Coordinated convergecast in wireless sensor networks

Convergecast is a common communication pattern across many sensor network applications featuring data-flows from many different source nodes to a single sink node during a very short time window. Convergecast in wireless ad hoc network requires proper coordination among the nodes to avoid high packet collision rates near the sink node. A coordinated convergecast framework for achieving high convergecast reliability has been developed. In this paper, we extend this framework and study the effectiveness of packet aggregation and duplication within this framework. We analyze the performance of the coordination strategies via simulation and show the tradeoffs among reliability, latency, and throughput. We also compare a set of coordinated convergecast strategies with the existing routing strategy designed and implemented for a real-world application