REACTIVE: A peaceful coexistence between deluge and Low Power Listening

In this paper we analyze the interaction between two communication protocols implemented in TinyOS 2.x: Deluge T2, an over-the-air programming protocol, and the Low Power Listening (LPL) implementation provided with the standard Medium Access Control layer, BoX-MAC. We show how the characteristics of the two layers deeply diverge, leading to a sensible performance degradation. We present REACTIVE, a simple algorithm that, integrated in Deluge, is able to dynamically disable and re-enable LPL in order to boost Deluge performance, leveraging on the critical aspects of the layers integration. REACTIVE is able to increase the performance of Deluge, compared to its standard implementation, by a factor of 2.6 in terms of energy efficiency and 7 in terms of dissemination time.