A Comprehensive Analysis of Congestion Control Models in Wireless Sensor Networks

Congestion control is an important factor for performance improvement in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Congestion occurs due to various reasons including a variation in the data rate between incoming and outgoing links, buffer size, flooding attacks and multiple inputs and minimum output capability. Various outcomes of congestion in sensor networks include immense packet loss or packet drop, fast energy depletion, unfairness across the network, reduced node performance and increased delay in packet delivery. Hence, there is an extreme need to check channel congestion in order to enhance the performance with better congestion management. The job of choosing a suitable congestion control technique is a challenging task for the network designer. In this article, the authors traverse through the underlying conceptual ideas on congestion control schemes which come under six unique models. This article highlights a survey on the existing works done so far on congestion control domains in sensor networks. A comparative analysis based on Quality of Service parameters has been discussed.