TRCCTP: A traffic redirection based congestion control transport protocol for wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes are limited in memory, battery and computational power. When the traffic load in the network increases, buffer at a node becomes full and it cannot handle more packets. This causes packet loss and retransmissions which affects delivery ratio, energy efficiency and decreases network lifetime. With the rapid increase in traffic load, congestion remains a serious problem in wireless sensor networks. Congestion in wireless sensor networks can be alleviated either by reducing data rate or by increasing resources to form alternative paths (Traffic Redirection) for congested traffic. Reducing data rate is not acceptable in some critical applications. Traffic redirection diverts the traffic load from congested paths with the help of more resources that form alternative paths. When congestion occurs, the traffic is redirected to the optimal alternative paths selected by TOPSIS technique. We present the design and implementation of the proposed protocol and compare it with the existing protocol. Simulation results show reduced packet drops with reduced delay and energy loss for our protocol in comparison with the existing protocol.