Reliability Guaranteed Data Transmission With Adaptive Multi-Coverage in Sensor Networks

Reliability guaranteed data transmission with energy efficiency is one of the major challenges in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the presence of unreliable or lossy wireless link. In this paper, we propose a protocol called RTAM which could deliver packets at the desired reliability with low transmission cost by employing adaptive multi-coverage strategy. Sensors are deployed either randomly or evenly distributed to K-cover the monitored region, such that any point or sub area information could be sensed and delivered by multiple sensors and the network guarantees the desired reliability. Furthermore, in order to control the overhead of the reliable transmission, we introduce two algorithms ORS and CRS in RTAM, which ensure sensors automatically join to detection and reporting according to the desired reliability and local knowledge. Thus, RTAM can jointly optimize both information reliability and energy efficiency in sensor networks.