pTunes: runtime parameter adaptation for low-power MAC protocols

  • Authors:
  • Marco Zimmerling;Federico Ferrari;Luca Mottola;Thiemo Voigt;Lothar Thiele

  • Affiliations:
  • ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland;Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista, Sweden;Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista, Sweden;ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

We present pTunes, a framework for runtime adaptation of low-power MAC protocol parameters. The MAC operating parameters bear great influence on the system performance, yet their optimal choice is a function of the current network state. Based on application requirements expressed as network lifetime, end-to-end latency, and end-to-end reliability, pTunes automatically determines optimized parameter values to adapt to link, topology, and traffic dynamics. To this end, we introduce a flexible modeling approach, separating protocol-dependent from protocol-independent aspects, which facilitates using pTunes with different MAC protocols, and design an efficient system support that integrates smoothly with the application. To demonstrate its effectiveness, we apply pTunes to X-MAC and LPP. In a 44-node testbed, pTunes achieves up to three-fold lifetime gains over static MAC parameters optimized for peak traffic, the latter being current - and almost unavoidable - practice in real deployments. pTunes promptly reacts to changes in traffic load and link quality, reducing packet loss by 80% during periods of controlled wireless interference. Moreover, pTunes helps the routing protocol recover quickly from critical network changes, reducing packet loss by 70% in a scenario where multiple core routing nodes fail.