Traffic-Aware Channel Assignment in Wireless Sensor Networks

Existing frequency assignment efforts in wireless sensor network research focus on balancing available physical frequencies among neighboring nodes, without paying attention to the fact that different nodes have different traffic volumes. Ignoring the different traffic requirements in different nodes in frequency assignment design leads to poor MAC performance. Therefore, in this paper, we are motivated to propose traffic-aware frequency assignment, which considers nodes’ traffic volumes when making frequency decisions. We incorporate our traffic-aware frequency assignment design into an existing multi-channel MAC, and compare the performance with two conventional frequency assignment schemes. Our performance evaluation demonstrates that traffic-aware channel assignment can greatly improve multi-channel MAC performance. Our trafficaware assignment scheme greatly enhances the packet delivery ratio and system throughput, while reducing channel access delay and energy consumption.