Opportunistic transmission based QoS topology control in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), QoS topology control achieves energy-efficiency by turning off redundant nodes and links, while still satisfying the given QoS requirement. However, existing topology control algorithms assume that links are either connected or disconnected. Recent experiments have shown that, besides the connected and disconnected region, a large percentage of links reside in the transitional region with fluctuating link qualities. In this paper, we propose both centralized and distributed solutions for QoS topology control, where we employ the opportunistic transmission to catch the best transmission opportunities on transitional links. Our simulations demonstrate that opportunistic transmission based approach can significantly improve energy-efficiency in QoS topology control with low communication overhead. A unique contribution of this paper is to consider link quality and apply opportunistic communication in topology control for WSNs.