Safeguarding schedule updates in wireless sensor networks

Working in the duty cycling mode enables sensor nodes to utilize limited energy efficiently instead of unnecessary idle listening. In such networks, awareness of neighboring nodes´ working schedules is essential, especially when each node sets up the schedule independently. Most traditional research assumes that a node can always share its working schedule with its neighbors once it joins the network. However, dynamic energy supply and varied requirements of system performance make adjusting duty cycles necessary. Consequently, sensor nodes have to regularly change their schedules and advertise the new schedule to their one-hop neighbors. In this work, instead of changing nodes´ working schedule directly, we introduce SSD, a staged and smooth design for safeguarding schedule updates. Our design is aimed at bounding average packet loss rate with a minimum energy cost. We evaluate our design with large-scale simulation and show that under the comparable packet loss rate, our design saves up to 35% energy compared with the minimal packet loss solution.