Hierarchical Range Sectoring and Bidirectional Link Quality Estimation for On-demand Collections in WSNs

TL;DR

This paper introduces HBCP, a protocol for wireless sensor networks that combines hierarchical organization and bidirectional link quality estimation to improve reliability and efficiency in data collection.

Contribution

It proposes two novel mechanisms—Hierarchical Range Sectoring and Bidirectional Link Quality Estimation—and integrates them into the HBCP protocol for enhanced WSN performance.

Findings

HBCP achieves high reliability in large networks.

The protocol reduces hidden terminal problems.

Effective in scenarios with network bottlenecks.

Abstract

The paper presents two mechanisms for designing an on-demand, reliable and efficient collection protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks. The former is the Bidirectional Link Quality Estimation, which allows nodes to easily and quickly compute the quality of a link between a pair of nodes. The latter, Hierarchical Range Sectoring, organizes sensors in different sectors based on their location within the network. Based on this organization, nodes from each sector are coordinated to transmit in specific periods of time to reduce the hidden terminal problem. To evaluate these two mechanisms, a protocol called HBCP (Hierarchical-Based Collection Protocol), that implements both mechanisms, has been implemented in TinyOS 2.1, and evaluated in a testbed using TelosB motes. The results show that the HBCP protocol is able to achieve a very high reliability, especially in large networks and in scenarios with bottlenecks.