Energy Efficient Reliable Data Delivery in Wireless Sensor Networks for Real Time Applications

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are inherently unreliable and experience excessive delay due to congestion or in-network data aggregation. Furthermore, this problem is more aggravated due to the redundant data in WSNs. Therefore, an energy efficient and reliable data reporting scheme is essential for the delay sensitive applications. In this paper, we propose an Energy efficient Delay Sensitive Reliable Transport (EDSRT) protocol for intelligent data aggregation and forwarding. The EDSRT protocol computes the admissible waiting time of data in each intermediate node for convergence of similar data packet at the same node. Our protocol also uses the explicit and implicit acknowledgement scheme. Moreover, the delay sensitive packets are prioritized at near-sink nodes during congestion to increase the on-time delivery ratio. The proposed protocol is evaluated trough extensive simulations. The simulation results reveal that it outperforms the existing delay sensitive transport protocols in terms of energy efficiency, reliability and on-time delivery ratio.