A fuzzy logical controller for traffic load parameter with priority-based rate in wireless multimedia sensor networks

In wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs), sensor nodes use different types of sensors to gather different types of data. In multimedia applications, it is necessary to provide reliable and fair protocols in order to meet specific requirements of quality of service (QoS) demands in regard to these different types of data. To prolong the system lifetime of WMSNs, it is necessary to perform adjustments to the transmission rate and to mitigate network congestion. In previous works investigating WMSNs, exponential weighted priority-based rate control (EWPBRC) schemes with traffic load parameter (TLP) schemes in WMSNs were used to control congestion by adjusting transmission rates relative to various data types. However, when the TLP is fixed, a large change in data transmission causes a significant difference between input transmission rate and the estimated output transmission rate of each sensor node. This study proposes a novel fuzzy logical controller (FLC) pertaining to TLP schemes with an EWPBRC that estimates the output transmission rate of the parent node and then assigns a suitable transmission rate based on the traffic load of each child node, with attention paid to the different amounts of data being transmitted. Simulation results show that the performance of our proposed scheme has a better transmission rate as compared to PBRC: the delay and loss probability are reduced. In addition, our proposed scheme can effectively control different transmission data types insofar as achieving the QoS requirements of a system while decreasing network resource consumption. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.