A Relay Selection Strategy Based on Weighting Function Adapted to Different Characteristics of Services in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor network (WSN) with multimedia data services (MDSs) of different characteristics and relay nodes of different transmission capabilities, the selection of relay nodes of MDSs affects the transmission quality of MDSs. Thus, how to form the best match between relay node and service is an urgent problem. This paper using Markov model and queuing theory proposes a relay selection strategy, called WF strategy. This strategy can make multimedia data service select the most suitable relay node for their data characteristics based on a weighting function that can adapt to different characteristics of services, then achieves the optimal matching between service and relay node, which can improve the quality of MDSs’ transmission and WSN’s performance. Moreover, in order to evaluate the WF strategy, a queueing analytical method is used in this paper to model the system. Then comprehensive performance evaluation indicators of each relay node are obtained separately, such as average throughput and average delay. By using these indicators, the WF strategy, the weighted round robin selection strategy (WRR strategy) and the weighted random selection strategy (WR strategy) are compared. The simulation results show that within certain numerical results WF strategy is better than WRR strategy and WR strategy.