Fairness in delay-aware cross layer data transmission scheme for wireless sensor networks

Prioritization of the data collected by the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can provide promising performance enhancements for applications that monitor and control the critical systems. Particularly, in smart grid, defense and e-health applications, delivering high priority data with low latency is important. Previous works have focused on various cross layer approaches for providing Quality of Service (QoS) in WSNs. However, in the ad hoc nature of WSNs it is highly challenging to become aware of selfish nodes that may exploit those QoS-aware approaches. In our previous work, we have proposed a delay-aware cross layer technique for WSNs. In this paper, we propose a cross layer scheme that is both fairness-aware and delay-aware. Our fairness in delay-aware cross layer data transmission scheme (FDRX) is based on delay-estimation and data prioritization steps that are performed before the data transmission by the application layer. If the estimated delay is higher than the acceptable latency range for the high priority data, MAC layer parameters respond to the delay requirements of the application and vary channel access mechanism in a fair manner. Our results show that the proposed FDRX scheme is able to reduce end-to-end delay for data demanding timely delivery while the latency of the other packets is slightly impacted. Furthermore, our approach is able to maintain acceptable performance in terms packet delivery and energy consumption.