kTC - Robust and Adaptive Wireless Ad-Hoc Topology Control

Topology control for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is a frequently tackled challenge, for which no satisfying general solution for realistic deployments has been found to the current day. Aiding to minimize unnecessary transmissions, it nevertheless represents a crucial function of WSN, in the light of their pursuit of efficiency. kTC is a new WSN topology control that unlike prior art neither relies on location information, nor on complex geometric structures, which could leave doubts about a practical feasibility. Even though location-free approaches have been proposed to circumvent systematic problems, they do not address issues like robustness and adaptability satisfyingly, which may lead to disconnection in real world deployments. kTC is a location-free approach that adapts topologies dynamically in face of changing environmental influences. It is based on a local, pattern-based heuristic, and transmitting only two messages per node to construct the topology it is highly scalable. The graphs kTC creates are symmetric, connected, and planar; they have bounded degree and nodes are θ-separated. Simulative evaluations indicate that kTC outperforms known topology control schemes. A preliminary deployment on a sensor testbed corroborates the obtained results and acts as proof of concept for kTC.