Queueing theory-based path delay analysis of wireless sensor networks

Path planning is one of the important factors that affect data transmission and processing in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This paper addresses this issue by means of the paths delay analysis. Considering that WSNs are used for temperature monitoring, we model the WSNs using the open queueing network theory and analyze the paths delay based on the model. An iterative approximation algorithm is proposed for the qualitative analysis of the packet arrival rate of sensor nodes. According to the capacity and redundancy of nodes along the path, the destination node search trees are created for pre-selecting the transmission paths. Then the end-to-end delays of the pre-selected node paths and the average delay of sub-queueing networks are calculated. The optimal path and the assistant path for data transmission in WSNs could be obtained on the basis of the delay analysis. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.