Adding QoS support for timeliness to the observe extension of CoAP

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a modification of the observe extension of CoAP to include Quality of Service (QoS) support for timeliness. The proposed QoS support is based on delivery priority. Nodes are able to express the priority order with which they wish to be notified. Furthermore, they are also able to specify which notification they want to receive. We classify the notifications in two categories: Critical and Non-Critical. The provided QoS is the result of a negotiation between the client and server. The client demands a certain degree of QoS according to its role. The server could accept or negotiate it. This choice depends on the availability of server and network resources. We evaluate our proposal in a real Wireless Sensor Network. An e-health application has been chosen as target of our tests. The performance evaluation is done in terms of average delay, energy consumption and delivery ratio.