Node synchronization for minimizing delay and energy consumption in low-power-listening MAC protocols

Low-power-listening MAC protocols were designed to reduce idle listening, a major source of energy consumption in energy starved wireless sensor networks. Low-power-listening is a MAC strategy that allows nodes to sleep for t_i s (the ldquointer-listeningrdquo time) when there is no activity concerning them. It follows that a node has to occupy the medium for at least t_i s to guarantee that its destination will probe the channel at some point during the transmission. Low-power-listening protocols have evolved with the introduction of new radios, and the most recent contributions propose to interrupt communication between the sender and the receiver after the data packet has been successfully received and acknowledged. This results in significant energy savings because a sending node does not need to send for full t_i periods. We propose a new and simple approach to synchronize nodes on a slowly changing routing tree so that energy consumption is further reduced at the sending node, and the delay is considerably less. Our method allows the nodes to use a lower duty cycle, at no cost of overhead in most cases. Simulation and implementation results show that energy consumption can be reduced by a significant factor (dependant on t_i) and delay by at least 18%.