Utility-based cross-layer optimization is a valuable tool for resource management in mission-oriented wireless
sensor networks (WSN). The benefits of this technique include the ability to take application- or mission-level
utilities into account and to dynamically adapt to the highly variable environment of tactical WSNs. Recently,
we developed a family of distributed protocols which adapts the bandwidth and energy usage in mission-oriented
WSN in order to optimally allocate resources among multiple missions, that may have specific demands depending
on their priority, and also variable schedules, entering and leaving the network at different times.9-12 In this
paper, we illustrate the practical applicability of this family of protocols in tactical networks by implementing one
of the protocols, which ensures optimal rate adaptation for congestion control in mission-oriented networks,9 on a
real-time 802.11b network using the ITA Sensor Fabric.13 The ITA Sensor Fabric is a middleware infrastructure,
developed as part of the International Technology Alliance (ITA) in Network and Information Science,14 to
address the challenges in the areas of sensor identification, classification, interoperability and sensor data sharing,
dissemination and consumability, commonly present in tactical WSNs.15 Through this implementation, we (i)
study the practical challenges arising from the implementation and (ii) provide a proof of concept regarding
the applicability of this family of protocols for efficient resource management in tactical WSNs amidst the
heterogeneous and dynamic sets of sensors, missions and middle-ware.
This paper examines the practical challenges in the application of the distributed network utility maximization
(NUM) framework to the problem of resource allocation and sensor device adaptation in a mission-centric wireless
sensor network (WSN) environment. By providing rich (multi-modal), real-time information about a variety of
(often inaccessible or hostile) operating environments, sensors such as video, acoustic and short-aperture radar
enhance the situational awareness of many battlefield missions. Prior work on the applicability of the NUM
framework to mission-centric WSNs has focused on tackling the challenges introduced by i) the definition of
an individual mission's utility as a collective function of multiple sensor flows and ii) the dissemination of an
individual sensor's data via a multicast tree to multiple consuming missions. However, the practical application
and performance of this framework is influenced by several parameters internal to the framework and also by
implementation-specific decisions. This is made further complex due to mobile nodes. In this paper, we use
discrete-event simulations to study the effects of these parameters on the performance of the protocol in terms
of speed of convergence, packet loss, and signaling overhead thereby addressing the challenges posed by wireless
interference and node mobility in ad-hoc battlefield scenarios. This study provides better understanding of the
issues involved in the practical adaptation of the NUM framework. It also helps identify potential avenues of
improvement within the framework and protocol.
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