Self-Organizing WSN Protocol for Real-Time Communication Requirements

In this paper we propose a distributed, low-power, self-organizing MAC scheme for low-power wireless sensor and control applications. In such applications, nearly periodic traffic needs to be handled so that the communication delays are minimized and the transmission is as predictable as possible. We propose Asynchronous Random Schedules with Collision Forecast (ARS/CF) for this purpose, together with a multichannel extension based on an improved modulation scheme to improve capacity scaling of the basic ARS/CF scheme. We analyze and simulate the basic single-hop ARS/CF implementation with regard to throughput and delay when used both in single- and multi-channel settings. Finally, we consider the implementation of ARS/CF in a multi-hop setting.