Empirical evaluation of querying mechanisms for unstructured wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In the last few years, several studies have analyzed the performance of flooding and random walks as querying mechanisms for unstructured wireless sensor networks. However, most of the work is theoretical in nature and while providing insights into the asymptotic behavior of these querying mechanisms, does not account for the non-idealities faced by the network in real deployments. In this paper, we propose a 3-way handshake protocol as a reliable implementation of a random walk and compare its performance with flooding in real environments. The metrics considered are delay, reliability and transmission cost. Our initial results suggest that flooding is better suited for low-interference environments, while random walks might be a better option in networks with high interference. We also present possible research directions to improve the performance oflooding and random walks.