QoS-aware Channel Allocation in Directional Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In WSNs, majority of the channel allocation mechanisms considered energy efficiency as the many objective and assumed data traffic with similar priority. However, the introduction of image and video sensors demands certain QoS from the channel allocation mechanism and the underlying network. Managing real-time data requires both energy efficacy and QoS assurance. In this paper, we first present a novel QoS aware channel allocation algorithm, QDCA (QoS-aware Channel Allocation in Directional Wireless Sensor Networks), that supports high data rate for real-time traffic. By exploiting node clustering and directional communication, the channel is allocated dynamically by mapping the data priority requirements of the transmitting to the appropriate channel. The proposed mechanism works in distributed manner to ensure bandwidth and end-to-end delay requirements of real-time data. At the same time, the throughput of non-real-time data is also maximized. We have also proposed an improved QDCA mechanism, IQDCA, that enhances data throughput by inducing little computational and communication overhead. Results evaluated in simulation shows that QDCA and IQDCA mechanisms exhibit enhanced performance in terms of average delay, throughput and fairness.