A Distributed Feedback Control Mechanism for Quality-of-Service Maintenance in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are typically operating in a dynamic context where events, such as moving sensor nodes and changing external interference, constantly impact the quality-of-service of the network. We present a distributed feedback control mechanism that actively balances multiple conflicting network-wide quality metrics, such as power consumption and end-to-end packet latency, for a heterogeneous wireless sensor network operating in a dynamic context. Nodes constantly decide if and how to adapt controllable parameters of the entire protocol stack, using sufficient information of the current network state. Using experiments with an actual deployment we show that our controller allows to maintain the required network-wide quality-of-service, with up to 30% less power consumed, compared to the most applicable (re-)configuration approaches.