Improving an Over-the-Air Programming Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Small World Concepts

Reprogramming is an important and challenging problem in wireless sensor networks because it is often necessary to in-network sensor processing. Thus, over-the-air programming is a fundamental service that relies upon reliable broadcast for efficient distribution. In this work we use small world features to improve the over-the-air programming. The small world based protocol takes into account the communication workflow of sensor networks to create shortcuts toward the sink, thus improving the reprogramming process. The end-points of these shortcuts are nodes with more powerful hardware, resulting in a heterogeneous wireless sensor network. We then evaluate the behavior of the small world based protocol regarding the number of transmitted messages, energy consumption and time to reconfigure the network.