CODE-WSN: A Formal Modelling Tool for Congestion Detection on Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently been attracting much attention from not only the research community but also the industry. One of the important constraints which must be seriously considered when designing a WSN is the congestion control, since it may cause damaged or even lost packets during the transmission. Hence, this paper proposes a tool, known as CODE-WSN (Congestion Detection on Wireless Sensor Networks) to detect possible congestion occurrence on a WSN design. The major difference between this tool and the others is that CODE-WSN exploits the strength of formal modelling approaches. In CODE-WSN, a WSN is modelled by the formal modelling language Petri Net (PN), to allow one to inspect and verify congestion potential. In addition, two types of PN, including Place/Transition Nets and Coloured Petri Nets, are supported for modelling in CODE-WSN, thus readers can observe the advantages and the disadvantages as well of each PN kind. Notably, this tool also presents some ways to overcome the issue of state space explosion which seemingly the most practically painful problem on formal modelling aspect.