Improving QoS in Wireless Sensor Networks Using a Multi-Stack Architecture

Wireless sensor networks deployed nowadays are traditionally mono-stack: they are operating according to a single combination of one MAC protocol and one network (NWK) protocol. This work proposes a new multi-stack architecture in which several combinations of MAC and NWK protocols are used. This can be achieved by dividing time into time intervals and activating different combinations during each period. Simulations of this approach prove that QoS is mitigated among the combinations. To alleviate the complexity of the time-intervals dimensioning, a formal description of a queue exchange algorithm that allows frames from a time-interval to be sent during another time-interval is proposed. This algorithm improves significantly the global performance of the network.