1-D Coordinate Based on Local Information for MAC and Routing Issues in WSNs

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel hop-count-based virtual coordinate system for wireless sensor networks that improves node differentiation and supports real-time, reliable communication under energy and connectivity constraints.

Contribution

A new coordinate system based on hop-count and local connectivity that enhances node differentiation and supports real-time MAC and routing in WSNs.

Findings

Coordinates differentiate nodes with same hop-count.

Supports real-time delay bounding in WSNs.

Improves reliability and energy efficiency.

Abstract

More and more critical Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) applications are emerging. Those applications need reliability and respect of time constraints. The underlying mechanisms such as MAC and routing must handle such requirements. Our approach to the time constraint problem is to bound the hop-count between a node and the sink and the time it takes to do a hop so the end-to-end delay can be bounded and the communications are thus real-time. For reliability purpose we propose to select forwarder nodes depending on how they are connected in the direction of the sink. In order to be able to do so we need a coordinate (or a metric) that gives information on hop-count, that allows to strongly differentiate nodes and gives information on the connectivity of each node keeping in mind the intrinsic constraints of WSWs such as energy consumption, autonomy, etc. Due to the efficiency and scalability of greedy routing in WSNs and the financial cost of GPS chips, Virtual Coordinate Systems (VCSs) for WSNs have been proposed. A category of VCSs is based on the hop-count from the sink, this scheme leads to many nodes having the same coordinate. The main advantage of this system is that the hops number of a packet from a source to the sink is known. Nevertheless, it does not allow to differentiate the nodes with the same hop-count. In this report we propose a novel hop-count-based VCS which aims at classifying the nodes having the same hop-count depending on their connectivity and at differentiating nodes in a 2-hop neighborhood. Those properties make the coordinates, which also can be viewed as a local identifier, a very powerful metric which can be used in WSNs mechanisms.