Link Activity Scheduling for Minimum End-to-End Latency in Multihop Wireless Sensor Networks

End-to-end delay is an important QoS metric in sensor networks as well as any application that involves transferring of small-sized files. In this paper, we address how to minimize the end-to-end delay in a multihop wireless network. End-to-end delay is defined as the total time it takes for a single packet to reach the destination. It is a result of many factors including the length of the routing path and the interference level along the path. In this paper we present a transmission scheduling scheme that minimizes the end-to-end delay along a given route. The link scheduling scheme is based on integer linear programming and involves interference modeling. Using this schedule, there are no conflicting transmissions at any time. Through simulation, we show that the proposed link scheduling scheme can significantly reduce end-to- end latency regardless of the routing algorithm used.