Supporting Service Differentiation in Wireless Sensor Networks

The evolution of wireless sensor technology allows for the provision of enhanced services to miscellaneous application domains. In parallel, Quality of Service (QoS) support becomes necessary to satisfy the needs of these new service models. This paper presents QoS requirements from a service model perspective and describes challenges for QoS support in WSNs. We also provide a review of current efforts in Medium Access Control (MAC) QoS support in WSNs. Then, we investigate various performance metrics of IEEE 802.15.4 standard in order to determine the technological issues that arise. From the outcome of the experiments conducted, using ns-2, we identified that different schemes of services and application scenarios for different ways of deployment, scales of network and traffic load can satisfy diverse user needs and requirements.