EMBA: An Efficient Multihop Broadcast Protocol for Asynchronous Duty-Cycled Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose an efficient multihop broadcast protocol for asynchronous duty-cycled wireless sensor networks (EMBA) where each node independently wakes up according to its own schedule. EMBA adopts two techniques of the forwarder's guidance and the overhearing of broadcast messages and ACKs. A node transmits broadcast messages with guidance to neighbor nodes. The guidance presents how the node forwards the broadcast message to neighbor nodes by using unicast transmissions. This technique significantly reduces redundant transmissions and collisions. The overhearing of broadcast messages and ACKs helps to reduce the number of transmissions, thus it minimizes the active time of nodes. We implement EMBA and conventional protocols of ADB and RI-MAC broadcast in ns-2 simulator to compare their performance. The simulation results show that EMBA outperforms ADB and RI-MAC broadcast in both sparse and dense networks. EMBA achieves lower message cost than the conventional protocols and significantly improves the energy efficiency in terms of both duty cycle and energy consumption.