Aggregation-Friendly Data Collection Protocol of Wireless Sensor Networks for PoI Monitoring

Point of Interest (PoI) coverage problem has been discussed lately. Both practical strategies and theoretical analysis have been proposed. We however argue that coverage solution alone is not enough. In real applications, data from the covered area need to be collected and sent back to the sink. We notice that existing protocols are for general purpose use and not specially designed for PoI monitoring. Accordingly, we propose Smaller tree Collection Protocol (SCP) for data collection in this kind of applications. SCP is a distributed approximation for building a minimum Steiner tree connecting all PoI nodes and the sink. SCP aims to activate minimum relay nodes and supports data aggregation better than other collection protocol, e.g., Collection Tree Protocol (CTP), Backpressure Collection Protocol (BCP) and opportunistic routing protocols. We also design low cost distributed mechanisms to handle PoI dynamics. Extensive simulations have been performed to evaluate the proposed protocol.