Large Scale Network-Centric Distributed Systems

9

Analytical Model of Time-Critical Wireless Sensor Network: Theory and Evaluation

Kambiz Mizanian and Amir Hossein Jahangir

Contents

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Real-Time Wireless Sensor Network: An Overview

9.2.1 Previous Work on a Related Analytical Model

9.2.2 Previous Work on the Real-Time Communication Protocols

9.3 Real-Time Degree

9.3.1 Basic Assumptions

9.3.2 Evaluation of the Real-Time Degree

9.4 Reliable Real-Time Degree

9.5 Model Validation

9.6 Conclusion

References

9.1 Introduction

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are self-organized ad hoc networks, which are equipped with limited computing and radio communication capabilities [2]. Nodes are capable of sensing, gathering, processing, and communicating data, especially the data pertaining to the physical medium in which they are embedded. It is envisioned that a typical WSN consists of a large number of nodes [2, 24, 26]. A typical network configuration consists of sensors working unattended and transmitting their observed or sensed values to some processing or control center, the so-called sink or base-station node, which serves as a user interface. Due to the limited transmission range, sensors that are far away from the sink deliver their data through multihop communications, that is, using intermediate nodes as relays. In this case, a sensor may be both a data source and a data router.

This enables sensing and actuation at a fine-grained level, both spatially and temporally. Though significant on their own, WSNs play ...