Leaky Bucket based congestion control in Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), congestion poses as a major threat in efficient communication between the nodes, leading to delay of packets, overflowing in the buffer, poor energy efficiency and minimizing the throughput. To mitigate congestion in such networks and to overcome this serious issue, three steps are being taken, viz. congestion detection, congestion notification and congestion control. Traffic control and resource control are the two kinds of approaches to diminish congestion in wireless sensor networks. Congestion control based dynamic routing can also applied to tackle the concern related to WSN. By using simulation tools, which have the potential to provide substantial support for wireless networks, we can implement the control of congestion by applying leaky bucket based congestion control mechanisms for better outcomes in wireless sensor networks and to compare the results obtained with some of the existing implementations. Since leaky bucket algorithm has the ability to control congestion in a network having bursty traffic, this approach has been chosen for effective detection and implementation of congestion avoidance. A study on how leaky bucket algorithm works over changing the bucket size, the rate of flow, the size and the number of packets being sent is made here. We have made analysis based on the derived results and made performance analysis on what schema of setting parameter does guarantee minimal packet loss.