Do we really need A Priori Link Quality Estimation?

Master thesis (2013)

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Programme
Embedded Systems (EEMCS) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2013 Vasilopoulos, V.
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Published Date

13-08-2013

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Programme

Embedded Systems

Abstract

Traditionally, link quality estimation (LQE) has been viewed as an a priori step in sensor network routing protocols because it filters out unreliable links before data transmission. Recent results, however, show that protocols can perform well without a priori LQE. Because getting rid of LQE seems rather counter-intuitive, the aim of this work is to look deeper into the behavior of LQE-free protocols. Our results, based on one of the state-of-the-art LQE-free protocols, show two interesting insights. First, LQE-free protocols manage to choose links that are slightly better than the ones obtained with a priori LQE methods. Second, in traditional protocols, the effort needed to identify good links accounts for 40% to 60% of the energy consumption of nodes. By eliminating this overhead, LQE-free protocols can save a significant amount of energy compared to standard approaches. On the other hand, clear downsides of LQE-free operation are the longer paths and the worse load balance. The latter poses a higher transmission burden on some nodes.