Congestion Control Approaches Applied to Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a specific category of wireless ad-hoc networks where their performance is highly affected by application, life time, storage capacity, processing power, topology changes, and the communication medium and bandwidth. These limitations necessitate an effective data transport control in WSNs considering quality of service, energy efficiency, and congestion control. Methods: Congestion is an important issue in wireless networks. Congestion in WSNs badly effects loss rate, channel quality, link utilization, the number of retransmissions, traffic flow, network life time, delay, and energy as well as throughput. Due to the dominant role of WSNs, more efficient congestion control algorithms are needed. Results: In this paper, a comprehensive review of different congestion control schemes in WSNs is provided. In particular, different congestion control techniques are classified according to the way congestion is detected, notified and mitigated. Furthermore, congestion mitigation algorithms are classified and different performance metrics are used to compare congestion control algorithms.Conclusion: In this paper, congestion mitigation algorithms are classified in different groups. Finally, the current work attempts to provide specific directives to design and develop novel congestion control schemes.======================================================================================================Copyrights©2018 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.======================================================================================================