Density-adaptive network reprogramming protocol for wireless sensor networks

Network reprogramming is a process used to update program codes of sensor nodes that are already deployed. To deal with potentially unstable link conditions of wireless sensor networks, the epidemic approach based on 3-way advertise-request-data handshaking is preferred for network reprogramming. Existing epidemic protocols, however, require a long completion period and high traffic overhead in high-density networks, mainly due to the hidden terminal problem. In this paper, we address this problem by dynamically adjusting the frequency of advertisement messages in terms of the density of sensor nodes, which is the number of sensor nodes in a certain area. We compare the performance of the proposed scheme, called DANP (Density-Adaptive Network Reprogramming Protocol), with a well-known epidemic protocol, Deluge. Simulations indicate that, in the grid topologies, DANP outperforms Deluge by about 30% in terms of the completion time and about 50% in terms of the traffic overhead. Significant performance gain is observed in random topologies as well. The performance of DANP is further confirmed via measurements in an experimental test bed. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.