BEAR: Bandwidth estimation-based admission control and routing for IEEE 802.15.4-based networks

In this paper, we present BEAR; a bandwidth estimation-based admission control and routing protocol for IEEE 802.15.4-based networks. The purpose of BEAR is to support real-time multimedia flows in IEEE 802.15.4-based networks by satisfying their end-to-end bandwidth requirements. BEAR combines a novel bandwidth estimation approach, admission control, and routing. BEAR uses a measurement-based bandwidth estimation algorithm that combines nodes´ transmission rate, and actual MAC layer overhead to estimate the available bandwidth. The available bandwidth information is used as input to the admission control protocol, and BEAR proposes algorithms to estimate a flow´s contention, intra-flow contention, and additional MAC layer overhead with an increased data load inside a network. Moreover, BEAR proposes that the available bandwidth information can be used as a routing metric to select forwarding path(s) that can offer better end-to-end available bandwidth. BEAR is a comprehensive framework to support realtime multimedia applications in IEEE 802.155.4-based networks.