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

This chapter establishes a probabilistic fundamental quantitative notion for time-critical applications on real-time information transfer in multihop wireless networks. Those wireless sensor networks that are capable of providing bounded delay guarantees on packet delivery are referred to as real-time wireless sensor networks (RT-WSN). The preliminaries and assumption of the problem are clarified. The chapter derives a model for evaluating the reliable real-time (RRT) degree and presents the model validation for RT-WSN. The model can be extended to describe various aspects in the design of sensor networks, such as data aggregation or backpressure traffic mechanisms. Finally, the chapter deals with the cluster-based network architectures as well as the case where the network topology varies.