Determining the Main CSMA Parameters for Adequate Performance of WSN for Real-Time Volcano Monitoring System Applications

This paper presents a study in order to identify the value range of the main parameters within carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) defined in IEEE 802.15.4 that guarantees a satisfactory wireless sensor network (WSN) performance for a volcano monitoring application. Moreover, this study performs the comparison among several test-beds in outdoor scenarios with the purpose of distinguishing the optimal number of nodes for each gateway according the main constraints given by an existing sensor network for real-time (RT) volcano monitoring system such as sampling time, packet loss, and delay. We used a mathematical model that works with Markovian techniques and involves some parameters of CSMA mechanism within the model, such as the minimum value of the backoff exponent (BEmin), the contention window length (W), and the number of slots (L). We obtained the approximate values of these parameters by the interpolation of the normalized throughput curves from the deployment, and thus, we could obtain a mathematical model with the specifications required for the RT volcano monitoring. After validating the model with test-bed outdoor deployments we found that BEmin, W and L are key factors for determining the performance of a WSN, these parameters guarantee the range in which the WSN works according to the constraints imposed for this particular volcano monitoring application.