Citation: Majeed, U.; Malik, A.N.;
Abbas, N.; Abbass, W. An
Energy-Efficient Distributed
Congestion Control Protocol for
Wireless Multimedia Sensor
Networks. Electronics 2022, 11, 3265.
https://doi.org/10.3390/
electronics11203265
Academic Editors: Alvaro
Araujo Pinto and Hacene Fouchal
Received: 7 September 2022
Accepted: 6 October 2022
Published: 11 October 2022
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Article
An Energy-Efficient Distributed Congestion Control Protocol
for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks
Uzma Majeed
1,
*, Aqdas Naveed Malik
1
, Nasim Abbas
2
and Waseem Abbass
3
1
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, International Islamic University Islamabad,
Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
2
Department of Cyber Security, Air University Islamabad, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
3
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, COMSATS University Islamabad,
Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
* Correspondence: uzma.phdee107@iiu.edu.pk
Abstract:
Wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) generate a huge amount of multimedia
data. Congestion is one of the most challenging open issues in WMSNs. Congestion causes low
throughput, high packet loss and low energy efficiency. Congestion happens when the data carried
by the network surpasses the available capacity. This article presents an energy-efficient distributed
congestion control protocol (DCCP) to mitigate congestion and improve end-to-end delay. Com-
pared to the other protocols, the DCCP protocol proposed in this article can alleviate congestion by
intelligently selecting the best path. First, congestion is detected by using two congestion indicators.
Second, each node aggregates the received data and builds a traffic congestion map. The traffic
congestion map is used to calculate the best path. Therefore, the traffic is balanced on different routes,
which reduces the end-to-end delay. Finally, a rate controller is designed to prevent congestion in the
network by sending a congestion notification message to a source node. After receiving a congestion
notification message, the source node immediately adjusts its transmission rate. Experimental results
based on raspberry pi sensor nodes show that the proposed DCCP protocol significantly improves
network performance and is superior to existing modern congestion control protocols.
Keywords:
wireless sensor networks; wireless multimedia sensor networks; congestion control;
wireless video transmission
1. Introduction
Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) are one of the promising paradigms
for the Internet of Things (IoT) [
1
]. WMSNs consist of wirelessly connected devices that
can capture video data from the environment. Sensor nodes are equipped with inexpensive
video cameras and microphones [
2
]. These camera nodes capture this visual information,
process it and transmit it to the base station through multi-hop or single-hop communica-
tion. WMSNs are used in various applications. The scope of WMSN applications includes
monitoring of indoor and outdoor environments [
3
], IoT-based smart agriculture [
4
] and
object tracking [
5
]. The transport layer [
6
,
7
], the network layer [
8
], the physical layer [
9
]
and the media access control layer [10,11] have been extensively researched in WMSNs.
Due to many practical and theoretical challenges, WMSNs have attracted the attention
of many researchers. There are many challenges that need to be addressed, such as
harsh environmental conditions [
12
], node failures [
13
], mobility of nodes [
14
], mobility
of detected events [
15
], dynamic network topology [
16
], heterogeneity of nodes [
17
], large
scale deployments [
18
] and unattended operations [
19
]. In addition, there is tremendous
progress in internet traffic applications that requires bandwidth. Industrial forecasts predict
that large-scale video traffic will dominate global internet traffic in the future [20].
Network congestion in WMSN networks is one of the most challenging open is-
sues [
21
]. Video data in WMSN networks always consumes a lot of bandwidth. The sensor
Electronics 2022, 11, 3265. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11203265 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics
