ATS-DA: Adaptive Timeout Scheduling for Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, the timeout scheduling of data aggregation controls the time each sensor node has to wait to receive data from its child nodes. This paper proposes a new timeout scheduling scheme for data aggregation, the ATS-DA, which adaptively configures its length of timeout according to changing data patterns. The ATS-DA decreases the timeout when the variance of the received data (data variation) from children is lower than a pre-defined threshold because there are not any noticeable events, which reduces the consumed power and improves transmission latency. The ATS-DA, however, increases the timeout when data variation is more than the pre-defined threshold in order to fulfill more accurate data aggregation. Extensive simulation work under various workloads has revealed that ATS-DA not only enhances data accuracy by 33%, but also it improves power consumption and transmission latency by 5% and 58% respectively, as compared with the previous cascading timeout scheduling scheme.