Evaluation of Early Packet Drop Scheduling Policies in Criticality-Aware Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper introduces three autonomous, criticality-aware packet scheduling policies that address the impact of high traffic loads and degraded conditions in wireless sensor networks. The proposed policies, collectively referred to as Early Packet Drop (EPD), leverage cross-layer information, including RPL Rank, link quality, and time-slotted Medium Access Control schedule, to mitigate Quality of Service degradation. Simulation results demonstrate that EPD consistently outperforms a Criticality-Monotonic Scheduling (CMS) baseline.