Power-Domain Interference Graph Estimation for Multi-hop BLE Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel power-domain interference graph estimation method for multi-hop BLE networks that enables simultaneous measurement and communication, reducing overhead and improving network performance.

Contribution

It proposes a new approach to interference graph estimation using power as a dimension, integrated with concurrent flooding for BLE networks, addressing measurement overhead issues.

Findings

Power linearity holds under certain conditions in concurrent flooding.

Power-related hardware nonlinearities can affect estimation accuracy.

The proposed method improves channel map convergence and data collection efficiency.

Abstract

Traditional wisdom for network management allocates network resources separately for the measurement and communication tasks. Heavy measurement tasks may compete limited resources with communication tasks and significantly degrade overall network performance. It is therefore challenging for the interference graph, deemed as incurring heavy measurement overhead, to be used in practice in wireless networks. To address this challenge in wireless sensor networks, our core insight is to use power as a new dimension for interference graph estimation (IGE) such that IGE can be done simultaneously with the communication tasks using the same frequency-time resources. We propose to marry power-domain IGE with concurrent flooding to achieve simultaneous measurement and communication in BLE networks, where the power linearity prerequisite for power-domain IGE holds naturally true in concurrent flooding. With extensive experiments, we conclude the necessary conditions for the power linearity to hold and analyze several nonlinearity issues of power related to hardware imperfections. We design and implement network protocols and power control algorithms for IGE in multi-hop BLE networks and conduct experiments to show that the marriage is mutually beneficial for both IGE and concurrent flooding. Furthermore, we demonstrate the potential of IGE in improving channel map convergence and convergecast in BLE networks.