English

Data Dissemination Performance in Large-Scale Sensor Networks

Networking and Internet Architecture 2014-07-24 v1 Probability

Abstract

As the use of wireless sensor networks increases, the need for (energy-)efficient and reliable broadcasting algorithms grows. Ideally, a broadcasting algorithm should have the ability to quickly disseminate data, while keeping the number of transmissions low. In this paper we develop a model describing the message count in large-scale wireless sensor networks. We focus our attention on the popular Trickle algorithm, which has been proposed as a suitable communication protocol for code maintenance and propagation in wireless sensor networks. Besides providing a mathematical analysis of the algorithm, we propose a generalized version of Trickle, with an additional parameter defining the length of a listen-only period. This generalization proves to be useful for optimizing the design and usage of the algorithm. For single-cell networks we show how the message count increases with the size of the network and how this depends on the Trickle parameters. Furthermore, we derive distributions of inter-broadcasting times and investigate their asymptotic behavior. Our results prove conjectures made in the literature concerning the effect of a listen-only period. Additionally, we develop an approximation for the expected number of transmissions in multi-cell networks. All results are validated by simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1407.6034,
  title  = {Data Dissemination Performance in Large-Scale Sensor Networks},
  author = {Thomas M. M. Meyfroyt and Sem C. Borst and Onno J. Boxma and Dee Denteneer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.6034},
  year   = {2014}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T05:10:24.304Z