Congestion Control for Wireless Sensor
Network based on Generalized Minimum
Variance Controller
Xinhao YANG
Department of Mechanical and Electric Engineering
Soochow University
Suzhou, China
e-mail: yangxinhao@163.com
Juncheng JIA
School of Computer Science and Technology
Soochow University
Suzhou, China
e-mail: jiajuncheng@suda.edu.cn
Ze Li
College of electronic and information engineering
Suzhou University of Science and Technology
Suzhou, China
e-mail: lizeing@163.com
Shukui Zhang
School of Computer Science and Technology
Soochow University
Suzhou, China
e-mail: zhangshukui@suda.edu.cn
Abstract—In order to improve the quality of service and the
energy efficiency, congestion control has exposed as an
essential factor in the wireless sensor network. Congestion
control for wireless sensor network based on generalized
minimum variance controller is proposed in the paper, for
which node-congestion and link-congestion are considered
simultaneously. The discrete transfer functionfor the node-
congestion and the link-congestion , as the wireless sensor
network model, is presented based on the fluid-flow theory,
small signal linearization and the bilinear Z-transform. Due
to the time-variable network parameter and topology,
generalized minimum variance controller is introduced to
the congestion control in wireless sensro network, of which
the necessary and sufficient condition for the stability is also
provided. The congestion control algorithm based on
generalized minimum variance controller can reduce queue
time and alleviate congestion. Ns-2 simulation results
indicate that the proposed algorithm restrains the congestion
in variable network condition and maintains a high
throughput together with a low packet drop ratio for the
whole network.
Keywords-
congestion control; wireless sensor network;
generalized minimum variance; Ns-2 simulantion;
quality of
service
I. INTRODUCTION
Over the last decades, there have been widely
researches in the area of the wireless sensor
networks(WSNs) [1]. Normally, the sensor nodes will be
deployed in the remote area, such as the island in the sea
and the satellite in the outerspace, in which case recharging
is not feasible. Thus, the main focus for WSNs is on the
low energy use. Congestion may result in wasted resources
due to lost or dropped packets, and even possible
congestion collapse. So congestion control is considered as
an essential factor in WSNs.
In order to improve the quality of service and the
energy efficiency, several congestion control methods are
researched for sensor network applications. As the queue
length in buffer suggesting the current network condition,
IFRC [2] uses queue sizes to detect the congestion, and
further shares the congestion state through overhearing.
Rate-based congestion control may react more rapidly than
queue-based scheme, Congestion Control and Fairness for
Many-to-one Routing in Sensor Networks [3] is another
rate assignment scheme that uses a different congestion
detection mechanism than IFRC. Data gather tree
algorithm [4] is researched to eliminate the congestion in
WSNs.
The classification of the congestion in WSNs includes
node-congestion and link-congestion [5]. (1) node-
congestion: the traffic need to send is more than the ability
of the sensor node, which causes the buffer overflow,
packet loss or queue delay increasing. (2) link-congestion:
several adjacent nodes compete one shared channel at the
same time, which will generate an access conflict, increase
packet service time or reduce the link utilization and
network throughput. Based on the discussion above, it is
obvious that the congesion control in WSNs should
consider both the queue length and the traffic rate. Sliding
mode control [9] solves both node-congestion and link-
congestion in WSNs, but whose performace deteriorates in
time-variable network conditions. The time-variable
network parameter and topology in WSNs is considered as
the syetem noise which can be suppress by Generalized
minimum variance(GMV) [6] effectively. In conclusion,
the generalized minimum variance is deployed in the
congestion control for WSNs.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: section 2
presents the congestion model based on the fluid-flow
theory, small signal linearization and the bilinear Z-
transform for WSNs. In section 3, congestion control
algorithm based on Generalized minimum