Dynamic Data Forwarding in Low-Duty-Cycle Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), asynchronous duty-cycle technique can significantly reduce energy consumption. However, packets in low-duty-cycle networks suffer high end-to-end (E2E) delay. Besides, recent experimental studies have also shown that links in WSNs are highly unreliable and radio irregularity has adverse impact on routing protocols. In this work, we introduce a dynamic data forwarding (DDF) scheme which combines a realistic link model with asynchronous duty cycle. Different from most of other routing protocols, each node in our solution first finds out a set of candidate nodes and then forwards packet to the first waking up node in this set. Our solution can reduce E2E delay, guarantee delivery ratio and improve network lifetime. We evaluate this dynamic data forwarding scheme with extensive simulations and the simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of our solution.