Adaptive failure detection in low power lossy wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we investigate the use of failure detectors (FD) in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). We provide a classification of FD with respect to some WSN criteria. The focus will be on energy depletion and lossy links. We then propose a new general FD model tailored to WSN constraints, called Adaptive Neighborhood Failure Detector for Low-power lossy WSN (AFDEL). AFDEL provides adaptive local failure detection robust against packet loss (intermittent failures) and saves the use of energy, bandwidth and memory storage. Furthermore, we introduce in AFDEL model an adaptive timer strategy. This strategy offers the possibility to customize the dynamic timer pattern with respect to application requirements in terms of completeness and accuracy. We illustrate the use of this strategy by proposing three failure detection techniques based on AFDEL general model. As a part of this work, we give a stochastic based approach for timer adaptation. We evaluate all techniques using implementation on MiXim/Omnet++ framework. The overall experiments show that AFDEL achieves better trade-off between accuracy/completeness and detection/recovery period compared to static timer approach FaT2D (Benhamida and Challal, 2010) and HeartBeat timer-free technique (Aguilera et al., 1997). Moreover, using adaptive timer strategy in local interaction/detection makes it possible to reduce energy consumption and the overall exchanged data overhead.