Experimenting TCP/IP for Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents the analysis and real experiments on TCP/IP communication in a low-power monitoring wireless sensor network (WSN). TCP/IP flow control, addressing, and packet fragmentation are adapted in a gateway that relays TCP/IP communication to WSN. The performance of TCP/IP is evaluated between endpoint PCs communicating over TUTWSN (Tampere University of Technology WSN), which is used as a transparent communication medium for TCP/IP data. The evaluation results show that the window-based flow control algorithms of TCP perform too aggressively in WSNs, where random bit errors and topology changes are main reasons for errors instead of congestion. Further, a frequent duty cycle is needed in WSN to compensate the TCP/IP overhead. In TUTWSN, compared to an environmental monitoring application with two second activity cycle and native WSN transport, the enabling of TCP/IP consumes five times more power