AutoSync: Automatic duty-cycle control for synchronous low-power listening

Low power listening (LPL) has been widely adopted to save energy in wireless sensor networks. However, LPL is ineffective in adapting to dynamic networks with asymmetric traffic patterns, as it sets a network-wide check interval. As a result, nodes with low data traffic waste significant energy resources doing idle listening. This problem is particularly exacerbated in multi-radio networks where majority of data comes through the most reliable radio and the duty cycles of other radios could be reduced. We address this issue in AutoSync, a protocol that combines synchronous LPL with automatic selection of check intervals to reduce energy consumption in both single and multi-radio networks. We first present the justification for AutoSync´s design, and we then discuss our implementation of AutoSync in TinyOS. We compare AutoSync against existing protocols in both simulations and empirical experiments. Results show that AutoSync attains a substantial increase in the operational lifetime and mean power consumption over existing protocols in single radio networks and even more in dual radio networks.