “Location-Aided Flooding: An Energy-Efficient Data Dissemination Protocol for Wireless-Sensor Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2005, pp. 36-46. doi:10.1109/TC.2005.8
[24]	H. Wang, C. Liao and Z. Tian, “Effective Adaptive Virtual Queue: A Stabilising Active Queue Management Algorithm for Improving Responsiveness and Robustness,” IET Communications, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2011, pp. 99-109. doi:10.1049/iet-com.2009.0700
[25]	V. Firoiu and M. Borden, “A Study of Active Queue Management for Congestion Control,” IEEE 19th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, Tel Aviv, 26-30 March 2000, pp. 1435-1444.
[26]	www.opnet.com