Predictive Congestion Control Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Available congestion control schemes, for example transport control protocol (TCP), when applied to wireless networks, result in a large number of packet drops, unfair scenarios and low throughputs with a significant amount of wasted energy due to retransmissions. To fully utilize the hop by hop feedback information, this paper presents a novel, decentralized, predictive congestion control (DPCC) for wireless sensor networks (WSN). The DPCC consists of an adaptive flow and adaptive back-off interval selection schemes that work in concert with energy efficient, distributed power control (DPC). The DPCC detects the onset of congestion using queue utilization and the embedded channel estimator algorithm in DPC that predicts the channel quality. Then, an adaptive flow control scheme selects suitable rate which is enforced by the newly proposed adaptive backoff interval selection scheme. An optional adaptive scheduling scheme updates weights associated with each packet to guarantee the weighted fairness during congestion. Closed-loop stability of the proposed hop-by-hop congestion control is demonstrated by using the Lyapunov-based approach. Simulation results show that the DPCC reduces congestion and improves performance over congestion detection and avoidance (CODA) [3] and IEEE 802.11 protocols.