Dynamic Buffer Sizing for Out-of-Order Event Compensation for Time-Sensitive Applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces and evaluates five novel dynamic buffer sizing algorithms designed to improve out-of-order event handling in sensor networks, enhancing the reliability of time-sensitive applications amid environmental variability.

Contribution

The paper proposes new dynamic buffer sizing algorithms and demonstrates their effectiveness over static buffers in real-world sensor network scenarios.

Findings

Dynamic algorithms outperform static buffers in variable environments.

Higher environmental variation increases the need for adaptive buffering.

Dynamic time-out buffering balances reaction time and event order correction.

Abstract

Today's sensor network implementations often comprise various types of nodes connected with different types of networks. These and various other aspects influence the delay of transmitting data and therefore of out-of-order data occurrences. This turns into a crucial problem in time-sensitive applications where data must be processed promptly and decisions must be reliable. In this paper, we were researching dynamic buffer sizing algorithms for multiple, distributed and independent sources, which reorder event streams, thus enabling subsequent time-sensitive applications to work correctly. To be able to evaluate such algorithms, we had to record datasets first. Five novel dynamic buffer sizing algorithms were implemented and compared to state-of-the-art approaches in this domain. The evaluation has shown that the use of a dynamic time-out buffering method is preferable over a static buffer. The higher the variation of the network or other influences in the environment, the more necessary it becomes to use an algorithm which dynamically adapts its buffer size. These algorithms are universally applicable, easy to integrate in existing architectures, and particularly interesting for time-sensitive applications. Dynamic time-out buffering is still a trade-off between reaction time and out-of-order event compensation.