Dynamic Buffer Sizing for Out-of-order Event Compensation for Time-sensitive Applications

Abstract

Today’s sensor network implementations often comprise various types of nodes connected with different types of networks. These and various other aspects influence the delay of transmitting data and therefore of out-of-order data occurrences. This turns into a crucial problem in time-sensitive applications where data must be processed promptly and decisions must be reliable. In this article, we research dynamic buffer sizing algorithms for multiple, distributed, and independent sources, which reorder event streams, thus enabling subsequent time-sensitive applications to work correctly. To be able to evaluate such algorithms, we had to record datasets first. Five novel dynamic buffer sizing algorithms were implemented and compared to state-of-the-art approaches in this domain. The evaluation has shown that the use of a dynamic time-out buffering method is preferable over a static buffer. The higher the variation of the network or other influences in the environment, the more necessary it becomes to use an algorithm that dynamically adapts its buffer size. These algorithms are universally applicable, easy to integrate in existing architectures, and particularly interesting for time-sensitive applications. Dynamic time-out buffering is still a trade-off between reaction time and out-of-order event compensation.