WSN10-6: An Energy Consumption Study of Wireless Sensor Networks with Delay-Constrained Traffic

Many mission-critical applications of wireless sensor networks generate traffic that have a stringent delay requirement. In this paper, we study the effects of relaying delay- constrained traffic in a wireless sensor network according to two different strategies. The first strategy allows traffic splitting, in which data flow can be split and sent on multiple paths from the source to the destination. The second strategy disallows traffic splitting, in which data flow cannot be split and must be sent on a single path from the source to the destination. We present a model based on linear and integer linear programming for finding an optimal allocation of splittable and unsplittable traffic in a wireless sensor network, in which traffic is subject to soft delay constraints. The objective is to minimize the total energy consumption spent on communication and the penalty incurred from the violation of delay constraints. Based on this model, we perform an empirical analysis to quantify the performance gains and losses of a splittable and unsplittable traffic allocation strategy for wireless sensor networks with delay-constrained traffic. The experiment results 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.