Segmentation and reassembly data merge (SaRDaM) technique for Wireless Sensor Networks

The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have limited power capabilities whereas they require long network lifetime. To increase the latter, techniques to reduce energy consumption are highly required. This study proposes such a technique which explores the benefits of data aggregation without size reduction, under various parameters in data flows scenarios. The proposed technique exploits the potential of utilizing the maximum allowed packet size. Actual data from incoming packets are appended to already buffered packets, until the maximum packet size or a maximum waiting time is reached. Hence, the number of transmissions is reduced and redundant header transmissions are avoided, leading to an overall gain in energy consumption. Our study explores the impact of the proposed data merge mainly in all-to-one data flow scenarios executed under various traffic loads, wait time intervals and number of merging nodes. Our results show gain up to 56% in packet loss and 46% in energy consumption compared to a direct forwarding of packets.