Structured communication in single hop sensor networks

We propose a model for communication in single-hop wireless sensor networks and define and evaluate the performance of a robust, energy balanced protocol for a powerful and general routing primitive (N, p, k(1), k(2)) routing. This routing primitive represents the transfer of N packets among p nodes, where each node transmits at most k(1) packets and receives at most k(2) packets. Permutation routing is an instance of this primitive and has been recently studied by other researchers in the context of single-hop wireless radio networks. Our proposed protocol is the first to exploit the availability of a low-power control channel in addition to the "regular" data channel to achieve robustness in terms of handling node and link failures - both permanent and transient. We use a dynamic, distributed TDMA scheme for coordination over the control channel, which leads to collision-free transmissions over the data channel. The objective is to minimize overall latency, reduce per-node and overall energy consumption, and maintain energy balance. Our protocol is robust because the coordination is decentralized, there is no single point of failure, and one node failure affects only the packets destined for (and transmitted from) that particular node. Simulation results for different scenarios are presented.