Energy-Efficient and Latency-Aware Message Replica Transmission in IoT Networks

Message replication on the links from end devices (sensors) to gateways has been used to improve the reliability of data transfer in many wireless IoT applications. Existing replication schemes employ one of the following two approaches: 1) each replica is transmitted as a separate frame and 2) replicas are included in the payload of frames that carry new data (known as piggybacking). These approaches provide either low latency or low energy expenditure, but not both. We propose a hybrid approach that reduces the energy consumption while operating within the delay constraints of the application. Aimed at sensor networking applications with small message sizes and reasonable delay tolerances, the proposed method is shown to outperform existing mechanisms in terms of energy expenditure and reliability.