A Model for Differentiated Service Support in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

Different network applications need different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements such as packet delay, packet loss, bandwidth and availability. It is important to develop a network architecture which is able to guaranty quality of service requirements for high priority traffic. In Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs), a sensor node may have different kinds of sensor which gather different types of data, with differing levels of importance. We argue that the sensor networks should be willing to spend more resources in disseminating packets that carry more important information. Some applications of WMSNs need to send real time traffic toward the sink node. This real time traffic requires low latency and high reliability so that immediate remedial and defensive actions can be taken, where necessary. Similar to wired networks, service differentiation in wireless sensor networks is also very important. In this paper we propose a differentiated service model for WMSNs. The proposed model can provide requested quality of service for high priority real time classes. In the proposed model, we distinguish high priority real time traffic from the low priority non-real time traffic, and input traffic streams are then serviced based on their priorities. Simulation results confirm the efficiency of the proposed model.