Fast and Reliable Alert Delivery in Mission-Critical Wi-Fi HaLow Sensor Networks

Abstract

Rapidly evolving, the Internet of Things imposes new challenges for the developers of wireless networks. Various critical infrastructure monitoring scenarios require fast and reliable alert delivery. In such systems, multiple sensors are entrusted to react to the same emergency event. Thus, it is enough to receive an alert message from any of these sensors. However, such a message shall be reliably delivered as soon as possible. The recently published Wi-Fi HaLow standard defines the Restricted Access Window (RAW) mechanism that coordinates transmissions of numerous devices. Thus, it can improve reliability and reduce delays. The paper is the first to study the usage of RAW in a scenario of emergency alerts, where the alert shall be received from at least one sensor. The paper presents an easy-to-calculate mathematical model of alert delivery with RAW. The model allows dynamic online reconfiguration of RAW parameters to select such parameters that minimize consumed channel timeshare while providing satisfactory reliability and delivery delay for an alert. Intensive performance evaluation shows that the RAW is fruitful for mission-critical data delivery in the considered scenario.

Keywords

• IEEE 802.11ah
• restricted access window
• sensor network
• alert