Efficient adaptive failure detection for Query/Response based wireless sensor networks

We consider the problem of failure management in wireless sensor networks (WSN). In such networks, nodes can be subject to frequent failures due to energy depletion and the hostile deployment environment. Our work focuses on local crash process detection in WSN considering intermittent failures due to lossy radio links. As a part of this problem, we introduce a new type of Adaptive Neighborhood Failure Detection mechanism (ANFD) that relies on adaptive timers. Then we analyze properties of the introduced failure detection algorithm and determine how and when timers´ update is necessary. We carried out intensive simulations using TinyOS-2 and evaluated the performance of our solution. Simulation results show that our solution improves failure detection rate and delay, and reduces fault positive detections and packet loss ratio. Moreover, we analyzed energy consumption using PowerTossimZ and results demonstrate that our solution does not induce extra energy consumption compared to other solutions in the literature.