Self-Synchronization in Duty-cycled Internet of Things (IoT) Applications

TL;DR

This paper presents an improved decentralized emergent broadcast scheme for IoT networks that enhances energy efficiency and robustness through synchronized duty-cycling, supported by theoretical analysis and real-world testing.

Contribution

It introduces an extended EBS scheme that enables decentralized, energy-efficient, and collision-avoiding communication in IoT networks, with proven convergence behavior.

Findings

The EBS scheme improves energy efficiency in IoT communication.

The scheme ensures robust message delivery with minimized collisions.

Theoretical convergence is validated through real test-bed experiments.

Abstract

In recent years, the networks of low-power devices have gained popularity. Typically these devices are wireless and interact to form large networks such as the Machine to Machine (M2M) networks, Internet of Things (IoT), Wearable Computing, and Wireless Sensor Networks. The collaboration among these devices is a key to achieving the full potential of these networks. A major problem in this field is to guarantee robust communication between elements while keeping the whole network energy efficient. In this paper, we introduce an extended and improved emergent broadcast slot (EBS) scheme, which facilitates collaboration for robust communication and is energy efficient. In the EBS, nodes communication unit remains in sleeping mode and are awake just to communicate. The EBS scheme is fully decentralized, that is, nodes coordinate their wake-up window in partially overlapped manner within each duty-cycle to avoid message collisions. We show the theoretical convergence behavior of the scheme, which is confirmed through real test-bed experimentation.