Title: Design and analysis of distributed power scheduling for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

Authors: Melody Moh, Eun Jik Kim, Teng-Sheng Moh

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0249, USA. ' Mobile Handset R&D Centre, LG Electronics, Anyang, Korea. ' Department of Computer Science, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0249, USA

Abstract: One major challenge of contention-based Medium-Access Control (MAC) for sensor networks is to reduce energy waste in idle listening time without global synchronisation of active/sleep duty cycles. This paper presents Distributed Power Scheduling (DPS), a medium access control protocol that is specifically designed for a sensor network that supports data aggregation. DPS integrates data aggregation process into power-mode scheduling in the MAC layer and effectively reduces packet delay. Two enhancements, adaptive aggregation and adaptive sleeping, dynamically adjust aggregation period and sleeping time, and greatly reduce idle listening period. DPS requires only local synchronisation and supports self-configuration. Detailed protocol description is presented. Formal analysis presents upper bounds on expected frame time (duty cycle period)and expected packet delay. Simulation study shows that the two enhancements in DPS achieved 28% reduction in idle listening time, which resulted in 20% energy reduction, as compared to the basic DPS protocol.

Keywords: data aggregation; duty cycle; energy efficiency; medium access control; MAC; routing; wireless networks; wireless sensor networks; simulation; local synchronisation; self-configuration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2006.012030

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2006 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.143 - 155

Published online: 12 Jan 2007 *

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