Experimenting TCP/IP for Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents the analysis and real experiments on TCP/IP communication in a low-power monitoring wireless sensor network (WSN). TCP/IP flow control, addressing, and packet fragmentation are adapted in a gateway that relays TCP/IP communication to WSN. The performance of TCP/IP is evaluated between endpoint PCs communicating over TUTWSN (Tampere University of Technology WSN), which is used as a transparent communication medium for TCP/IP data. The evaluation results show that the window-based flow control algorithms of TCP perform too aggressively in WSNs, where random bit errors and topology changes are main reasons for errors instead of congestion. Further, a frequent duty cycle is needed in WSN to compensate the TCP/IP overhead. In TUTWSN, compared to an environmental monitoring application with two second activity cycle and native WSN transport, the enabling of TCP/IP consumes five times more power

[1]  Hala ElAarag,et al.  Improving TCP performance over mobile networks , 2002, CSUR.

[2]  Yueming Hu,et al.  Issues of transport control protocols for wireless sensor networks , 2005, Proceedings. 2005 International Conference on Communications, Circuits and Systems, 2005..

[3]  David Gothberg.  Micro-IP for embedded systems , 2000 .

[4]  Zhaohui Wu,et al.  A TCP/IP implementation for wireless sensor networks , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583).

[5]  Janne Riihijärvi,et al.  NanoIP: the zen of embedded networking , 2003, IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2003. ICC '03..

[6]  Ian F. Akyildiz,et al.  Sensor Networks , 2002, Encyclopedia of GIS.

[7]  Timo Hämäläinen,et al.  Ultra low energy wireless temperature sensor network implementation , 2005, 2005 IEEE 16th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[8]  Timo Hämäläinen,et al.  Design, Implementation, and Experiments on Outdoor Deployment of Wireless Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring , 2006, SAMOS.

[9]  Katia Obraczka,et al.  FLIP: A Flexible Interconnection Protocol for Heterogeneous Internetworking , 2004, Mob. Networks Appl..

[10]  Sally Floyd,et al.  Simulation-based comparisons of Tahoe, Reno and SACK TCP , 1996, CCRV.

[11]  Nirwan Ansari,et al.  TCP in wireless environments: problems and solutions , 2005, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[12]  M. Weiser,et al.  Hot topics-ubiquitous computing , 1993 .

[13]  Lui Sha,et al.  Real-time communication and coordination in embedded sensor networks , 2003, Proc. IEEE.

[14]  Adam Dunkels,et al.  Connecting Wireless Sensornets with TCP/IP Networks , 2004, WWIC.

[15]  Adam Dunkels,et al.  Full TCP/IP for 8-bit architectures , 2003, MobiSys '03.