Evaluating an (m, k)-firm Deadline Real-time Stream Based on a Reliable Transport Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

As application-specific requirements for wireless sensor networks emerge, both real-time and reliable communications become major research challenges in wireless sensor networks due to the many constraints on nodes and wireless links. To support these services, several protocols have been proposed. However, since most of them were designed as well as developed for general purpose applications, it is not recommended that they be directly adapted to applications with special requirements. In this paper, we propose a way to extend the current reliable transport protocol to cover a special real-time service, the (m,k)-firm deadline stream, in wireless sensor networks. While the proposed scheme is basically built on the PSFQ protocol for reliability, some features have been newly developed to support the (m,k)-firm stream efficiently. Finally, simulation results are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme in high traffic and with failed links.