Analysis of Data Delivery Delay in Acoustic Sensor Networks

Acoustic sensor networks can provide rich multimedia information, which doubtlessly benefit a plethora of data hungry applications such as environment monitoring, health care, emergency response, and security surveillance. In this paper, we study the data unit delivery process of cluster head by developing a discrete-time Markov chain model and a M/G/1 queue model, based on a single-hop cluster-based sensor networks architecture. Our analysis shows how arrival rate and the number of sensor nodes influence mean waiting time and how many sensor nodes that a cluster head can support. The result of our study can be used to guide the design of real-time acoustic wireless sensor networks system.