Reliability Evaluation of a Wireless Sensor Network in Terms of Network Delay and Transmission Probability for IoT Applications

Abstract

Reliability is a crucial performance metric for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because it ensures network functionality even with degraded sensor nodes and wireless connections. Due to the limited availability of power resources associated with the sensor nodes, their efficacy is reduced. In addition, parameters such as the number of neighbours, packet success rate, packet size, and node capacity have a significant impact on how sensor nodes function. Similarly, inter-node distance and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) have the greatest influence on the functioning of wireless communications in WSNs. Before evaluating the reliability of a WSN, therefore, the node and link reliability must be computed. This paper evaluates the reliability of sensor nodes by taking into account all of the parameters previously mentioned. In addition, the lifetime of each sensor node is estimated in terms of the fractional energy consumed for each wake-up operation and the transmission of packets, respectively. Using the inter-node distance and SNR values, each wireless link’s reliability is determined. Following this, a proposed algorithm evaluates the reliability of WSN by first enumerating all minimal paths between the sensor node and the base station and then converting these minimal paths into their sum-of-disjoint-product terms. Making use of a suitable example network, every step of the proposed method is illustrated. For evaluating the reliability of WSN, the proposed method is simulated in different environments. In addition, the influence of parameters such as inter-node distance, SNR, number of neighbours, packet success ratio, and time on the reliability values of WSN is portrayed and analysed.